Asher Roth Hits Spring Break With Rolling Stone, Gets Naked Like D'Angelo for April Fool's

When Rolling Stone hit Panama City, Florida, for mtvU's Spring Break with rising hip-hop sensation Asher Roth earlier this month, we saw the 23-year-old MC down Miller Lites and vodka shots and get friendly with a bevvy of young ladies (enjoy a gallery of Roth's wild Spring Break here). But the "I Love College" rapper didn't strip down and uh, act sexy, like he does in the above video, a specially prepared April Fool's spoof of D'Angelo's famed "(Untitled) How Does It Feel" clip.

Roth showed off his sharp sense of humor during his time with RS, but he admits he started out rapping about some heavy topics even though he was a white kid from suburban Morrisville, Pennsylvania. "When I was younger, I was rhyming about guns. And it's just crazy, man, 'cause that's the influence that pop has," Roth says. "There I was, a white kid at 16 years old, rhyming about guns. I held a gun once, by accident. It was on top of one of my ex-girlfriend's refrigerator, her dad had it for protection. I was like, 'Oh, shit, wow, this is much heavier than I thought it would be.' Guns and hard drugs — that's not part of my lifestyle. I like to just kick back and just relax."

Roth, who is actually a spacey stoner who practices yoga and enjoys musing on politics, stumbled upon his hit record — which features the riff from Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" — by accident, and is well aware that the track, like the rest of his debut Asleep in the Bread Aisle (due out April 20th), doesn't sound like the songs on the hip-hop charts. "I'm sitting there and I have this song and I'm like, 'That party last night was awfully crazy. I wish you taped it, I danced my ass off and had this one girl completely naked.' My friend was like, 'Yo, that shit is killer. Keep rockin' that shit.' So we get in a conversation about what we loved about college. Dollar slices — all this and that. And I was like, 'Man, I miss college.' It just wrote itself. Honestly, probably took about 15, 20 minutes."

For more on Roth, grab the new issue of Rolling Stone.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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