It’s time for the slow jams. Dance floor’s elevated now. And there’s, like, poles and shit.

A Clear Channel edit of this song has the incomprehensibly named T-Pain grinning out, “I’m in love with a dancer,” which, if anything, serves as little more than an exercise in censorial absurdity, the rest of the drooling, ogling lyrics quite intact. However, the edit does inspire conjecture as to what might happen to the entire song if other nouns were substituted for its key word, and that kind of hypothesizing reveals how boring and safe Mr. T-Pain actually played it. Take women caricatures from greater extremes (“I’m in love with a virgin” or “I’m in a love with a crack whore”), and you have a potential laugh riot to best R. Kelly at his most oblivious. As this track stands, though, it seems like the audience is supposed to sit back and marvel at how glorious a stripper this must be if her dancing can reach past T’s genitals, straight to his heart. Acoustic guitar and keyboards burble out a poor approximation of what they think melancholy must sound like, and Pain lets his vocals noxiously cling to the back-ends of the melodies, those cloying enough by themselves.

But, for all that playing to sentiment, there’s no actual sentiment in what T-Pain’s saying. He just wants to get the dancer back to his crib to “do that night thang.” More accurate song title: “I’m Turned On (By this One Stripper Moreso than the Other Strippers, and I Wish She Was a Prostitute).” Depending on how committed one is to listening to this shit for yuks, Mike Jones’ verse will either be the final round’s bell or the sweet, sweet icing. “She’s every man’s dream / She’s God’s gift to urf,” starts Mike, his toddler mispronunciation of “earth” all but endearing. Then he continues with what has to be some kind of insinuation that he likes women because women are sometimes lesbians: “Women they love ‘em, too / That’s what you call a woman’s wurf.” Once you decide that Mike meant to say “worth,” you’re still left with a sizable wtf. But, in the end, it’s all a part of the song’s relational myopia and the furthering of pop culture trends that degrade the idea of “love” into just another term for getting off.

Even worse, though, is the fact that Wyclef Jean already did this song with “Perfect Gentleman,” and he did it better. Wyclef did it better. How’s that for something you’ve never read before.

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