Everything about Kanye’s “I Love It,” from the song to the video to the rollout, feels like it belongs in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch about him that got cut. “It’s just too absurd and unfunny,” Lorne would probably say. There’s something about it that’s even more surreal than Pete Davidson’s “Tucci Gang”: The real Lil Pump is here, too, and he’s cooing, “You’re such a fucking ho, I love it” over and over. And that’s supposed to be the hook. The bizarre Spike Jonze-produced video, which featured Kanye and Pump in cartoonishly enlarged, boxy body suits, debuted during the first-ever Pornhub Awards, for which Kanye was the creative director. Last month, Kanye professed to Jimmy Kimmel that he’s an avid user of the site, which scored him a lifetime premium membership and likely got him this gig, too, but a ceremony awarding the great filmed feats of eroticism deserved better than something this half-cocked.
The rest of us deserve better, too. Almost fittingly, the song has the same pervy energy as the last Kanye song, the bafflingly bad “XTCY” (in which Kanye rapped, “You got sick thoughts? I got more of ‘em/You got a sister-in-law you’d smash? I got four of ‘em”). Here, he’s a “sick fuck” who will get you a boob job in exchange for a blowjob, but at least he leaves the creepy Kardashian clan come-ons out of it. These horndog raps aren’t quite as crude and tasteless as those were, but they’re too inane not to feel uninspired. If you squint really hard, there’s a playful irreverence that could be seen as endearing and even “fun” in the wake of ye’s jarring crisis of confidence. The interspersed jokes from comedian Adele Givens are a nice touch, drawing some attention away from the overbearing testosterone of the male co-stars. If anyone comes out ahead, it’s Pump, who has a better showing and isn’t that far out of his element. But the inherent goofiness (and spoofiness) of the entire affair isn’t enough to mask the ignominy of this massive self-own.
