Asher Roth: The Other White Meat
I have a complex relationship with Asher Roth. I initially dug him, because he didn’t seem like some entitled douche who was ready to receive his accolades because he was co-signed by industry heavies. Then, when his music started to come out (his average “A Milli” freestyle, horrible XXL mixtape cuts, etc) I lost my interest because he seemed like just another underground dude trying to twist himself into knots behind the mic in an effort to showcase how “real” he is. Click “ignore”.
When he was signed to SRC and started work on his album, I was admittedly taken aback by the artists and producers who signed on to work with him. Maybe they see him as a sure thing, maybe he was just dope in the booth. Either way, I had my opinions and nothing had changed: people were getting gassed by the new Slim Shady and his inevitable crossover appeal.
When his music started leaking out, I continued to ignore it. Since I’d rather have other more worthy folk judge major releases through my “Streets Say” series, I didn’t see the point of listening to any of the tracks. In fact, I had never heard anything beyond “I Love College” – until today.
After checking out the available tracks (“Lark On My Go Kart”, “Lion’s Roar”, “Perfectionist” and “As I Em”) I can say that the dude is pretty nice. He has chosen tracks with an original sound, his flow works and he’s definitely hip-hop: party and bullsh*t. Is he Top 5 material? Not even close. Am I up at midnight on April 20th to grab Asleep In The Bread Aisle off of iTunes? Hell no. But will Asher add another layer to hip-hop? Sure.
The only real beef I have with Roth comes from his joint “As I Em”. I think he’s smart for just confronting the comparisons to Em, but I have a note for Asher: I don’t think you sound like Marshall Mathers because of your skin and your particular inflection. I think you two are alike because you both:
- Drop lead singles that are made for the radio and are about nothing;
- Spend most of your 16 bars talking about yourself;
- Are the first to complain about how difficult your life is as an artist;
- Go out of your way to try and be more lyrical than the next cat.
The similarities are remarkable there, boys. Anyway, Asher has proven that he has enough skill to warrant him carrying the banner of hip-hop to the masses eager to consume the “next big thing” in rap, which happens to be a dude who was into Dave Matthews Band before he discovered hip-hop. Whether we are prepared to deal with the fallout of that is the real question.
Tags: Asher Roth, Asleep In The Bread Isle, Eminem
I wish I could hear what the hell u hear in lark on my go kart and the other songs…This kid has been meh to me from day 1. I dunno. I mean you’re not the only 1 to say he has skills, which for the life of me I still have not seen and I feel like I’m a pretty good judge of what skills is. I find that people usually say ‘he doesn’t suck” as the way of saying he’s acceptable when in reality he’s fuckking terrible. So I guess suck is a step lower than terrible. I dunno. Maybe cats are trying to get on the Asher bandwagon because they feel the need to be on “the big thing” ((II)) so they can say they supported the movement if it goes there. Maybe these are cats who didn’t know about eminem til 99 and they feel like they were late. I cosign alot of what u blog, but this 1 here, fam I cannot see anything hiphop about this kid. He’s a college fratboy that tries to freestyle during beerpong. I say if we let him in we gotta let them ALL in, cuz honestly some of hem are probly nicer than this kid. Now when that’s what HipHop becomes will everyone be bitching and complaining like “it’s the natural progression” or will they look back and have the courage to go against the grain and say “hey y’know Asher Roth was complex marketing that was everywhere and I couldn’t escape it because too many bloggers and journalists cosigned him so I got pulled in as well”.
We’ll see.
100
Actually, I was looking for a word/phrase that best summed up how I felt about Asher. “Nice” was the best I could come up with last night, but “he doesn’t suck” is more accurate.
I guess my view on him has been influenced by the incredibly low expectations I had before hearing his music.
I feel the same way about this dude. I am not on the hype train like the rest of the paid celebs, but this dude isn’t completely whack. Good stuff.
@M
Who are we to decide “what’s hip hop” and what’s not? As far as I’m concerned, a 55 year old redneck from Alabama could jump in the booth and drop a rhyme and that would be hip hop. His genre classification is out of the question. Does his music fit to your personal preferences? Now that’s for you to say. But you can’t say that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing.
you should check out the greenhouse mixtape first… unless you were referencing that… I consider myself at least an informed hip-hop head and i really thought that tape had some good stuff on it, but it’s probably not for everyone…
“Go out of your way to try and be more lyrical than the next cat.”
Is this a bad thing? You seem to be dissing on a hip-hop artist for… trying to write good lyrics. Should hip-hop artists try to be less lyrical?
Most of your other criticism is valid – although I don’t think it’s fair for you to twist your perception of Roth as a person in with your judgment of his music – but criticizing somebody for trying to create better art? Really? That smacks of tearing somebody down just for the hell of it.