Reviews
A Yawn for Asher Roth’s “Asleep in the Bread Aisle”
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I just finished listening to Asher Roth’s new album Asleep in the Bread Aisle and BOY are my ears tired. Although this freshman class dropout has certainly worn the buzz feeds thin with his parent label Interscope’s precise media blitz, he has yet to truly make the mark he tries for. Like the others awash in Ash-mania, I first heard the Pennsylvanian suburban rap hero on DJ Green Lantern’s project “Greenhouse Effect” wherein his penchant for silly rhyme schemes and syllable dexterity reminded me (and everyone) of Eminem. In fact, he was so similar to Eminem that I found myself reaching for anything outside of Eminem’s signatures, rhymes he could call his own, so to speak.
Asher Roth lacked on “Greenhouse Effect” the essential quality that would include him in the hip hop community blues. Contemporary hip-hop music requires less of the elemental style heritage of blues and jazz and reggae, and much more of the media savvy and willingness to pretend those musical qualities for the camera. There, in the glow of a passing spotlight, Asher Roth thrives and even channels some of the recent rap-rockers in popular culture like Fred Durst and Everclear, who carefully meshed ska-infused rhythmic slow raps with the up-tempo drums. But at his worst, Asher either dips into Eminem’s oldest bag of tricks, namely drunken frat boy humor and the perpetual complaint, or he drags out his rhymes until there’s nothing left but a thin film of postmodern Beastie Boys who’ve burnt out on dorm room bong hits one too many times.
Although having a downtrodden life, or a life of absolute struggle, is no precursor to involvement in the mechanics of beats and rhymes, it certainly can strengthen the audience’s initial connection to the new artist. Because Eminem effectively clawed and scratched his way to the top of his city in storied rap battles, he established himself as a sufferer for the art, and was rewarded for it. His first album, drawn from a dark alter ego character in Slim Shady, mined the once-alien territory of white trash rap lament and made the white experience at least a few degrees more relatable in the hip hop canon.
Asleep in the Bread Aisle smartly begins with a different mission. With the assertion that Asher Roth is an entirely new entity and that the laid-back suburban basement experience is just as germane to the rap audience as the urban ghetto experience, he tramples on the neighbors’ lawn with reckless vigor. “Lark On My Go Kart” begins with dexterous albeit nonsensical rhymes about playing a hypothetical game of life as seen through the Mario Kart video game, but wherever the rhymes drop off in substance, they please the ears in the same scatting way in which they are delivered. “Blunt Cruisin” follows in the same pattern, telling of a weed ride gone wrong and the joys of that kind of youthful indiscretion.
If only those upbeat notes, the ones that track Roth for an album maybe not uniquely his own but at least fun, had continued with “I Love College.” Things take a dip into the shallow pool of carelessness with the lines ‘That party last night was awfully crazy/ I wish we taped it’ — just a touch of the detached lackadaisical rhymes that comprise his anthem. And the rest of his first opus sounds equally noncommittal, the touchstone sentiment of a 21-year-old’s album no doubt. However, the album should not be registered as a failure to capture youthful lighting in a bottle. Rather, it’s a conceptual contradiction with “Be By Myself” as Cee-Lo’s white flag waving to concede his creative efforts are now reduced to throwaway Gnarls Barkley hooks, and Asher Roth claiming he can have “any girl” before later talking about the simplicity of having a girlfriend.
The sense of Asher’s identity, crucial to any debut album, gets lost in the race to the mainstream. “As I Em” is an apologetic mimic of Eminem’s style meant to passively dispel the rumor that he only aspires to be his rap father. Kanye’s “Big Brother” was awkward enough and Asher takes listeners down the wrong road with his late reminder that “Hey, I know you know who I sound like, but let’s not talk about it after this.”Of the highlights, “Bad Day” chronicles a day in his life as an artist and is one of few songs that begin to reveal his emotional scope. But the praise stops there for Asher Roth who should consider a persona overhaul next time around, leaving the image-making to the publicity specialists and confining his career to his clear lyrical talents.
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