It’s always been the case that the biggest consumers of rap music in the US are white, suburban kids who get off on the exaggerated “danger” of the lyrics and the whiff of cordite that comes from the more prominent proponents of the genre. Some of these rap consumers have now become recording artists themselves. While absorbing the musical fundamentals of rap, they’ve replaced the lyrics with something more applicable to their own surrounds.
The man currently getting all the attention – and, yes, picking up all those “new Eminem” descriptions at a rate of knots – is Pennsylvania rapper Asher Paul Roth (his real name, you suspect).
Roth cuts an unlikely figure – he’s working that skinny 23-year- old dork look and has made no attempt to “reimagine” his nice, middle-class upbringing. “I’m not angry at all,” he says disarmingly. “I don’t sell coke. I don’t have cars or 25-inch rims. I don’t have guns. But I have finally got to a point where I have the confidence to do this thing myself. I was just making music for myself. And it turns out a lot of people feel the same way I do.”
Make that an awful lot. Asleep in the Bread Aisle, Roth's album, went straight to No 1 on the US iTunes chart this week. His single, I Love College, has sold a million copies and has, been streamed more than 36 million times on Roth's MySpace page.
For a kid who could hardly be described as coming from the school of hard knocks, Roth is very on top of things. Given that the only real existing reference point for a solo white rapper is Eminem, he's already headed off the comparisons at the pass. On the song As I Em(which, weirdly, features a sample of Joe Jackson's Geraldine and John) he raps, "Because we have the same complexion and similar voice inflection/It's easy to see the pieces and to reach for that connection". He also, in the same song, refers to the Eminem comparison as "the elephant in the room".
While Eminem has his "anger management issues", Roth seems more interested in making responsible observations in his lyrics. I Love Collegemay be about the stereotypical hedonistic lifestyle – joints, booze, etc – but he also warns, "Don't have sex if she's too gone/and when it comes to condoms put two on".
The irresistible rise of Asher Roth is curious in many respects. Much rap music sells itself on its “edge”, on presenting a lifestyle that revels in quasi-criminality and a very particular type of “street cred”. But Roth is straight-up “white bread” in his subject matter and concerns. The jarring effect here is that lyrically he is an articulate frat boy (but still a frat boy) but musically he can hold the hip-hop rhythm together.
Throughout the history of recorded music, acts have been “remodelled” by record companies. Any semblance of functional, normal, orthodox (or worse still, privilege) is mentally Tipp-exed out and replaced with a more bohemian and alluring backstory. You would be astonished to discover the real socioeconomic background of some of the more ostensibly “mad, bad and dangerous to know” music figures.
Scooter Braun, who signed Roth, is already dealing with media suggestions that the rapper is a gimmick, a type of souped-up Vanilla Ice designed to appeal to a predominantly white record- buying audience.
“I always get a kick out of the gimmick allegation,” he says. “Asher is a white kid in a predominantly African American genre who goes by his own name. He has no stamp of approval.” This is a reference to the fact that Eminem’s path to rap superstardom was smoothed out by an endorsement from the esteemed Dr Dre.
Asher Roth as the Great White Rap Hope? I’d hold off on that for some time. But for honest authenticity in an industry that doesn’t understand either word, he’s your only man.
