White rapper Asher Roth's rhymes reppin' college kids, suburban homies alike

03/05/09 - For all its ghetto bravado, hip-hop has a dirty secret - although it's a secret that's entirely obvious to anyone who grew up with a white picket fence: hip-hop is, and has long been, immensely popular in the quaint, grassy suburbs.The rap community, understandably, doesn't pay much mind to its broad reach into the sprawl of suburbia. The suburbs, after all, aren't the most interesting or intimidating of locales. It's hard to look hood in a minivan (no matter how tricked out it is), and lawn games aren't half as hardknock as the drug game.

The urban sprawl is luridly compelling - and, obviously, a lot less wholesome - than its Pleasantville counterpart. As a rule of thumb, if your neighbors are dope-fiends, you don't invite them over for bingo night. It doesn't take a genius to know that whole "Mr. Rogers" thing doesn't fly in the hood. Dope fiends are notoriously crafty anyway.

Hip-hop has transcended the hood and is already casually acknowledging, if not outright embracing, its tidy, clean(er)-living fan-base.

Well-established rappers like Kanye West, N.E.R.D. and Lupe Fiasco sit at the more cerebral end of the rap-spectrum, mixing off-beat, PG topics like school and robots and skateboarding, with the requisite flash and trash about girls, bling and all the other trite trappings of fame and fortune.

But some up-and-coming rappers are seriously considering (and aiming to redefine) the boundaries of the rap species. "What makes a rapper?" 23-year old Asher Roth, a suburban - and, yes, white - rapper from outside Philadelphia, asks on his track, "The Lounge."

Roth questions the classification and definition of a rapper asking, "I got a question, what's a rapper look like? Is he tan? Is he black? White? Is he blacked-out, high on the crack pipe? Or more the cats that'll ride on the half-pipe?"

Roth is a newbie in the rap game, and has so far has only released a mixtape titled The Greenhouse Effect, (the cover of which wryly features a lab-coat-clad Roth and his posse creatively using beakers as bongs) but he's an interesting case study.

Roth is extraordinarily self-aware, for one thing, and makes for a notable contribution to the weak pantheon of "white rap," a genre that really only includes Eminem, the Beastie Boys (whose "license to ill" is still valid, in my book) and the flat-top sporting embarrassment known as "Vanilla Ice."

Roth's sound is decidedly lo-fi, and his rhymes pack a bemused dose of wit and an underpinning of irony. His voice is shrill and a little nasally, which could be a drawback,

But here's what really matters: in a sea of churned-out commercial dreck, Roth's music sounds fresh.

It's not hollow or over-produced, and you don't have to worry about T-Pain popping up to mimic the hook or repeat " Ayyy T-Pain!" at odd intervals. And although "relatable" is relative, the subject matter should be familiar to a lot of college students: "build a beer bong, nothing wrong with some fun, even if you did get a little bit too drunk," he raps on his anthemic first single "I Love College."

So, if you feel like a poser bumping tracks about busting gats (when your street-cred is limited to the handful of karate lessons you took when you were 8 years old), well, Roth's album should fit the bill.

Unless, of course, you've never been to a party, thought about society as a whole, or played a video game. In which case, the Jonas Brothers might be more your speed.

The comparison to Eminem is probably inevitable, seeing as they're both white artists in a predominantly non-white genre. (They're both white! And they rap! White people rapping!) But making that connection is taking the easy way out. If race were an important (or interesting) factor in terms of making music, Michael Jackson would have lost his fan base years ago.

If The Greenhouse Effect and the success of "I Love College" (scout it out on College Humor, MTV2 and WBRU) are any indication, Roth promises to be an interesting addition to the rap game. Playing intramural soccer, sitting down for family dinner and mowing the lawn on Saturdays may never be as badass as getting shot nine times or stabbing a crack dealer in prison, but thanks to Roth, the sleepy suburbs may just "up" their street-cred.