Asleep In The Bread Aisle

6.2/10

Best Track: Sour Patch Kids

Worst Track: Blunt Cruising

Asher Roth is white. Not Eminem white, but Eugene Levy-as Jim’s-dad white. Yeah, THAT white. He samples Weezer and Ben Kweller, his main hip-hop influence is Mos Def, and he raps about College and Mario Kart, until now, uncharted territory in mainstream hip hop. However, as “Asleep on The Bread Aisle” displays, this is not necessarily a good or bad thing, just his thing, and, as his freshman debut, that’s a good enough premise for me. Not good, or bad, but good enough.

Asher Roth alternates silly moments with serious moments in “Asleep”, never losing his tempo or flow throughout the entire album. Despite being a fan of Roth’s entertaining, although ultimately empty, wit and his slow and clear cadence, which I’ll get back to later, the content of his rhymes, save for very few exceptions (His Dream), often lack depth and value, even if it’s mere shallow entertainment. “Bad Day” is by far the most ridiculous track on the album as he narrates a typical Asher-Roth bad day, which includes things such as sitting next to a fat person on the plane, him wanting to shit but not being able to, turbulence, forgetting his Ipod, Meeting an annoying girl from his high school, and room service not being a Latina maid willing to fuck him. If you don’t see it as simply fucking ridiculous then, in the least, you’ll understand that Asher Roth’s bad day is utterly boring.

Thankfully, “Bad Day”, like a plethora of other tracks on “Asleep”, is saved by the great production values of newcomer Oren Yoel, who, as you can see by the name, is also as white as Asher, but thankfully, infinitely more talented. “His Dream”, as I mentioned before, has amazing production values, with a dreamy piano hook and backing vocals, adding to the mood of the song. The album’s highlight, both lyrically and musically, “Sour Patch Kids” makes a musical allusion to Run DMC’s rock box with a heavily distorted guitar, but it doesn’t so much as steal from it, as it updates it, making you revert back to 1984 without losing the context as Roth sings “Take me away from here”. The distorted guitar over the creative bass beat adds to Roth’s incessant rhymes, and the chorus is the most infectious modern pop can get. Besides His Dream, Bad Day, and Sour Patch Kids, Oren Yoel’s stroke of genius is present in 6 other “Asleep” songs, and he is the one that, ultimately, saves Asher’s freshman album from mediocrity.

Okay, that might’ve been harsh. There are also the guest performers. Cee-lo, Miguel and Jazze-Pha, some of the collaborating crooners for this album, play decisive, not to mention respectively groovy, emotional and funky, parts in enhancing Roth’s tracks. On the other hand, the rappers that Asher Roth invited to guest spit on Asleep, Busta Rhymes and Slick Rick, manage to deliver worse material than Asher himself. Busta Rhymes in particular sounds obsolete and just plain old, reaffirming how low Busta has sunk.

Asher Roth is the classic example of a budding artist trying to find his identity, as his rhymes are very inconsistent and he struggles constantly with his identity. Matter a fact, he struggles so with it much he dedicated an entire track to his struggle: “As I Em”, where he complains ad nauseam about being compared to Eminem, but without disrespecting him. The thing is, who in fact, is comparing Asher Roth to Eminem? Despite their cadence and flow *sometimes* being similar, their topics when rapping are almost polar opposites, and I haven’t seen any press comment on Roth’s likeness to Eminem. It would be infantile to say they are similar because they are white. We are not in 1991 anymore; there are a plethora of white rappers out there, besides Eminem, doing their game and achieving success, not only on the underground, but on the mainstream as well. Paul Wall, Bubba Sparxx, Aesop Rock, Mike Skinner…the list is never-ending.

Roth is a diamond in the rough, or at least, a work in progress. His rapping dynamics are superb, despite sometimes leaning on cliché, and so are his beats, something rare to find on a freshman debut. What makes this CD mediocre, however, is it's lyrical content. Not to say that his overall topic choice is boring, he just does it wrong, with overused phrasing and awkward, even weak, metaphors. What Roth needs is a contextual makeover, a rhyming dictionary, and a new world view, after all, as Kanye West proved it, college can only last for so long. What’s next, Mr. Roth?