By Ryan Broderick
Asher Roth refers to himself as the “king of the blumpkins” in his first verse on the first track of his debut album, “Asleep In The Bread Aisle.” Now assuming you have the cognitive function to read this review, you probably think that is an incredibly stupid thing to say. You probably also won’t like the CD either.
Oh, also, the album came out on 4/20. Get it?
From the opening track the listener gets a very clear impression that Asher Roth is white, likes smoking a lot of weed, getting really drunk, and having anonymous sex with women. In “I Love College” there’s a line in the title about filming it. Man, that dude sure loves college. By the second track, though, “Blunt Cruisin'” this is an already redundant theme.
The album follows a pretty simple formula. Some like really “chill” guitar riff plus a bunch of really tired Eminem-style raps about how big his trust fund is and then packaged sort of ironically for white people that are too white to listen to real rap. Roth would have been smarter titling his album “L-O-L.”
The fact he sounds like Eminem is probably the CD’s worst problem. There’s nothing new added to it either. It’s just a whiney voice and non sequitur lyrics drenched in faux-irony with an unintelligible spew of pop culture references. The man rhymes a line with “Teddy Rockspins.”
Here’s the problem. Asher Roth is a marketing executive’s wet dream, but there’s absolutely no substance. Sure he’s llike a “ohmigod a white dude that raps about being a yuppie.” There’s not even any substance musically. It’s so limp. Critiquing the album is even a challenge because “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” is so mundane and mediocre. There’s not even enough created inside of it’s 15 tracks to create a foundation for criticism. It’s the same track, and the track’s just okay.
The album’s single, though, is in definite need of some attention. First of all it samples Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.” Second of all, it’s called “I Love College.” There’s two ways to look at Asher Roth’s debut single. One is that he’s a performance artist making an incredibly sad statement on the state of collegiate education standards. The other is that Asher Roth is a humungous a**hole.
Asher Roth’s “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” is a cliched mess. Its scattered and phoned in and never materializes into anything worth listening to. It’s built on a gimmick that’s been tired since Vanilla Ice. The only difference Mr. Roth seems to think that separates him from his incredibly lame forefathers of white guy rap is the fact he’s aware of his own “lameness.” The question is though, if he’s so aware of it, why doesn’t he just stop being some damn lame. The answer: He’s an incredibly lazy flash in the pan that will fizzle away just like the joint he hopes you light to his first track.