Music Matters: Asher Roth and Suburban Hip Hop

Asher Roth - Asleep in the Bread Aisle, UniversalMotown
Download Now - I Love College, As I Em, The Lounge

Asher Roth is a pioneer of a new genre of music I'm going to call Suburban Hip Hop.

Hip Hop is highly conscience of place. Which 'hood, city, state, coast an artist comes from is not merely a biographic detail, it defines the essence of that artist. In the same way, Suburban Hip Hop effectiveness will be predicated on how true its artists are to the places they come from. If a Suburban Hip Hopper starts rapping about how hard life was growing up with two loving parents and the best schools in the county, people will surely tune out. But if Suburban Hip Hoppers are honest about the place they came from they will add an interesting and exciting addition to Hip Hop culture.

Suburban Hip Hop is understandably and perhaps necessarily going to be on the defensive against a deluge of haters and skeptics. The classic complaints will be, here's another group of white people who are stealing black music (that they don't understand, by the way), sanitizing it, and getting rich off it. This argument held water in the 1950's when music really was stolen from oppressed groups, but no one can claim that the founders of Hip Hop have not been well compensated for their contribution to the art form. Also, access to Hip Hop in its purest unedited form is widespread and successful, meaning a Sunday-morning-friendly bastardization of rap would be wholly rejected. There is some truth to the claim that a kid growing up in Fairfax doesn't know what it's like for a kid growing up in Southeast DC, but the power of Hip Hop is that it provides a forum for that kid from Southeast to explain where he's coming from in a way that can get that kid from Fairfax to listen.

For a long time that dialogue has been one way, but Asher Roth's new record, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, opens up a channel in the opposite direction. Like a lot of kids from the burbs, Asher is one of three kids from a supportive two parent home who smoked pot, went to college, and has a long term girlfriend. If you are shocked by the fact that after graduating he choose to rap instead of going into investment banking then Suburban Hip Hop is a vital platform for telling us a more about a place we think we understand.

Asher is honest about where he's from which gives a striking credibility to his work. He fell in love with rap when he was a kid and just like a lot of future rappers had a dream to be an MC, worked hard to get there, and has arrived. He laments the inevitable comparisons to that other white rapper that he kind of sounds like, Eminem, but doth strongly protest that while inspired by Slim Shady he is not his clone. After listening to his work I agree that he's not Em, but he's like Em in the fact that he is completely honest about where he's from and who he is.

I believe Asher has paved the way for kids all across the country who bump classic Biggy in their moms' minivan to not apologize for where they are from but to use it as inspiration to achieve any dream they have.