Asher Roth may be the epitome of keeping it real.
On the surface, there’s nothing inherently special about the 23-year-old rapper who’s set to drop his debut LP later this month. Roth is far from a wannabe and makes no attempt to hide his suburban upbringing. In a recent sit down with The Wall Street Journal, Roth dropped his thoughts on Hip Hop and all those comparisons to another famous white rapper.
Ultimately, he blames the commercialization of Hip Hop and Hip Hop culture that brought him to where he is today. “Unlike Eminem, I’m classic white,” he says of his style and sound. “I’m talking about yoga and yogurt covered in fruit. I represent more of a suburban middle-class lifestyle.”
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While he believes Hip Hop is universal, he gives all of the credit to the original pioneers of the industry, many of whom are black.
“Besides the white guys who sell it and push it, hip hop is black music,” he stated. But when that push extended to Roth’s suburban home, he caught the urge to step to the mic and tell his story. “But it got to the point where they were targeting us, the white people in the ‘burbs. We got brought up on it, but suddenly when a 23-year-old white kid who’s been inspired by Jay-Z starts rapping, it’s a bad thing? C’mon, those [rappers] were talking to us the whole time. It’s interesting to see what this is turning into. I was just this punk kid rapping to the laptop in my sophomore year in college. That’s what hip-hop has turned into.”
And then there’s that whole Eminem thing. Roth hopes his album track “As I Em” [click to listen] will sum everything up.
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“Now, when I get asked, I can say, ‘Refer to song 8. Conversation over.’”
