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For the past few months, I've been hearing rumors of a kid out of Pennsylvania who's been drawing comparisons to Eminem. With the current dearth of capable emcees these days (at the mainstream level, anyway), any rapper who shows an above average level of wordplay is going to get some attention on the internet - if that rapper happens to be white, however, you can generally multiply the expected level of hype by a factor of ten. Going by his government name, Asher Roth has just released a mixtape with DJ Drama, The Greenhouse Effect, so this seemed like a good time to check him out and see what all the buzz has been about.
Now that he's gotten his name spread around the blogosphere, his internet posse seems to be backing away from the Em comparisons, with the latest claims being that the only thing that Ash and Marshall have in common is the "timbre" of their voice. That's definitely true, as the two sound nearly identical from a strictly vocal standpoint. The similarities run deeper than that, however. Most notably, both have devoted a song to a certain blonde pop icon, both have a habit of dropping bizarre non sequiturs throughout their songs, and Asher's cadence at times seems to be patterned directly after Eminem's.
Yet when Asher does channel the ghost of Em's once bright career, the results are a significantly watered down version of what was so successful for Mr. Mathers. While Eminem attacked Christina at the height of her popularity, Ash sets his sites on Britney Spears long after she's held any shred of relevancy. Em certainly wasn't afraid to take shots at easy targets (N'Sync?) but at least it was timely. And when Ash does start to flow like Eminem, it's the Encore-era Slim Shady that he emulates rather than the far more interesting delivery of Em's earlier days - as when Asher, over the ubiquitous Cannon beat, does his best imitation of Ass Like That.
To be fair, Roth doesn't spend the entire mixtape dissing washed up pop divas. On Roth Boys, he lets off a few lyrical rounds at Jay-Z. It seems at one point during his time as CEO of Def Jam, Jay passed on Asher Roth and instead signed fellow Pennsylvanian Pittsburgh Slim (to continue the Slim Shady comparisons, I suppose if Ash does go mainstream, Pittsburgh Slim will be what Cage was to Eminem). Ash raps that the move was perhaps best for his career anyway - as he says, "When has a Jay decision ever gone gold?" Yet in case it wasn't clear that this was in fact a diss track, Ash closes the song out with the line, "This is the same thing that happened on Renegade," which is to say that once again, Hova gets served by a white emcee on his own song.
Comparisons aside, Asher is at his best when he's doing his own thing without trying to emulate any other emcee. When he does that, he's actually quite entertaining. As long as you don't expect to hear the second coming of Marshall Mathers, there's a whole lot to like about this kid. And if you can get past all of Don Cannon and DJ Drama's incessant sound effects and shoutouts to "The Daily Kush," his mixtape The Greenhouse Effect may be one of the best to come out this year.
Two tracks off of the tape:
Asher Roth - The Lounge
Asher Roth - Cartoon Chick
And here's the video for The Roth Boys:
Asher Roth - The Roth Boys
To download The Greenhouse Effect for free, and to preview all of the songs, head on over to Asher Roth Music.
7/6/2007 08:10:01 PM posted by Fresh