Asher Roth: The Hip-Hop John Rocker?

(yo, Drugs Bunny here, the following is a guest post by one of my boys. i do not share Semi-Semitic's opinions necessarily, i liked the homie Asher's new album but I can't cosign the strange racial comments he's been making lately...Semi vented in some comment section and I told him I'd repost that rant here, cuz it's blogworthy. see for yourself.)

Asher Roth: The Hip-Hop John Rocker!

A Semi-Semitic Drop


"All these black rappers? African rappers? Talking about how much money they have? Do
you realize what's going on in Africa right now?"
-Asher Roth, Associated Press Article, April 28th

can i just say, by way of introduction, that as one of the many jewish/cracker/hiphop heads in the Lurkforce, i have always disliked asher roth.

yes, he can spit. but only now and then. he drops a respectable 8 bars of wordplay roughly once every 4 songs.

most of his beats are wack. (slick rick joint aside. yes i too love weezer.) his choice of flows to match the beat is also poor.

dude appeared out of nowhere when his label pushed that wack mixtape onto every blog last year, and repeated the strategy with the always-looked-like-it-would-suck "Asleep In The Bread Aisle."

he keeps giving interviews where he defends biting em's flow by implying he's only the second white dude to ever attempt a hip-hop career. like, "i sound like em cuz i'm white, let another white rapper get over!"

ORLY? here's a short list of white rappers with flows and rhymes WAY better than A. Roth:

Eminem, Everlast, El-P, Remedy (Wu Tang), Sage Francis, Slug, Eyedea, Aesop Rock, Ill Bill, Bubba Sparxx, MC Serch, Mac Lethal, Buck 65, Classified, Paul Wall, CAGE (the original for eminem's xerox), Hot Karl, Edan, Paul Barman. just off the top of my head.

.....they had a whole show of crackerspittin on VH1, remember?

every bit of white rapper shtick was played out by those dudes well before Mr. Roth joined the industry. Paul Barman in particular patented the jewish college kid rapper with an overactive vocabulary thing.

so yeah, forget Em, ash is in a very crowded lane, and like all the other dudes i mentioned apart from Em, he's hitting the wall.

okay. so I already can't stand the guy. now he's lecturing people? black people? his fellow rappers? he called them AFRICANS?








GTFOH.

i'm a jew and only slightly less pale than dude, but i grew up on the south side of chicago, and from there I moved to baltimore city. mainly because I stay broke, I've always lived in black/latino/mixed areas, and one thing you learn as a fishbelly in the hood is, don't discuss other folks' race or nationality.

it's bad enough i get a free pass from cops, employers, and other racist authorities. white don't get to talk about other nationalities unless we are asked first. even then not really.

so ash? from one vanilla hebe hip-hop head to another, please, from now on, when you do press, just speak on your music. i've read your interviews. you come off badly when you discuss the general culture. it's not your fault. you're sheltered/from the burbs, white, rich, and 23. you need more life experience. until then, nobody wants to hear your take on racial relations. I promise.

the Braves had a relief pitcher named John Rocker, back when you were 13. i'm guessing you never heard of him. you seem like a lacrosse player to me. sports illustrated interviewed him for a feature. "do you like pitching in new york?" they asked.

his carefully thought out response: "The biggest thing I don't like about New York are the foreigners. I'm not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?"

sure, he was an openly ignorant cracker. but you're almost worse, a walking, talking cliche: the ignorant cracker who wants to enlighten the world with his deep understanding of race relations.

you don't think that's a racially biased attitude, but it is. rocker didn't consider himself racist either.

rocker was gone by the next season. i'm just saying.

Semi-Semitic rant over & out.

But WHY did he pick the name "Jay Electronica"?

....I guess it's a conversation starter.

Every time the man leaks a hot track, or when he dropped that hot mixtape awhile back, I try to put some of my boys on to the lyrical mastery and quirky mystery that is Jay Electronica.

"Hey, check out this cat's new song, he's got some bars!" I will say, or tweet, or IM. (That jawn leaked yesterday, and it's sick for days. Song's called "Exhibit A: Transformations." WTF? I agree.)

"What's the dude's name?" they'll ask, and I mumble..."Jay Electronica." "Jay WHAAA?" is the inevitable response.

The name makes you think he's either a) a trance DJ, or b) one of those horrible jungle MCs you see at raves (no disrespect, J Magik). The only thing good about that name is it rhymes with gay electronica.

Pause.

And that's only good if you were tryin to battle dude, in that it's funny.






Jay Electronica

......VS......









Gay Electronica (lol I assume)

Those who know he's a rapper but ain't give him a listen probably assume his flow is some weak hipster jive, based again off the name. Jay's actually much more of a lyrically gifted, punchline inclined MC with some genuinely weird tendencies. Like 3 Stacks or Mr. West Mr. West. (Both of whom have indulged their weird tendencies way too much in recent memory.)

So I wish he'd change it up. I know Jay and Uncle Murda are both in the same boat here...your name is unmarketable, even as your career starts taking off.

Murda been trying "Uncle M" lately. How bout "Jay Electron?" See, it's still weird, without referencing an entirely different style of music just to confuse people. Better!

But seriously, give that song a listen and tell me he ain't have god MC potential.

And if you want to see just how weird dude can be, check out the strange, trippy video he made for his strange, trippy song "Dimethyltryptamine." Which is a psychedelic drug. I never messed with all that, but the video is what I imagine being on it is like.