Asher Roth: The Hangover Interview

April 2009 was a poignant month for 24-year-old Asher Roth. His debut offering, Asleep In The Bread Aisle (Universal Motown), peaked at #5 in the charts boasting features from the likes of Busta Rhymes, Chester French, Cee-Lo, Beanie Sigel and more recently Keri Hilson. The Eminem comparisons were easy [and lazy] but the Shady co-sign was official [“At the end of the day, I think he's dope.”]; all was going well for this up-and-coming rapper riding on the wave of glory from being hailed as one-to-watch on the cover of XXL magazine’s Hip Hop’s Class ’09 December issue.

However, April was almost a key month for all the wrong reasons - four months ago Roth found himself at the centre of blogosphere-consuming controversy as a result of a tongue-in-cheek tweet about “hanging out with nappy headed hoes.” He explained soon afterward that the statement had been “an immature attempt to poke fun at an infamously moronic joke.” The incident now mostly forgotten, he speaks to HipHopDX about the impact of blogs despite the fact that he doesn’t read them, the impact of celebrity despite "not being one" - and the subsequent need to watch what you say when friend networks are no longer limited to actual friends.

HipHopDX: You’ve spoken in other interviews about it taking you a while to get into Hip Hop. Did performing come naturally to you?

Asher Roth: The performing aspect came naturally. I wasn’t even an avid show-goer and the shows I was going to were The Wailers, The Roots [click to read], I wasn’t going to these live underground Hip Hop shows you know where KRS-One [click to read] was performing. I wasn’t in that scene, I wasn’t in New York in the early ’90s/late ‘80s. So for me, I’m getting to a point now at 24 - and really started at 21 - really starting to be able to really appreciate it and really understand what was going on. Because at 13, 14, 15, yeah you’re listening but a lot of it’s just Top 40 stuff, a lot of it’s just the stuff they’re telling you to listen to, but now I’m actually cognisant and old enough to be like, "This is what I wanna listen to, this is why I wanna listen to it, this is what I like."

You get to learn about samples and what they’re actually sampling, when you hear Busta Rhymes [click to read] figuring out that it’s coming from [Al Green's] “Love & Happiness” like wow, I heard this completely before [hearing it] on The Coming and you’re thinking the whole time it’s a Hip Hop song but really is a soul and R&B song they’ve jacked. Learning how the whole thing works is something that’s been awesome for me. [Editor's note: Busta Rhymes' "Turn It Up" sampled Al Green's "Love & Happiness" appeared on When Disaster Strikes]

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http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/features/id.1412