Spring Break
White rapper Asher Roth's rhymes reppin' college kids, suburban homies alike
Caity Cudworth
Issue date: 3/5/09 Section: Entertainment
03/05/09 - For all its ghetto bravado, hip-hop has a dirty secret - although it's a secret that's entirely obvious to anyone who grew up with a white picket fence: hip-hop is, and has long been, immensely popular in the quaint, grassy suburbs.
The rap community, understandably, doesn't pay much mind to its broad reach into the sprawl of suburbia. The suburbs, after all, aren't the most interesting or intimidating of locales. It's hard to look hood in a minivan (no matter how tricked out it is), and lawn games aren't half as hardknock as the drug game.
The urban sprawl is luridly compelling - and, obviously, a lot less wholesome - than its Pleasantville counterpart. As a rule of thumb, if your neighbors are dope-fiends, you don't invite them over for bingo night. It doesn't take a genius to know that whole "Mr. Rogers" thing doesn't fly in the hood. Dope fiends are notoriously crafty anyway…
Hip-hop has transcended the hood and is already casually acknowledging, if not outright embracing, its tidy, clean(er)-living fan-base.
Well-established rappers like Kanye West, N.E.R.D. and Lupe Fiasco sit at the more cerebral end of the rap-spectrum, mixing off-beat, PG topics like school and robots and skateboarding, with the requisite flash and trash about girls, bling and all the other trite trappings of fame and fortune.
But some up-and-coming rappers are seriously considering (and aiming to redefine) the boundaries of the rap species. "What makes a rapper?" 23-year old Asher Roth, a suburban - and, yes, white - rapper from outside Philadelphia, asks on his track, "The Lounge."
Roth questions the classification and definition of a rapper asking, "I got a question, what's a rapper look like? Is he tan? Is he black? White? Is he blacked-out, high on the crack pipe? Or more the cats that'll ride on the half-pipe?"
Roth is a newbie in the rap game, and has so far has only released a mixtape titled The Greenhouse Effect, (the cover of which wryly features a lab-coat-clad Roth and his posse creatively using beakers as bongs) but he's an interesting case study.
The rap community, understandably, doesn't pay much mind to its broad reach into the sprawl of suburbia. The suburbs, after all, aren't the most interesting or intimidating of locales. It's hard to look hood in a minivan (no matter how tricked out it is), and lawn games aren't half as hardknock as the drug game.
The urban sprawl is luridly compelling - and, obviously, a lot less wholesome - than its Pleasantville counterpart. As a rule of thumb, if your neighbors are dope-fiends, you don't invite them over for bingo night. It doesn't take a genius to know that whole "Mr. Rogers" thing doesn't fly in the hood. Dope fiends are notoriously crafty anyway…
Hip-hop has transcended the hood and is already casually acknowledging, if not outright embracing, its tidy, clean(er)-living fan-base.
Well-established rappers like Kanye West, N.E.R.D. and Lupe Fiasco sit at the more cerebral end of the rap-spectrum, mixing off-beat, PG topics like school and robots and skateboarding, with the requisite flash and trash about girls, bling and all the other trite trappings of fame and fortune.
But some up-and-coming rappers are seriously considering (and aiming to redefine) the boundaries of the rap species. "What makes a rapper?" 23-year old Asher Roth, a suburban - and, yes, white - rapper from outside Philadelphia, asks on his track, "The Lounge."
Roth questions the classification and definition of a rapper asking, "I got a question, what's a rapper look like? Is he tan? Is he black? White? Is he blacked-out, high on the crack pipe? Or more the cats that'll ride on the half-pipe?"
Roth is a newbie in the rap game, and has so far has only released a mixtape titled The Greenhouse Effect, (the cover of which wryly features a lab-coat-clad Roth and his posse creatively using beakers as bongs) but he's an interesting case study.
