Asher Roth's Asleep in the Bread Aisle no better than the single

His references are absurd and his lyrics are boring.

By Jordan Sargent

Published April 23, 2009

Asher Roth wants us to take "I Love College" -- his truly reprehensible and completely awful debut single -- as the red herring of his short career. And it's true that nothing on his shockingly on-time debut Asleep in the Bread Aisle is as flagrantly dumb or disgustingly pandering as "I Love College," but it reveals more about Roth than he'd like us to believe.

"I Love College," though an admitted sellout single (can you even sell out with your first single?), is indicative of Roth's willingness to fall back on his otherness without making his admittedly different subject matter interesting to the listener. On his debut album, much like on "I Love College," Roth raps about what he should be rapping about -- his privileged suburban upbringing -- but he never provides for us a reason to care about his stories beyond the fact that you won't hear them coming out of the mouth of Young Jeezy.

Roth posits himself as a fun-loving punchline rapper, much closer to, say, Ludacris than Eminem. But, again, Roth is content to try and let his suburban references -- Wii Fit, Bob Saget -- do the work for him, and he puts startlingly no effort into making them connect back to him in any meaningful manner.

Take, for instance, the album's opening song "Lark on My Go-Kart." The song is a typical opening track -- a barrage of couplets with no chorus. Its stoned stream of consciousness and high school-era namedrops recall Da Drought 3-era Lil Wayne, but where Wayne's austere references dazzled because they were equally out-there and coherent, Roth's seem inserted as billboards to make sure we remember he's coming from a place that mainstream rap is not used to.

At the end of the second verse he raps, "Razor Ramon flow/oh, so sharp," in reference to the early '90s wrestler. Although the namedrop is mildly impressive from an obscure standpoint -- especially for anyone like me who was a WWE geek in elementary school -- it doesn't mean anything at all. Ramon, who is a human, not a razor blade, isn't "sharp" in the way Roth uses the word, and thus the reference is worthless. Consequently, when Wayne raps, "Peyton Manning flow/I just go no huddle," it serves as an apt and fresh description of his rapping style: frenzied but ultimately under control, orchestrated on the fly and scarily unstoppable when locked in.

Roth's disinterest in details is evident just about everywhere. Second song "Blunt Cruisin'" -- about riding around and getting high -- fails to even sketch a picture, relying, as "I Love College" did, on a chanted brain-dead refrain: "Hide the weed." Compare to Jackie Chain and Jhi Ali's instant classic drug anthem "Rollin'," which revels in word play and imagery: "At the sto' get the Swishas/Tropicana and a Twizzla."

Even with the fact that every song is about one subject, all of Roth's songs are painfully boring -- be it when he's rapping about his Eminem complex on "As I Em" or farting on "Bad Day" or -- wait for it -- the government on "Sour Patch Kids," which is like a journal of stoned political "epiphanies" straight from Bonnaroo hell.

Despite his horrible smash single and meaningless album, Roth is here to stay, at least for the time being. And while he'll be easy to ignore once "I Love College" falls off the radio, it's hard to stomach that his existence has been forced upon us while much better and more deserving rappers languish in bootleg mixtape inertia. The least he could've done with his debut album is bring more than weed crumbs to the table.