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]
DX: That re-discovery stage.
Asher Roth: Absolutely, that’s where I’m at right now because I got into it late, I started to appreciate it [when I was] around 17, 18 years old when I kinda started messing around, but even then I didn’t get it and now at 23, 24 I’m like "Wow, this is what they were basing their stuff off of," – because at 13 you’re listening to 24, 25 year old minds. You’re not there yet. So now I can listen to Jay-Z’s [click to read] Reasonable Doubt and see where they’re coming from.
DX: What else are you listening to these days?
Asher Roth: See… I’m not even listening to Hip Hop right now. Like indirectly I am, but I’m listening to The Meters, Eddie Kendricks - different stuff like that. Taste buds change like every seven years. Right now I’d say the immortal Otis Redding, Bob Marley, Blu’s Below The Heavens [click to read] has been bumping, Mos Def’s The Ecstatic [click to read] has been killing it right now and I’d say the Black Milk ELEC [mixtape] [click to listen] is pretty much what I’ve been rocking with – and Dilla’s Donuts; always.
DX: Were you pleased with the critical response to your album?
Asher Roth: Can I be 100% honest? Earlier on in my career, I definitely paid attention to that stuff, but I don’t pay any attention. It’s so funny because I do all these interviews and all these tapings and I never see them. When it comes to music, when it comes to art, when it comes to expressing myself - I just don’t see how I could pay any attention to anybody else’s opinion of it. There’s certain opinions in the people in my circle that are more than enough – like for instance my father: straight-forward Stanford graduate, like when I was rapping about titties and blunts, he was the first to tell me, "You need to grow the fuck up." I don’t need some dude from the New York Post telling me "grow up." I didn’t surround myself with a bunch of yes-men, so in my life, my surrounding cast and myself have a good grasp of how I want this thing to shape up so I don’t pay any mind to the critics. I’m sorry – keep critiquing, you can keep telling me that, you know, you’re not into it but for me I just gotta keep it natural. ‘Cause [if] you get caught up in all that stuff, it starts to affect the music and I think it’s something that you don’t wanna do.
Once we started using the Internet as the main marketing tool, I started to realise that all the sites I’d check up on, I kept popping up on them, so I don’t web-surf anymore. Honestly, I go to 49erswebzone because I’m a big American football fan and I go to My Yahoo - and that’s it. Then I have my Twitter and that’s on my Blackberry. So my Internet-surfing game has gone way down the tubes and I’ve just kinda found other ways to spend my time. I’m completely cool with the fact that some people hate me. I have no problem with it, it is what it is. You can’t please everybody. Like what’s the reason for hating somebody like me? I’m pretty non-threatening, I’m just kinda doing my thing. I think Jay-Z said it best – “either love me or leave me alone,” – I think that’s the realest shit.
DX: Earlier in the year you experienced a big backlash from your tongue-in-cheek comments on Twitter, the extent of which reinforced just how important blogs are right now. Has it changed the way you view them?
Asher Roth: When that whole thing happened, and the response to it, I was like, "Whoa, I need to clarify myself." And that happened in five minutes. Imagine trying to get it pressed in a magazine, that takes months – that shoot I did for Playboy about three months ago isn’t coming out for another three months, so the press publications go through so much... but with the blogs it’s just bang-bang-bang and it’s out. Twitter’s absolutely crazy, the information.
DX: Has it made you paranoid or more wary of what you say?
Asher Roth: Just in general I think it’s important that people appreciate and respect different ways of life. There’s a delicacy to how people were raised and they’ll react differently to different things. People need to appreciate and respect that but for me, I think it’s important to get conversation out there so the way I feel about life, I don’t think it’s wrong or anything like that, I just think it’s open for discussion… I think it’s just, we need to get back to the basics of treat others how you want to be treated and, you know, talk about some things.
It’s a long road of history and present and I think stuff like Twitter and the Internet is hella important because it allows you to have a foundation – for instance coming off MySpace was a foundation built by myself, there wasn’t a machine behind me - and with Twitter, it’s very personal, you can allow people to get to know who you are. Shaq has a sense of humour; you can see that in his Twitter. Who would've known?
DX: Did that experience suddenly labour you with the downside side of being an artist – watching what you say in public and in the media?
Asher Roth: Dealing with media… it’s funny because, two things, one: don’t act like a celebrity and people won’t treat you like one, and I try my best to do that. Two, you can’t let the media dictate your life. Once you start doing that, you’re not living your life anymore. I was talking about Lily Allen earlier - I adore her because she just lives. She’s not worried about anything else. I totally appreciate that about somebody who even with the cameras in their face can totally just be themselves. But it just goes to show that as an artist and as a public figure you need to be ‘on’ all the time.
DX: Don’t you need an element of celebrity to sell?
Asher Roth: I’m not motivated by that shit at all. When I was talking about removing ego like, "Why haven’t I sold more records" but with “I Love College” in the States they were like, "Why don’t you go into the studio and make 'I Love Vegas,' 'I Love Miami,' 'I Love… California,' and do it all for these markets?" I was like, "No, that’s absolutely not happening." Would it have gotten me more spins on all of those radio stations? Absolutely. It probably would have helped overall, but at the end of the day, that’s compromising music that’s already close to a parody already. And that automatically makes it that song, and it already almost is that song [laughing] so I didn’t wanna go there. There are so many times I’ve been in that situation where you do this and sell more records and I just don’t wanna compromise my character - you know, who I am as a person.
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]
DX: That re-discovery stage.
Asher Roth: Absolutely, that’s where I’m at right now because I got into it late, I started to appreciate it [when I was] around 17, 18 years old when I kinda started messing around, but even then I didn’t get it and now at 23, 24 I’m like "Wow, this is what they were basing their stuff off of," – because at 13 you’re listening to 24, 25 year old minds. You’re not there yet. So now I can listen to Jay-Z’s [click to read] Reasonable Doubt and see where they’re coming from.
DX: What else are you listening to these days?
Asher Roth: See… I’m not even listening to Hip Hop right now. Like indirectly I am, but I’m listening to The Meters, Eddie Kendricks - different stuff like that. Taste buds change like every seven years. Right now I’d say the immortal Otis Redding, Bob Marley, Blu’s Below The Heavens [click to read] has been bumping, Mos Def’s The Ecstatic [click to read] has been killing it right now and I’d say the Black Milk ELEC [mixtape] [click to listen] is pretty much what I’ve been rocking with – and Dilla’s Donuts; always.
DX: Were you pleased with the critical response to your album?
Asher Roth: Can I be 100% honest? Earlier on in my career, I definitely paid attention to that stuff, but I don’t pay any attention. It’s so funny because I do all these interviews and all these tapings and I never see them. When it comes to music, when it comes to art, when it comes to expressing myself - I just don’t see how I could pay any attention to anybody else’s opinion of it. There’s certain opinions in the people in my circle that are more than enough – like for instance my father: straight-forward Stanford graduate, like when I was rapping about titties and blunts, he was the first to tell me, "You need to grow the fuck up." I don’t need some dude from the New York Post telling me "grow up." I didn’t surround myself with a bunch of yes-men, so in my life, my surrounding cast and myself have a good grasp of how I want this thing to shape up so I don’t pay any mind to the critics. I’m sorry – keep critiquing, you can keep telling me that, you know, you’re not into it but for me I just gotta keep it natural. ‘Cause [if] you get caught up in all that stuff, it starts to affect the music and I think it’s something that you don’t wanna do.
Once we started using the Internet as the main marketing tool, I started to realise that all the sites I’d check up on, I kept popping up on them, so I don’t web-surf anymore. Honestly, I go to 49erswebzone because I’m a big American football fan and I go to My Yahoo - and that’s it. Then I have my Twitter and that’s on my Blackberry. So my Internet-surfing game has gone way down the tubes and I’ve just kinda found other ways to spend my time. I’m completely cool with the fact that some people hate me. I have no problem with it, it is what it is. You can’t please everybody. Like what’s the reason for hating somebody like me? I’m pretty non-threatening, I’m just kinda doing my thing. I think Jay-Z said it best – “either love me or leave me alone,” – I think that’s the realest shit.
DX: Earlier in the year you experienced a big backlash from your tongue-in-cheek comments on Twitter, the extent of which reinforced just how important blogs are right now. Has it changed the way you view them?
Asher Roth: When that whole thing happened, and the response to it, I was like, "Whoa, I need to clarify myself." And that happened in five minutes. Imagine trying to get it pressed in a magazine, that takes months – that shoot I did for Playboy about three months ago isn’t coming out for another three months, so the press publications go through so much... but with the blogs it’s just bang-bang-bang and it’s out. Twitter’s absolutely crazy, the information.
DX: Has it made you paranoid or more wary of what you say?
Asher Roth: Just in general I think it’s important that people appreciate and respect different ways of life. There’s a delicacy to how people were raised and they’ll react differently to different things. People need to appreciate and respect that but for me, I think it’s important to get conversation out there so the way I feel about life, I don’t think it’s wrong or anything like that, I just think it’s open for discussion… I think it’s just, we need to get back to the basics of treat others how you want to be treated and, you know, talk about some things.
It’s a long road of history and present and I think stuff like Twitter and the Internet is hella important because it allows you to have a foundation – for instance coming off MySpace was a foundation built by myself, there wasn’t a machine behind me - and with Twitter, it’s very personal, you can allow people to get to know who you are. Shaq has a sense of humour; you can see that in his Twitter. Who would've known?
DX: Did that experience suddenly labour you with the downside side of being an artist – watching what you say in public and in the media?
Asher Roth: Dealing with media… it’s funny because, two things, one: don’t act like a celebrity and people won’t treat you like one, and I try my best to do that. Two, you can’t let the media dictate your life. Once you start doing that, you’re not living your life anymore. I was talking about Lily Allen earlier - I adore her because she just lives. She’s not worried about anything else. I totally appreciate that about somebody who even with the cameras in their face can totally just be themselves. But it just goes to show that as an artist and as a public figure you need to be ‘on’ all the time.
DX: Don’t you need an element of celebrity to sell?
Asher Roth: I’m not motivated by that shit at all. When I was talking about removing ego like, "Why haven’t I sold more records" but with “I Love College” in the States they were like, "Why don’t you go into the studio and make 'I Love Vegas,' 'I Love Miami,' 'I Love… California,' and do it all for these markets?" I was like, "No, that’s absolutely not happening." Would it have gotten me more spins on all of those radio stations? Absolutely. It probably would have helped overall, but at the end of the day, that’s compromising music that’s already close to a parody already. And that automatically makes it that song, and it already almost is that song [laughing] so I didn’t wanna go there. There are so many times I’ve been in that situation where you do this and sell more records and I just don’t wanna compromise my character - you know, who I am as a person.
