The Stool Pigeon

There’s this really lovely clip on YouTube where skinny white MC Asher Roth meets fat black soul singer Cee-Lo Green. Both live in Atlanta and they’re in a room talking about Roth’s Greenhouse Effect, a mixtape released last summer that shot the 23-year-old to fame in America and now has him being touted globally as quite the most unlikely man to breathe new life into hip hop. Cee-Lo wants to hear the fabled CD, so they step outside and walk towards the Gnarls Barkley man’s blingin’ ride. Cut to the two of them sat in the cream leather front seats, music pounding, Roth hilariously over-nodding and miming to his own rhymes. Cee-Lo, a portrait of heavyweight coolness, can’t help but make puny Asher looked stupendously geeky, but he’s into it - he loves the mixtape. The clip finishes with Cee-Lo saying, “Let me keep this copy, man! I’m not gonna byte it... I like it a lot.”

Cee-Lo Green digs Asher Roth? Hard to imagine, and he’s not the only big gun who’s been freely handing out major props to the young MC. Rap industry legend Scooter Braun manages him; Jay-Z got him to “spit” with a view to signing him; Akon is already a “good friend”; 50 Cent bigged him up; and Andre 3000 got in touch to say, “Let me know if there is a record you guys need me on...” Yet as little as two years ago Asher was an elementary education major at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. The kid is definitely not from the ’hood. Of course no one is leaving alone the Eminem comparisons, but they make no sense at all. If anything, he’s got more in common with Kayne West.

Today, Asher is on the rooftop patio of Universal Records in London. It’s his first time in the UK and he’s enjoying himself. He comes across as being unbelievably... nice. And polite. And bright. And not a sucker at all. In fact, he seems to be suffering a case of the jitters. Back home, his debut single ‘I Love College’ is going bananas - a good thing, you’d imagine - but Asher is worried...

The point about the Greenhouse Effect mixtape is that it announces a new talent. White, black, brown, pink, it doesn’t matter - the kid can rap. ‘I Love College’, however, is something far dumber - a frat boy anthem about getting fucked up and eating pizza. It’s more of a novelty pop song than a hip hop track and it’s perhaps not the best way to introduce yourself if you’re interested in longevity, as Asher is. Indeed, he thinks it’s the worst song on his forthcoming debut album.

“I understand it, I think fans who understand who I am understand it, but I know that ‘I Love College’ is going to be the first thing that most people hear from me and that’s tough,” he says. “What’s going to be interesting is whether it will dig me a hole or not. I appreciate that first impressions are everything. Here I am leaving the house and ‘I Love College’ is what represents me. I’m, like, ‘Man!’ I wasn’t even in a frat, and I don’t drink like that.”

There’s the smell of a rat floating across this patio, forcing Asher to be alarmingly frank. “The record label wanted ‘I Love College’ 11 times,” he says, “and that’s just not what I wanted to bring to the table. But, at the same time, if you put your name on the dotted line, you have to understand the responsibility to sell records. Some artists don’t want to do that - they refuse to play the game - and that can be hard. ‘I Love College’ is pin-pointing my demographic - it’s sort of a compromise and it’s too toned down for my tastes.”

Excuse the pun, but this conversation is already academic. Whether Asher likes the song or not, he wrote the thing and it’s completely out of his hands now. When we met on February 27, he’d had 3m plays of ‘I Love College’ on his MySpace page. Today, April 5, he’s on a staggering 27m.

Why? Of course a white rapper blowing up (he’s not Jewish, incidentally, contrary to the assertions of Wikipedia and The Guardian) is a source of intrigue and debate, but there’s more to it than that. Asher, who’s originally from the middle-class suburbs of Morrisville, Pennsylvania isn’t pulling a phoney gangsta pose or slaying hos in his tracks - he’s just being Asher Roth and, luckily for him, there are millions upon millions of people who understand exactly what he represents.

“I can’t make up some façade to help me fit into what people think hip hop is,” he says. “Instead I’m like, ‘This is who I am. I don’t want to feel uncomfortable - I don’t want to feel like I’m living a lie and I don’t want people to look at me like that.’ My main thing when I was coming into this was, ‘I need to be honest with myself.’ I want to use this opportunity to not talk shit. I don’t understand why successful rappers rhyme about how much money they have. They push people down. I would much rather my listeners feel like they can relate to me on a level-playing field.”

It applies to his image too. He’s got rubbish hair and he dresses badly, but he says he won’t let anyone spruce him up for the magazine shoots: “When I was in college, life was easy and now there’s all this pressure to do things - sound like this, dress like that, wear your hair like this, shave so the 15-year-olds like you. Who the fuck cares? Our priorities are fucked up, man. Hip hop is so influential. I mean, look at me: I’m a corny white kid from the suburbs who was absolutely enthralled and inspired by hip hop, like numerous other people. There might be millions of rappers that are better than me, but there are some tangibles that go into it - how you carry yourself, how you perform... all that helps you speak to people.”

And speaking to people, he’s decided, is priority number 1. Unashamedly destined for the mainstream, Asher thinks he can “Trojan Horse the joint” and get some better hip hop in the Top 40. “I don’t think success in the music industry is about making money - it’s in longevity and your message,” he says. “If I can stick around and people get to a point where they want to know what I’m going to say next, I’ll feel like I’m successful. But I’m scared to death. I don’t have a plan - I’m making it up as I go along.”

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