The White Shadow

Asher Roth’s Asleep in the Bread Aisle was released this week. Roth’s “I Love College” is already an anthem, but the album proves he’s no flash in the pan—which is exactly why we tipped him as one of the 10 most important new artists of 2009 in our annual Music Issue a few months back. Among the tunes on the record is “As I Em,” his response to all the Eminem comparisons that have dogged his short but meteoric career.

Though there are similarities in the timbre of Roth and Shady’s voices, there’s no way around the fact that they are lumped together for another reason: They are white rappers. Roth takes issue with that kind of categorization on several grounds, not the least of which is the worry that he will be dismissed as a wannabe when he is in fact totally open and unapologetic about his stereotypically white, middle-class, suburban background—a completely different backstory from Em’s hardscrabble origins.

Oddly enough, prior to Eminem, many of the most respected white MCs (Beasties, 3rd Bass) had personal histories closer to Roth’s, while some of the most ridiculed (Vanilla Ice, Snow) ran into trouble because they touted ostensibly “street” qualities. That is, blue collar white rap was far more likely to be perceived as Vaudevillian. Slim Shady turned that on its head; Roth raises the question of whether it is—or should be—an issue at all in the new genre-less era of digital music distribution, where the old distinctions between various radio formats (urban versus pop et al) and marketing channels no longer exist.

It’s a good excuse to look back at the ghosts of white rappers past, to see what Roth has to contend with going forward.

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Beastie Boys
The Beasties came to hip-hop via another urban New York genre, hardcore punk. Though now days hardcore can seem lily white—metal and hardcore have long since joined forces in the form of bands such as Hatebreed, and over the years there have even been white-power hardcore acts—when the Beasties started out, among their heroes were Bad Brains, an all black hardcore act with reggae underpinnings. As for the backgrounds of the Boys, Adrock’s dad was a playwright—that should tell you everything you need to know about street cred. But between their rhymes and their humor and their role in taking hip-hop into the mainstream with 1986’s License to Ill, nobody cared about "authenticity" issues—even though the early Beasties, with their absurd track suits and oversized chains, treaded dangerously close to what you might call, depending on your feeling about them, at best parody and at worst minstrelsy.




Vanilla Ice
When the “Under Pressure” bass line of “Ice Ice Baby” started to percolate through the country’s woofers, nobody knew at first what to think. The immediate reaction was not to dismiss him, otherwise the song wouldn't have become such a hit. Ridicule is something that came after the tour with MC Hammer, the movie deal, the big sequined pants, the “Teenage Ninja Turtle” song, and, perhaps most damning, the exaggerated stories he told about his hard knock credibility. At the very start, he was just a guy who had become a local sensation in the clubs of Florida. By the end, he was such an indictment of the white rapper phenomenon that other white rappers felt the need to take potshots at him.




3rd Bass
Prime Minister Pete Nice was a baseball player at Columbia University, but that didn’t stop him and MC Serch from calling out Vanilla Ice for his cartoon-like use of phrases like “Word to your mother.” In fact, their Ice-baiting single, “Pop Goes The Weasel,” was their biggest hit, dropped at exactly the moment in 1991 when the backlash against Vanilla peaked. When the group broke up, Serch had the distinction of helping break Nas, featuring him on a track on his solo album, Return of the Product (Nas was credited there as Nasty Nas). The Prime Minister opened a baseball memorabilia shop and other businesses, and recenty announced his intention to make a documentary on the history of white rappers.




Cypress Hill
From LA, this tough-talking, multi-ethnic crew never drew the ire of hip-hop purists—if anything, they became, for a time at least, part of the West Coast gangsta canon. Perhaps because Cypress was very much a melting-pot act: lead MC B-Real is Mexican and Cuban; Sen Dog African American; and DJ Muggs—who also had hits as a producer for artists like House of Pain—white. And besides, tunes like 1991’s “How I Could Just Kill a Man” were spooky good. Things started to go south as they became better known as pro-pot activists and played alt-rock showcases like Woodstock ’94 and Lollapalooza.




House of Pain
This cracker crew took a lot of heat because of what appeared to be a mercenary marketing schtick: They played the Irish card big-time. The album art of their debut included lines like “fine malt lyrics,” there were shamrocks all over the place, and one member was called Danny Boy. On the plus side, DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill gave 1992’s “Jump Around” one of his signature tea-kettle whistle sounds, ensuring its sonic foundations were strong--and memorable. Moving forward from their moment in the sun, House of Pain (and Muggs' s Cypress Hill) found difficulty getting play on urban radio.




Snow
Discovered on the mean streets of, uh, Toronto, Snow—Super Notorious Outrageous Whiteboy—had a number one hit with "Informer" in 1993. Though he has since remained active primarily in the dancehall world, his big album was made under the tutelage of MC Shan, an early New York hip-hop figure. Underpinning "Informer" was the murder she wrote riddim sample, a classic Jamaican bass line familiar from songs like Sister Nancy's "Bam Bam." And Snow is technically more toasting than rapping. But still, there is the breakdown in the middle with MC Shan's tale of trouble with the po-po from hanging with the Snowman; this may have contributed to the Vanilla Ice-like backlash against him.




The Streets
The UK has produced a lot of exciting hip-hop talent, including a slew of leftfield stuff like Tricky and MIA. But British artists have had a perennially tough time breaking into the mainstream US hip-hop market. The Streets, aka Mike Skinner, are no different. Still, Skinner’s tales of blue-collar package holidays and the day-to-day slog of working class life—as much slam poetry as they are traditional rap—have found a major hipster following stateside.




Atmosphere
One of the most successful and long-lived alternative hip-hop acts, Atmosphere has been going for 15 years and still get rave reviews for their work. Rapper Slug also founded influential backpack label Rhymesayers Entertainment, which has released albums by MF Doom, Grayskul, Brother Ali and others. One major difference between his stuff and mainstream stuff is the more introspective nature of his material. Check it out:




MC Chris
It's tough to know where in the hip-hop firmment to place nerdcore, the self-consciously geeky rap done by characters with novelty names like MC Steven Hawking, MC Chris is the genre's biggest luminary. Nerdcore focuses on self-consciously dorky subject matter (check the video for proof), and also gained from its association with stoner cartoon culture along the lines of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force." Early criticism of Asher Roth may have sought to put him in a sort of slackercore category and preemptively create a niche for him to get stuck in—but it ain't happening.




Aesop Rock
Alternative—or backpack or underground—hip-hop has been great for eclectic MCs of all shades. Though the audience for backpacker concerts is decidedly milky, the artists lionized in the community are by no means homogenous—in fact, among the godfathers of the scene are Mos Def and Talib Kweli. The trouble, however, is there is virtually no crossover between this scene and the mainstream hip-hop world. As much critical praise as Aesop Rock or El-P (who aside from rapping is also the head of the main label for the genre, Definitive Jux) garner, they have never looked likely to catch on at the level of Eminem.




Northern State
These girls from some upstate liberal arts college are roundly vilified among heads for their slow, awkward flow. They operate in more of an indie sphere, eschewing both backpack and the mainstream, but in part that's because no one will have them. (Except Adrock, who produced their last album.) Still, with smart-aleck touches such as the lead MC's Hawthorne-checking persona, Hesta Prynn, the Northern Staters have never presented themselves as anything but a college band.