Asher Roth isn’t the first artist to have been discovered off of MySpace or Facebook. Nor is he by any means the world’s first white rapper, the first to grow up in a nice suburban family instead of selling drugs in the inner city or even the first MC to rap about college life and being middle class. But by the time 2009 is in the books, the odds are good that Roth will officially be one of the biggest of all of the above. His major-label debut, Asleep in the Bread Aisle (on rap impresario Steve Rifkind’s Universal imprint SRC Records) didn’t hit stores until April, but 2008’s free download Don Cannon and DJ Drama Present … Asher Roth: The Greenhouse Effect (A.K.A. The Greatest Mixtape Ever) was a bona fide Internet sensation. Pretty fly for a white guy from nice, quiet Morrisville, Pa., who only really discovered hip-hop in 1998. What’s his secret? Apart from his undeniable wit and verbal dexterity on the mic, Roth doesn’t even try to be anyone but himself. He doesn’t go by a stage name, dress like anything other than an average college kid or rap about being a bulletproof, street-wise ladies man. He’s just Asher Roth, that dude in the dorm room down the hall who always knows where to find the best parties. Only these days, Asher Roth is the best party, and he’s not hard to find at all.
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