WESTCHEDDAR

On the low, I’m Asher Roth’s biggest fan.  I know, I know.  I dissed him.  You’re right.  And he deserved it.  And I would never go back on my words.  But after watching him for the past two years, I gotta give it to the kid.  He’s doing his thing, and I’m not mad at him.  And while I admit there are still things about him and his music that make me cringe when I hear or see them (i.e. his freestyles or demeanor in interviews) everything I like about him, his music, and his movement, is jam packed into his latest mixtape, Seared Foie Gras with Quince and Cranberry.

Let’s start at the beginning.  It was June 2008, and I was on a weekend getaway with my wife (fiancee at the time).  She was in the shower, and I was abusing the free wi-fi in our bed and breakfast room.  That’s when I first saw Asher Roth’s mixtape The Greenhouse Effect on NahRight.com. Of course, being a white rapper myself, I was very curious.  Who is this white kid doing a mixtape with DJ Drama?  A college kid from West Chester, Pennsylvania?  So I listened.  My immediate thought was that he sounded like Eminem.  But I could tell he was on some college, girls, weed, beer, white boy shit, which I can appreciate.  I mean, that was me a decade earlier.  A white boy in college rapping about the same topics.

From that day, Asher Roth’s buzz went bananas.  And I could see why.  He could spit, had the whole Eminem voice thing that the press had a field day with, was outgoing and confident, and basically anyone who met him seemed to like him and was drawn to him.  He had that “it” quality that famous people have.  But I had a couple problems with him.

My first issue, that was more of a coincidence and a “great minds think alike” type of thing, was that he was marketed wearing that John Belushi Animal House COLLEGE sweatshirt, the same one I had just recently switched the letters to IPCUS and made my Bachelor Party mixtape album cover.  I always wanted to do that, and figured it would work perfect for my Bachelor Party art, you know, how dudes where t-shirts to those parties with the bachelor’s name on them.  And don’t get me wrong, I understood the marketing behind it for Asher of course, it was brilliant.  But I was a little tight that now, as I was beginning to make my push to promote my own work, people would think I was biting his shit.  When in reality, I had the cover done before he was out.  But you know, that really was a coincidence.  Not his fault.  More of a “sucks for you Ipcus” situation.  All good though.

What I really thought was wack about Asher though was that he was running around like he was the first white boy from the suburbs/college that could rap.  And anyone who knows me knows that isn’t the case.  In fact, his whole premise of being this white kid from the suburbs talking about college and all that was done along time ago.  By me.  Stanley Ipcus.  And here’s Asher, acting like he invented the fucking wheel.  And to top it off, he’s running around going “SEE ME” all the time.  Like he’s the nicest.  Maybe it was an inside joke with his boys or whatever, but give me a break.  I admit, he could rap, he put together a nice mixtape, had great marketing and an awesome team behind him, but when we get down to the nitty gritty of pure hip hop illness, I needed to, for me and everyone else who was gassed off this kid, SEE HIM.  I wanted Asher, and whoever else was paying attention to understand, he’s not the messiah of the suburbs.  He doesn’t represent my suburban, Westchester County, New York hip hop experience, and he can’t SEE ME when it comes to rapping.  Period.

Making that diss track, in hindsight, was probably the worst thing I could have ever done, even though I think it’s amazing.  Because I’m a nice guy, and I show mad love to people, and it’s out of character for me to diss someone.  But that’s me, Dan, the person.  Stan Ipcus the rapper is vicious.  He don’t give a fuck.  He’s too ill on the mic to care.  He goes in.  And for the sake of Stan Ipcus, I put out the diss track.  Because fuck that.  This kid comes out of nowhere and because he meets the right young business manager, he gets to spit for Jay-Z?  Make an album with Steve Rifkind’s label?  I dare someone to let me spit for Jay-Z.  Double dare.

I already had made my way into the blogosphere with “My Ferris Buellers” by the time NahRight debuted my Asher Roth diss “The Great White Hope”.  Still, I wasn’t well known, but I existed there.  The diss got me a lot of haters, mostly from people who loved Asher, but also got me some supporters too.  And Eskay from NahRight told me “I can’t front, you went in”, which was a great compliment for me.  But I’m not sure what I really wanted to do with the diss.  I didn’t really think it through to be honest.  I wrote it one night, recorded it the next morning, and sent it to Eskay right after it was done without much thought.  I guess I was just really passionate at the time about letting Asher and everyone else who was gassed off him that he wasn’t the realest, nicest, whiteboy out there on the mic.  I was standing up for Stan Ipcus.  I was repping for myself because I had no one else to rep for me.  No manager.  No record label.  No one.  I was a one man army.  It was an aggresive hip hop move, and I went for it.

Here’s the thing.  Now Asher was aligning himself with my peoples.  He was now best friends with Peter Rosenberg (my friend from College Park and Stan Ipcus supporter), and he even opened up for Matisyahu (one of my closest friends from White Plains and I’m on his album).  I mean, it was crazy.  And I met Asher at an event Peter Rosenberg had after the diss, dapped him up, showed him love, it was cool, cracked a joke with him about the diss and we continued on with our lives, but it felt funny to me.  Like, here’s this kid, and because the industry is so gassed off him, he’s gonna be the one to blow everywhere and get all the good looks.  When deep down, in my soul, I knew I had the talent, the skills, and the music to be there.  But it was too late.  There’s only so many spots for white rappers, and Asher’s got this one.  Sure, I got my blog posts, and my song was on Hot 97, and I came out with my friend Matisyahu to kick a verse or two at his show in New York.  But no one really cared.  It was Asher’s time to shine.  He had the gimmick.  Asher was still young, and I was passed my prime, just finally getting some looks.  He was just getting started, red cup in hand, industry team in place, ready to take on the world and bring every Beirut playing kid along with him.  He had what I never had, or at least got the opportunity to properly show.  ”It”.

So I got married April 19th, 2009, and Asher Roth dropped his debut album the next day, 4/20.  Brilliant marketing, once again.  I gave his album a shot, and liked the song and video for “Lark On My Go Kart”.  It almost made me like the kid, but then I listened to the rest of the album, and I don’t know, I still thought he was a little too corny and forced and cliche, and for someone who was trying his best to be humble, a tad bit too cocky.  And his interviews on the web and wack freestyles made me cringe like I was watching an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.  He sounded like one of my friends from home who only raps when he’s drunk freestyling.  Not a famous rapper who gets paid to make rap music freestyling.  That bothered me.  Why is this kid getting nutted by everyone for wack ass freestyles like this?  And some people out there agreed with me, and some didn’t and thought he was the shit as if they’d never been at a keg party and listened to a bunch of silly whiteboys freestyle.  But like I said on the end of my diss track, I don’t hate, I congratulate.  And I wasn’t hating.  But as a white rapper myself, with skills, I was disappointed that the kid getting all the shine was kind of wack.  I’m not the biggest Eminem fan, but he was never wack, not for one second.  But I had to live with the fact that when I was Asher’s age I never got discovered, and I made bad decisions or was too busy doing other things to ever get the opportunities he was getting.  So I had to just accept the fact that even with my little buzz, at best I was just a local rap star and with some personal highlights under my belt.

I continued to follow Asher’s career.  I watched (from online) as he took heat for cracking jokes on Twitter, and I liked the way he handled it.  I didn’t like the jokes, but I thought he handled himself well through the heat.  I watched as people called him gay, and liked how he handled that too.  I’m sure he laughed it off and then banged the hottest asian girl at the bar.  And I watched him and his boys (who I met last summer at another Rosenberg event and thought were really cool kids) have the time of their lives on tour with Kid Cudi and then with Blink 182.  I mean, they put on entertaining shows, had their whole set tight, as least from what I could see in YouTube clips, with costumes and props and comedic interludes and all that.  And they were traveling the country together as best friends from home, doing rap shows at great venues, partying, and living it up with other young and famous hip hoppers.  It was what I always dreamed of as a college kid, but never got the opportunity to do.  But I wasn’t jealous.  I was happy for them.  Because I was living a more important dream.  I was starting a family.

So now my wife is pregnant, and we’re about to have a son in May, and with the exception of an occasional recording or Westcheddar related Stan Ipcus project I’m working on, I’m no longer really out there as a rap artist.  I host an Open Mic with my local community, but beyond that, I don’t perform any more.  Maybe an occasional appearance with Matisyahu, but that’s it.  And Asher, well I see he’s all over the place, still performing, in the studio with every big name producer I always wished I could collaborate with working on his next album (see him and DJ Premier above), and making the best of his budding career as a white rapper.  And I’m rooting for him.  I want him to do well.  I want him to know that even though I dissed him I am one of his biggest fans and supporters.  He’s a smart, crazy, pot smoking white kid who loves rap music, and I can identify with that.  I was him, and a big piece of me still is him.  In fact, if I had my choice of producers to work with, I’d choose the same ones he’s choosing too.  Shit, the kid is now even endorsing No Mas NYC, my cousin CI’s brand!  How could I be mad at that?

And his new mixtape, well, I downloaded it along with the rest of his fans yesterday morning bright and early, and on his recommendation, I listened to it in my car.  I listened to it all day.  And I loved it.  It was fun, and not as corny to me as his earlier stuff!  It’s straight hip hop, with that authentic whiteboy feel, and it sounds really genuine.  He picked great beats, his flow is on point, his voice is his now not Em’s (with the exception of the song with B.O.B. where he still sounds a bit Marshally), and his rhymes are clever and intricate and filled with great vocabulary and name drops, my favorite reference being “Steve Largent”.  His guest spots were hot too, and his boy Boyder (above, second from left), who I met, is probably my favorite rapper out right now (peep his verse on track #2 “Toni Braxton”), even though I can tell he kind of does it as a goof.  Still, he’s nice, and I just like how Asher puts his friends on his mixtape (Brain Bangley too, first from left) and lets them shine.  Him and his boys are just like me and mine were back in our prime.  Like me, I put my boy K-Wet on my tape too, and did songs with my boy C Bats on a couple albums also, and Matty B, and had songs with my friend Andrew doing interludes and stuff, and those were always my favorite tracks.  And his DJ, Wreckineyez (above right), did an amazing and impressive job of blending the whole thing together, with great scratches and intros, similar to what my boy DJ Roz did on my mixtape Real Breezy.  In the end, I like Asher Roth because he reminds me of  a young Stan Ipcus.  We may have different styles, but if he ever took the time to listen to my older stuff he’d probably flip out when he realized there was a white rapper before him doing the same type of shit.

DOWNLOAD ASHER ROTH SEARED FOIE GRAS WITH QUINCE AND CRANBERRY