All growed up…
[Video][Website]
[5.00]
Brad Shoup: He’s really trying to make “I Love College” our fault, eh? And yet, here he is, with a cut tailor-made for the campus-radio circuit. Dude’s flow is versatile; he can pull the e-brake on any pattern of assonance. I got gotten at “Magnús Ver Magnússon/strong set of hands, son” — it’s too tenderly presented to be a brag. From a freshman pledge to a junior marijuana mystic; if Roth’s growing pains continue to give us 40 tight bars at a time, so be it.
[7]
Alfred Soto: I can’t dismiss the (unfair) suspicion that this is old hat, but Mr. Roth’s earnest post-Em flow subsumes meaninglessness into a love of rhyme for its own sake.
[6]
Iain Mew: Appropriately for its title I guess, it feels like a well researched and delivered PowerPoint presentation about a subject which I have no interest in at all. There’s nothing wrong with it as such, it just feels like the only reason that I’m carrying on listening is because I’m stuck in the room with it.
[4]
John Seroff: Stanning for Asher is too often an uphill proposition when the dude flaunts his near-irredeemable penchant for lowest common denominator frat-rap at every opportunity. And yet there he is on a nicely produced Blended Babies track, actually adding something. No, he may not be saying much but the technical acumen on display in early mixtapes is front and center on “Common Knowledge”. Call me an optimist but Roth’s raw tools make me hopeful dude can pull off the difficult “reverse Cee-Lo”: start with dumb pop and slowly evolve into complication and meaning. Bonus point for the way the song circles seamlessly on repeat.
[7]
Matt Cibula: On one level, it doesn’t matter what is said about this song, because his fans will love him no matter what and his enemies will hate him no matter what and his apparently limitless self-esteem will ensure that he’ll see both reactions as the same thing so the best would just be to ignore it…but here we are, and here it is. Thing One is, this is what you guys get for loving Eminem so much back in the day. Thing Two is, Schmidt in “The New Girl” is a fictional character; there is no such thing as a guy being a lovable douchebag in real life.
[2]
Alex Ostroff: The beat’s decent enough and Asher’s always been technically talented. The eternal problem remains — no matter how many internal rhyme schemes you stack on top of each other, or how much consonance you can stuff into a verse, you still need to have something to say. He doesn’t.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: The last thing I expected from 2012 was a good Asher Roth single, if only because I had attempted to suppress all memories of “I Love College,” but evidently I’m in a forgiving mood today. Taking Weezer’s most emo-tastic moment and turning into a wankfest for stoners would have been punchable no matter who did it, after all. Nothing like that here, though. Interjections, long strands of assonance and a commanding presence, not to mention a pretty wicked drunkard-doing-scales-on-a-synth hook… this is enjoyable no matter who’s done it. Utterly meaningless, but when it sounds like a good pop song, who needs meaning?
[7]
Michaela Drapes: Asher Roth, the post-collegiate years. An anthem for questionable yoga-doing drum circle attendees, it seems a rather accurate snapshot of what life is like for the upper middle class unemployed overeducated dude currently. So that counts for something. But man, Asher’s salamba sarvangasana is terrible; the yoga nerd in me can’t help but feel like he’s moments away from grievous injury. (Oh, and work on your virabhadrasana one, dude, before you blow out a knee or something.)
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: A sinuous, shivering track drowned out by the frantic cramming of the guy in the next study room, who realized halfway through his sophomore “College” term that upper-level courses required more than frat-rap coasting.
[5]
Zach Lyon: Congrats on leveling up. Check back in with me once you’ve made it past your c. 2003 Def Jux phase.
[3]