ASHER ROTH

The Academy, Dublin Thurs 8pm €34 01-8779999

It’s a long time since there was anything remotely resembling a buzz about a white rapper (some guy called Eminem – wonder what happened to him?), but Asher Roth looks set to ruffle a few feathers before he surely goes the way of most other white rappers and disappears.

Roth’s inaugural calling card is the hip-hop slacker tune, I Love College, a decent commercial rap banger that waves its collective arms in the air like it just don’t care. Beyond that it’s possibly a case of too much, too soon, too familiar – Roth’s debut album, Asleep in the Bread Aisle, doesn’t just nod in the general direction of touchstone Eminem, it pretty much shakes its head off.

And yet . . . I Love College

is a smart, juvenile-stoner wheeze of a song. Providing Roth gets over his most obvious influences, he might just get close to going the distance.

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