Critical Reception
Reviews of Asleep in the Bread Aisle were mixed. According to Billboard, Oren Yoel's "mixture of boom-bap drums and pop sensibility mixes well with Roth's happy go lucky and sincere rhymes". Rolling Stone similarly complimented Roth for his sincerity and avoiding the cliche gimmicks typically employed by fellow white rappers, saying, "Roth's tight, witty debut lives up to the Internet hype that has swirled around him for months... he keeps the nerd-boy self-deprecation to a minimum and acts, you know, like a rapper." However, Allmusic noted, "Smoking weed, having sex, and swearing is hardly riveting material, and when Asher can't turn these topics into something clever, it becomes tiresome." HipHopDX agreed saying, "...Roth makes partying sound like the most boring thing in the world. It’s not that having fun in college is not worthy of being rapped about, it’s that Roth seems absolutely incapable of approaching this topic with anything remotely close to creativity or humor." Alan Ranta of PopMatters summarized by saying Asleep in the Bread Aisle was "a brainless summer record with flashes of conscience. Roth can do better or, at the very least, discover his own voice."
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