Back when Rodney Smith was starting out as Roots Manuva, the long road was not on his map. He was just ducking and weaving, hustling and hunting, trying to get his music out on the streets and learn as he was going about it. He didn’t realise that what he was doing would go on and on. Looking back recently, he told one interviewer: “I never really thought I would get past the Watford Gap.”
His music did all the hard yards for him. From his 1999 debut album, Brand New Second Hand, on, Smith has always followed his own nose and ignored trends. He zigged when everyone else zagged, moved to beats that rang as clear as a bell in his head and took that south London sensibility far and wide.
Smith has never bothered the mainstream too much; Witness (1 Hope) is the nearest thing to a breakthrough in his back catalogue. He never played that game, but found common cause when he recorded with acts such as Gorillaz, Jamie Cullum, Leftfield, Beth Orton, Coldcut and many more who liked what he had to offer.
What kept Smith in the frame was the fact that the albums kept coming. His ninth album, last year's Bleeds, is the latest in a long run of records that are full of tart commentary on personal and universal issues. That ability to observe the dramatic in the midst of ordinary life has never failed him.
Tangents
However, it sounds as if Bleeds, which features production from people such as Adrian Sherwood, Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden, Fred and Switch, was a very different – not to say difficult – album to make.
“I went through hell on this one,” he says. “Everyone had their say. I used to be able to go off on tangents with what I wanted to do and follow my own instinct. I’d record using my own money and then go to the label and say ‘Here you go, put this out’, so they didn’t have a say.
“But that’s changed, man. I’ve got a team and I have to listen to them because it’s been good for the music. I mean, I could have made a record with 50 or 60 tracks on it. Why not? But people kept saying that it would not come out if it was like that, so I listened to them and it’s just 10 tracks.”
Despite the fact that everything was distilled down to just those 10 tracks, Smith points out that there were a lot of people involved in the record. “There were so many people involved that I haven’t even met some of them, if you can believe that,” he says. “All the tracks are so detailed that I had to get help with the amount of production involved. It was a monster project.”
He didn't heed any help with his lyrics. The Britain he explores in Bleeds is a tough, rough, bleak, mean and occasionally dire place with all manner of social and economic ills.
Smith feels such problems haven’t happened overnight. “I think education has had a huge part to play in why things are like that. You’re constantly classifying people as this or that from an early age and making one person more important than the other person because they’re a doctor or something. Shouldn’t we just want every person on earth to be educated?
“That’s where all the problems start, and people end up doing horrible things to each other because of selfishness. People want to get ahead and want their families to get ahead, and they’re prepared to do all this nasty shit in order to do so. You might not start out thinking you’re a hard bastard – but you turn into one because you want to hold on to what you’ve got. It’s always been like that, I think.” One of the most striking influences on how Smith raps and performs has been his father, who was a Pentecostal church preacher. “When I was growing up, I’d see my dad talking to a bunch of people and getting his message across. I think that stuck for me, the way I speak and rap and project. It’s like a preacher conveying a message and messing around with emphasis and playing with language and being able to deliver a joke and tell a story.”
The long run
These days, Smith is thinking more about the long run. The dream now is to be able to keep making records and playing shows. The people he looks up to did it – or are doing it – so he feels he has a chance.
"Look at people like Lee Scratch Perry and James Brown and people that have those long careers. It is definitely something I aspire to, to be able to get away with it for that long. There are loads of other little things that I've toyed with doing, like getting more into writing and film.
“For example, I got into the whole studio thing. I wanted to do it because I thought I could make a living out of making music for adverts, but I don’t make much money from licensing at all. And that is what I wanted to do.
“It shows you really can’t predict these things. It has been a nice surprise that rapping pays the bills. I pay taxes through rapping, which is a very weird concept if you think of what things were like 20 years ago.”
Roots Manuva was due to play at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on August 10th but the concert has been cancelled
ROOTS SQUARED: THE SOUNDS OF ROOTS MANUVA
Brand New Second Hand
His 1999 debut remains a great statement of intent. Much of the chatter at the time had to do with a British rapper finally producing something compelling, but listening back now reveals an MC with a strong sense of his own destiny and abilities. Check Juggle Tings Proper and Strange Behaviour for some early lessons in Manuva-dom.
Run Come Save Me
This 2001 album defined Smith as one of the most interesting voices in the game. Letting loose about Pentacostal deacons and lager louts with a smoky reggae patois and roughneck bass produced stompers such as Witness (1 Hope), Evil Rabbit and Swords in the Dirt. Best line: "You can tell I'm from basic stock / When I get vexed, I want to beat the world with a pork chop."
Slime & Reason
On this 2008 album, Smith accentuated his own positives with blistering dancehall depth, great turns of phrase and a wonderful observational style perfectly teed-up by producer Toddla T. Takeaways include The Show Must Go On, I'm a New Man and Again and Again.
Bleeds
Last year's album saw Smith taking stock of the world around him from a veteran's perch in suburbia, which made for tart commentary on both personal and universal issues. Strong collaborations with Four Tet on Facety 2:11 and Switch on One Thing and I Know Your Face
