Interview: Roots Manuva

If a decade as the only hope for UK hip-hop has got to Roots Manuva, he's certainly not letting on. “I'm just like a kid in a sweet shop,” he grins, reclining backstage at the Liquid Room with an adoring redhead and a mountain of Guinness. But nine years after his debut Brand New Second Hand saw him hailed as “the voice of urban Britain”, it's hard not to feel that Roots Manuva's international success has done little to establish British hip-hop as a commercial rival to the American scene.

“British rap has had to reinvent itself,” concedes the rapper, real name Rodney Smith, whose ‘Witness (1 Hope)’ remains the only British hip-hop track to have achieved mainstream success. Yet he insists that things are not as bleak as they might seem. “You've got things like grime now, jungle, 2-step. I've always felt that that is British hip-hop. I was on the telly the other day with Elbow. I was listening to their beats, thinking: ‘That's not no normal indie boney guitar music; this is fucking hip-hop!’”

Smith's disdain for musical pigeonholes is evident in his latest offering, Slime and Reason, widely acclaimed as his best album yet. It's certainly his most eclectic, encompassing everything from old-style Jamaican dancehall to cutting-edge electro beats. He frowns at the suggestion that this variety is a conscious aim. “Definitely not. I've always been a bit of a freak, always been in a weird place. I’ve never learned music properly. But when I talk to classically trained musicians, they tell me my mind is on another level. I just hear things in such a strange way.”

There’s nothing Smith likes to talk about more than the chaos inside his head. It’s hard to blame him – his uniquely introspective lyrics have played a key role in his critical and commercial success. But when fourth album Awfully Deep appeared, with constant references to mental institutions and satanic visitations, rumours of a nervous breakdown abounded. “The creativity has been a magnifying glass,” he openly admits. “It’s magnified any kind of underlying turmoil and stresses.” He switches sporadically between sleepy murmur and wide-eyed posturing as he struggles to explain the workings of his personality, as though still figuring it out for himself. “My idols are Ozzy Osbourne, James Brown, Paul Gascoigne,” he says. “I like these people. I come from a really good, stable, Christian background, and I think that’s made me intrigued by the wild side.”

The son of a Jamaican lay preacher, Smith’s childhood was profoundly shaped by his strict Pentecostal upbringing in Stockwell, south London. It’s been a recurrent theme in his lyrics, notably in 2001’s ‘Sinny Sin Sins’, where an authoritarian father is quoted as telling the future Roots Manuva: “Son, as long as you’re living under my roof, you’re gonna eat my interpretation of the truth.” The track is a subtle, deeply affecting portrayal of the challenges of a religious upbringing. It’s a surprise, then, to see Smith seemingly discomfited by the subject of religion in conversation. “It’s always been a consideration, something to talk about,” he says tentatively. “I try to twist the gospel. I play the part of an orthodox priest on a lyrical level.” Not for the first time, his words are chosen with a view to rhythm rather than content. Yet it seems silly to hold this against a man whose genius for nonsense verse has had entire crowds singing along rapturously to lines like “Taskmaster burst the bionic zit splitter.”

For all his love of experimentation, there’s one form of hip-hop that Smith has never been tempted to try. Since the arrival of Public Enemy and NWA in the late 1980s, gangsta rap has risen to a position of dominance, with its insidious gospel of guns, bling and braggadocio. “That in itself is a new religion,” Smith says. “Violence, money. It doesn’t bother me because of my education, my outlook. I listen to it and I think it’s great, y’know. I can view it just like a gangster film.” But when he reads of 18-year-old Freddy Moody, murdered a stone’s throw from Smith’s childhood home; when he sees violent videos of south London gangs posturing to gangsta rap, does he not feel that the music has contributed to a culture of violence?

“The influence that it has is not to be blamed on the music,” insists Smith. “If I watch Scarface it doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and kill people. It’s to be blamed on the breakdown of communal society. There’s a massive lack of community in London.”

As politicians wrangle over who’s to blame for “Broken Britain”, no-one’s pointing the finger at Roots Manuva. With his loyal affection for all things English, the biggest star ever to rap about cheese on toast may be seen in the video for his latest single, ‘Again and Again’, enjoying nothing more violent than a game of village cricket. Speaking to him, one gets the impression that any youthful aggression has given way to placid contentment, as middle age draws near.

Fans would do well to catch him while they can. “I think I’ve had it with the travelling, the touring,” he reveals. “I’m old now, I’m 36. I want to put a suit on and start properly organising my Banana Klan label. And I want to do my autobiography – put the words to paper and pass some kind of reasoning on.”

Literary ambitions will have to wait, for now. On stage two hours later, Smith will prove as energetic a performer as ever, his audience hanging on every joyously eccentric word he utters. “I’m an emotional wreck,” he tells me with a wry smile. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.” For the moment, there’s no need to enquire too far.