OH MY GOSH! This man is a legend. Its with great pleasure that Outlook present the undisputed king of UK hiphop, the one and only Roots Manuva.
“Slime & Reason” – the conflict between doing what you want and what you know is right. It’s a simple idea but perhaps one that goes to the heart of Rodney Smith’s work and creativity, the basic tension that drives him.
Rodney Smith was born and grew up in Stockwell, South London. His grandfather had come over from Jamacia in the fifties. As he puts it, his family “were here to make it big time.” They worked hard, went to church, tried to live life the right way. His father was a lay preacher and tailor, a combination which goes some way to explaining the son’s preoccupation with the soul and the suit. As Rodney sees it now, “my family are such good, decent people. I’m the runt of pack.” The runt found music.
An avid but secret collector of the soundsystem tapes which were easy to find in Brixton at the time, Smith studied deejays like Eek-A-Mouse and Asher Senator, nodding to the rhythms, stretching his mouth around their words. But it was perhaps only when he heard hip hop and, in particular, the incomparable Rakim, that he realised that his voice could be used for more than toasting, that it was an expressive tool limited only by his imagination. But opportunities for Black British musicians in the nineties were few and far between. Hard work – his own kind of hard work – was the only way forward.