Roots Manuva
Bleeds (Big Dada)
Bleeds has been a long time coming for UK hip hop legend Roots Manuva. After releasing five full-length albums in six years to close out the aughts, Bleeds is Roots Manuva’s first album since 2011’s 4everevolution.
While Roots Manuva’s early work – namely 2002’s Mercury Prize-nominated Run Come Save Me – took a party-friendly approach to dancehall-inspired hip hop, Bleeds, on the other hand, is dark and deeply introspective: these are blistering missives from a man who’s fed up with an uncaring world.
Now 42 years old, the man known to his parents as Rodney Smith could be forgiven for his crank. There’s a palpable weariness to many of the songs on Bleeds. Opener “Hard Bastards” details the grim realities of the cycle of poverty, while on the brooding “Cargo” he points a finger at big business: “The corporate elite remain invisible / Minority rule to maintain the illusion”.
Little of the reggae sound that influenced his early work is present on Bleeds, traded instead for bass-heavy, minimalist post-grime beats. On the album’s lead-off single, “Facety 2:11”, Roots Manuva raps a mixture of patois and cockney rhyming slang over a 140+ BPM drum ’n’ bass beat.
Of course, he can still get groovy when he wants to, as is evident on the sublime “Don’t Breathe Out”, anchored by a sample of Barry White’s “Honey Please Can’t Ya See.” But that doesn’t mean Roots Manuva is lightening up.
“The poor don’t relax,” he states. “The poor do funky soul claps”
There’s an almost maudlin feel to many of his verses, and the album is riddled with spiritual references, no doubt alluding to Roots Manuva’s strict Pentecostal upbringing at the hands of his Jamaican parents.
Given few rappers can maintain a career into their mid-40s, Bleeds may well serve as a bookend to Roots Manuva’s career. Fittingly, he has decided to bare all, leaving nothing unfinished, and nothing unsaid.
Rating out of 5: ★★★1/2
