Roots Manuva

Davide Bortot

I think we have a bit of a situation now, because this gentleman here just said that, rather than lecturing, he would rather be lectured by you. But I guess there is enough stuff to talk about anyway, so please join me in welcoming Roots Manuva. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Roots Manuva, but I think a good start is always to play some music and I have a record here that I would love to play.

(music: Roots Manuva – “Juggle Tings Proper” / applause)

Davide Bortot

So, this is a record off your first album.

Roots Manuva

Yes, that was way back in ’99, it was probably made in ’98.

Davide Bortot

But I reckon you released music before that, didn’t you?

Roots Manuva

Oh yeah, there is some horrible records somewhere. [Laughs] Some white labels. I hope no one in this room has got any copies.

Davide Bortot

But seriously, do you remember when you first went into a recording studio? When was that?

Roots Manuva

Oh yeah. The very first time I went to a studio, I was probably about 15 and it was in a place called Music Works, which is in Stockwell, [south London]. It is like a community studio, which just had a four-track, some Casio keyboards and a 606 drum machine.

Davide Bortot

But you were there to record lyrics or make music?

Roots Manuva

We were there to make a noise and experiment with what was there. What we ended up doing was pushing the record, trying to get a James Brown record in time with the drum machine, and that not quite being in time, and then using keyboards around it to try and get some sense of timing to it. It was like collage of crazy out-of-time stuff, and then a little squawky rap over the top of it.

Davide Bortot

Do you remember what James Brown record it was?

Roots Manuva

It’s the one where he’s talking about a woman, “It's a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” yeah. [laughter]… speeded up.

Davide Bortot

So, for all of us who are not from this wonderful city, can you tell us what kind of place Stockwell is like and how you grew up there?

Roots Manuva

That’s hard. Stockwell is just like an inner city, it has got good transport links. It’s just another inner city…

Davide Bortot

What kind of music were you into back then besides James Brown? What kind of stuff influenced you? For me, it is kind of hard to tell, because obviously everybody who was into hip-hop grew up on American hip-hop back then. Was that your main influence or was there already UK stuff that you were into?

Roots Manuva

I was into a bit of everything because growing up it was primarily reggae. When I say growing up, I mean before hitting the double numbers, it was primarily reggae.

Davide Bortot

Was that through your parents?

Roots Manuva

They didn’t listen to reggae, they listened to Jim Reeves and decent music, music with a chord and a melody and a structure. Gospel music. I was kind of more into more noisy music.

Davide Bortot

What was it that attracted you to the noise, what kind of noise and why “noise?”

Roots Manuva

I remember seeing Art Of Noise, was that Art Of Noise? A band called Art Of Noise, I remember seeing them on, I think it might have been Blue Peter, and they were talking about this thing called MIDI, and how on MIDI anybody could make music. I thought, “Wow, if I could get away with not having to do my violin lessons…” That made my ears go up, because the first thing I did in a serious way, a serious effort, was violin lessons. But violin lessons for a nine-year-old who is the size of a 16-year-old – because I was always big for my age – it really wasn’t cool. Violins are quite delicate and hitting people with an antique violin, it wasn’t a good look.

Davide Bortot

When did you start playing the violin?

Roots Manuva

I did about a couple of terms on it.

Davide Bortot

Can you still play it?

Roots Manuva

I can still bow. I now collect violins. They are good investments. I wish I still had the one I had at school.

Davide Bortot

Let’s talk about that later when we go back to that time, but there is this one story of you being eight or nine years old and walking past a soundsystem with your mother, and being fascinated by that. Is that the kind of answer you made up because all the journalists were like, “When did you first get in touch with music?” How much truth is in the story?

Roots Manuva

No, no, that is a true experience. It’s not the first time I heard a soundsystem. Soundsystems were always there. Soundsystems were there playing at weddings, at funerals, at parties. I can’t remember the first time I ever saw a soundsystem, but it was something I was always drawn to. If I was at a wedding, I have vivid memories of just standing looking at the soundsystem – just looking. I just loved the wires; the way they used to stack the sound. In those days it wasn’t two turntables, it was just one turntable and loads of amps that were probably built from hand or reconditioned, and looking rather tatty.

Davide Bortot

So, you already touched on that a bit, but do you remember what exactly attracted you to soundsystems? Was that the technical side of things or was it the sheer power of the bass or the kind of music that was played? What was it that made you want to do something like that as well?

Roots Manuva

It was nothing specific. It’s just always been there, and it has always been present in my life. Growing up in Stockwell, there were loads of free festivals, mini-carnivals that happened all the way through the year, school fêtes. It just always seemed to be there. I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t any.

Davide Bortot

So, you’re 15 now and going into this community center and recording music… could you tell us why you actually wanted to record music? Was it just a fun thing, or was there anything you wanted to express or wanted to bring across? I think it is kind of interesting to learn why you started doing music, rather than just consuming music, because everyone in this room at some point started doing music, and I think everyone might have their reasons for doing so, and I’m just curious what your reason was.

Roots Manuva

It was just a fascination with the technology. Also, more of a vain kind of impetus, and an arrogance of listening to other music that was made at the time and thinking, “Well, I’ve already been told on the telly that anybody can do it, so I’ll have a go.”

Davide Bortot

Was there anybody, maybe a friend of yours or somebody who was around you, who actually did it and you looked up to and they influenced you? Did it come through listening to recorded music or music on the television, or American rap on cassette or something, or did anyone influence you directly?

Roots Manuva

Loads, loads, countless people. There was a local crew from Stockwell called Hijack, they were signed to a British hip-hop label, a British music label called Music Of Life. I always liked what they did, and another crew called London Posse.

Davide Bortot

I reckon it was always kind of an issue, whether you were listening to US rap or UK rap. I actually remember when I bought your first album in a record store in Soho, and the guy even laughed at me and said, “Nah, that ain’t real hip-hop. You need to listen to American shit.” Whatever, it was that sort of vibe, and I remember a lot of those discussions going on. Was that ever a question for you or is it just that this is music and this is music that I like? When you were listening to Hijack and these were people from the neighborhood, were you listening to people like Rakim who obviously isn’t from your neighborhood…

Roots Manuva

I can remember amongst my social group and peers being the butt of jokes because I liked the local hip-hop more than the American hip-hop. I looked forward to listening to it, even at a time when it probably wasn’t even that good. But I always liked it.

Davide Bortot

Do you think it wasn’t that good?

Roots Manuva

There was a time when it really didn’t find its feet. It was totally trying to mimic a weird place. It didn’t even exist. I don’t know what accent people were using or what part of America they were trying to be like, but it was just, “Huh?” It was a very strange sound, but I think it was true to the whole DIY, anybody-can-do-it ethic of hip-hop. The nature of hip-hop is that anybody can have a go and everybody can be a part of it.

Davide Bortot

So, did you ever fake an American accent in your life or did you have the confidence right away to say, “This is my language and this is the language I speak to my mother with, so why can’t I rap in that language?” Or did you have your humble, fake US beginnings as well?

Roots Manuva

I was never any good at an American accent anyway, so it was all in vain. The first slang that I always fall on lyrically is Jamaican patois. So, all my raps, even from the beginning, they have a lot of patois in them. That was even weird for my own friends, it was like, “You need to get some transatlantic slang.”

Davide Bortot

Where did you get confidence from to just rap that way?

Roots Manuva

It wasn’t even confidence, it was just an accident. It was all I could do! The first experiments I had as a vocalist, they leaned more towards dancehall. But amongst dancehall audiences, it wasn’t Jamaican enough, so I didn’t find a place in either… There were local kids that could do a better-sounding New York accent than I could at the time.

Davide Bortot

Would you agree that musicians, rappers, artists, whatever from the UK had more of a hard time to get accepted amongst their peers back then than they do now? If you were a rapper in the late ’90s, who rapped with a British accent, do you think it was harder for somebody like you to get acceptance than it is now?

Roots Manuva

That’s a hard question. I don’t know how you compare the times to now. Now, just the general amount of time that the culture and the templates and the blueprints have been around, it gestates in a different way. So, people’s air and the turnover of people that work within the industry is totally different to how was 10 years ago and totally different to how it was 20 years ago. Coming from the consideration that when hip-hop first came around, it wasn’t considered – it wasn’t even done as something that was supposed to be recorded. So, when it was recorded and sold as records, it was considered as noise and considered a passing trend that would pass away. But the whole audio science, the application of the audio science, is now just as refined as anything… as a ballad or a piece of jazz.

Davide Bortot

But we are still talking the second half of the ’90s, the commercial peak of US hip-hop, the Jay Zs and Biggies and Fugees of this world. It was not like hip-hop was anything obscure or an underground, rocket-science phenomenon.

Roots Manuva

In England, there wasn’t much of a success rate of translating product that was developed here into sales. They have spent loads of money signing up this, that and the other, and it never really translated.

Davide Bortot

I know you are a humble person and all of that, but would you agree to a certain amount you contributed to changing that? If you listen to 1Xtra these days or look at the charts or whatever, would you agree that a lot of the stuff wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for you? In all humbleness...

Roots Manuva

In all humbleness [laughs]… You just cancelled out your question. I think it’s more due to the fact of people’s palates being more opened up. It takes a while to get into the whole sound of different accents doing different hip-hop, or even singing.

Davide Bortot

So, if you see what is happening with a lot of UK-based artists now, does it make you proud and in a way? Not talking about the quality of the music, or whether you think N-Dubz should be awarded the Grammy awards or something like that?

Roots Manuva

They should! Give ’em two Grammys! Definitely. This journey has arrived from a start point that, it was noise. American hip-hop was noise to the traditional British A&R fraternity, whoever they are, let alone British hip-hop. British hip-hop was a joke, or a person trying to rap or even talk over a record. And now it’s a runaway beast.

Davide Bortot

What did your parents think about you speaking over this noise?

Roots Manuva

My mum always thought I had a refined taste; she likes more melody. Because mainstream hip-hop is so successful, they slowly have accepted it. They don’t necessarily like it or the things I say or the soundscapes that I choose to mess with…

Davide Bortot

So ’99, the one record we were talking about before, Brand New Second Hand came out on a record label called Big Dada. I don’t know if you are aware of a record label called Big Dada, a subsidiary of Ninja Tune I guess. Why did it take so long to release a proper album? If you say you were at 14 or 15 making your first recordings, and you were more than 10 years older when the first album came out. So why did it take you that long?

Roots Manuva

Probably because… there was never an urgency to release an album. There was never anyone waving any money for me to do it. I had loads of ideas, just like most of the people in this room have probably got a million and one ideas. It’s just the situation appeared.

Davide Bortot

So, when you listen to Brand New Second Hand it feels like the classic hip-hop debut record in a way. It is very pure, very raw even in sound, but it has that one vibe, the Illmatic kind of hip-hop record. The classic couple of tracks… you can almost see the basement it was recorded in, and it has that vibe. Was it actually a defined period of time that you recorded it in or was that a collection of ideas you had throughout all those years?

Roots Manuva

It’s a collection of ideas. Some of them I had re-tinkered with, but it was a collection of re-tinkered ideas between ’97 to early ’99.

Davide Bortot

Maybe we could listen to another record off that particular album, which you chose yourself.

(music: Roots Manuva – “Motion 5000”)

Davide Bortot

So, that song was probably recorded something like 12 years ago. Can you remember the kind of state of mind you were in back then?

Roots Manuva

It’s really mad, because that tune was done down the road at, I think, on Tooley Street, in a little studio called Downtown Bass. It doesn’t exist any more. So, yeah, I can remember.

Davide Bortot

I think when the record came out, besides the fact that nobody could believe that a rapper would rap about eating cheese on toast, I think I’ve found that line in every review of the album, it was obviously quite a spectacular thing for you British people.

Roots Manuva

That is such a stupid thing to talk about. Rappers say so much different stuff, it’s lazy journalism, as far as I’m concerned…

Davide Bortot

I think that most people described it as a dark record. Would you agree it is a dark record, Brand New Second Hand?

Roots Manuva

It sounds bright to me. There are some optimistic strings there. At the time that I was doing what made me happy. I had my weed money, I had my beer money, I had my chicken and chips money I was fine [laughter].

Davide Bortot

How did you to do it? You did most of the production on there, as well. Was it always you alone in the studio? How did the whole thing come together?

Roots Manuva

A lot of the night time, I had access to a studio in Brixton, I was just there in the night time. I had a lot of the demos for years. Even that track, “Motion 5000”, was a song that came out four years prior, in a different form. That was a recreation of an early release, but it was done with strings. I tried to take it where I always heard it going in the first place. The demo came out on a limited edition… 500 pressings.

Davide Bortot

What kind of equipment did you work on? You were talking about it before, you were sort of fascinated with what was going on in the digital world right now and all of that. So, what were you working on back then?

Roots Manuva

Back then, the guys who own the label, Coldcut, they borrowed me an Akai] S1000 [sampler] and I bought an Atari 1040, and that was basically it. I didn’t have anything. I don’t even think I had a mixer. It was taking sounds off cassette tape and MiniDisc… but then it may have even before MiniDisc.

Davide Bortot

I think they might never have heard of MiniDisc. [To audience] Do you guys even know MiniDisc? You never know with these young people nowadays… Recently, I was at the record shop and there were two people, 20 year olds, and they were talking about cassettes and saying, “I’ve seen these things before at my father’s place. Really? What is that?” I couldn’t believe it – it made me feel really old. So, that was production, but lyrics, do you ever write down lyrics? A lot of the lyrics you have, even though they are very lyrical, they still feel like they have a certain freestyle vibe to it. Would you agree?

Roots Manuva

I do write lyrics down, but even when they are in front of me, I don’t always say them correctly. What I try to capture in front of the microphone is never technique, it’s always style over technique, or style over the content. So even if there is a blatant grammatic mistake, but the feeling’s good, it has to stay.

Davide Bortot

Generally speaking, how do you work on music? I think a lot of rappers say, “OK, it is album time,” they pick 16 beats and start writing and record, that’s it. Is that the way you work or do you go to the studio every day?

Roots Manuva

I admire that. Over the years I’ve met people that are so focused and can do that. But I have never, ever been able to do that. It’s all pretty random to me, and it constantly changes until the day when it gets mastered.

Davide Bortot

Why is that? Because it is hard for you to be satisfied with your work?

Roots Manuva

It’s just because ideas come at different times. Different songs make a body of… Just one tune can turn a whole sequence of tunes into a whole different experience.

Davide Bortot

So, if you listen to that album now, I don’t know if you ever do that, but what do you think about it now? What kind of emotional relationship do you have to that body of work?

Roots Manuva

It always surprises me, because it still interests me now. In all its deficiencies that I have learned through the years, and the things that I would avoid straightaway now, or seek out studio facilities to iron out, or even take days to recreate now, I could do it quite easily.

Davide Bortot

Do you have an example of that, something that you would iron out these days?

Roots Manuva

Nowadays, I’m more into subtleties. On “Juggle Tings Proper,” that bass is just huge. I don’t have enough guts to do a tune like that with the bass being so… It just seems ridiculous to me. My ear has changed. I’m more into more subtle things now. I don’t just turn everything up and go, “Yeah, that’s great!”

Davide Bortot

Talking about less subtle things, on your second album [Run Come Save Me], there was this one record, which I think it is safe to say, changed a few things in your life. It might be the biggest record of your career so far.

Roots Manuva

Not in chart placements.

Davide Bortot

Yeah, I know, but if you play it out you always see people’s reactions. I think it’s kind of obvious.

Roots Manuva

People talk about it as this huge record and I have to do another one, but it never got any radio play, and it didn’t really show, it never got A-listed or anything. It’s a very strange, strange piece of music. And it was made, I was mucking about. This was like the good days. After the release of the first album, there was more money floating about. And with the first album they couldn’t get me out of the studio. With the second album, my management and my label had to drag me to the studio, and the song was just a result of being in the studio for like three weeks and not doing anything. And just having four hours to bung the quickest thing I could together to show them, so I could get some more money.

Davide Bortot

Maybe we should just play it quickly so people know what we are talking about because this might be a bit cryptic.

(music: Roots Manuva – “Witness (1 Hope)”)

Davide Bortot

I guess you know what we’re talking about. When you come in a club now – I don’t know if you ever go to clubs – but imagine you going into the club and hearing that record. What do you feel?

Roots Manuva

I always think it’s been mastered wrong.

Davide Bortot

So, who mastered it?

Roots Manuva

I don’t know what his name was, but it is just way too loud. The medium wasn’t right. I’ve only ever heard it sound right on three or four systems. I always think that compressors really go bonkers in a club and it just sounds wrong to me.

Davide Bortot

So, when you do a show, and I think you do quite a lot of shows, have you ever thought before the show, “Tonight I’m not going to play this record?”

Roots Manuva

Always, always. That’s always the thing. And now we do the show with more musicians and stuff, and I hate the way that the band relies on “Witness.” It really gets on my nerves. They’ll do a shit show and say, “As long as we do ‘Witness,’ it will be OK.” I’d rather do a show without it.

Davide Bortot

A gift and a curse, I guess. You said before that financially it didn’t change that much, but in a way, obviously it did because it brought a lot of attention. There was the Mercury Prize nomination and a lot more interviews and a lot more attention generally speaking from the public. How did you deal with that? With a lot of interviews for the third album, you didn’t seem too happy with the whole music industry, and you didn’t seem to be in a very good place back then when it came to dealing with that kind of mechanism or people. How did you feel about the sudden attention of people who obviously weren’t really familiar with what you’re doing?

Roots Manuva

It was just being out of my comfort zone. It’s probably, as a human being, good experience to think of more than just your immediate surroundings. Coming back to the very first record, I wasn’t thinking any further than Brixton, let alone the rest of the world. I was just thinking about doing something, and then to be making records and be nominated for Brits and Mercury awards and all of that, it was just like, “Wow, this is really weird.” The underlying text of what I am doing is bollocks to mainstream society, and I’m being courted by it. It was a bit weird. And being on an independent label, a nice, honest independent label, that is being courted by bigger labels, it’s like, “Jesus, this whole Roots Manuva thing was just supposed to be my little baby, and it became way bigger than I ever thought it could be.” And I couldn’t really get any control over it. It’s like you were saying, a gift and a curse. It won’t go away, and even when I’m doing what I consider to be my most objectionable, punk rock-esque music, really ugly, crazy music, for the pissheads and the weedheads and talking absolute crazy anti-establishment stuff, I couldn’t understand why the mainstream press would be interested in that.

Davide Bortot

You mentioned before that obviously you were and still are signed to Big Dada records, which is a small independent label. And especially by that time you were by far the biggest artist on there. Did you feel any pressure that, all of a sudden, jobs relied on you and all of that? Did that affect your recording and your creativity in any way?

Roots Manuva

Jobs relying on me?! I never thought of that. The bosses at the label, Coldcut, they are some clever people. They aren’t relying on whether I make a record for their company to survive. Never thought that at all.

Davide Bortot

Was it an option for you to sign to a major label?

Roots Manuva

Of course, that’s what I was saying. That’s what I was talking about. I signed to an independent label for the comfort or the pleasure, selling a lot less than being on a major, but less pressure and nothing to do with the mainstream, just maintaining. But then toying with the idea of further crossover, it still is quite a hard aspect of the whole creative circumference.

Davide Bortot

So, do you think about those things when you write music? Is that something that you think about, “Will it be popular? Should I do that? Should I do this?”

Roots Manuva

Not really, no. There’s no conscious thought of, “Will it be popular?” It’s just various needs to get various nuances out there. Most of it starts off by frustration. If everybody was sampling classical strings, I would sample classical bagpipes or something. I’m always trying to be the future, rather than just run after the trends of the day.

Davide Bortot

Maybe let’s listen to a record from the third album. Some people considered it to be the next step in your musical evolution. You sang a lot on there and experimented with other sounds. Let’s maybe listen to another bit of music here.

(music: Rhythm & Sound – “King in My Empire” / applause)

Davide Bortot

So, these are two dudes from Berlin, which couldn’t be more far away from Jamaica, and it’s their interpretation of what Jamaican music is. What is Jamaica to you? Both your parents are from Jamaica? Have you ever been there?

Roots Manuva

Yeah. I think Jamaica comes to everybody. There are more Jamaicans outside Jamaica than there are there. I last went there 23 years or so ago, and most of my family that I met while there, are now over here. Some legally, some illegally. I don’t know where they are! That’s the truth! I don’t see them much at all! I don’t know where they are.

[Laughter]

Davide Bortot

So how come you haven’t been there in 23 years? Obviously, you could afford a plane ticket and just go.

Roots Manuva

The last time I was there I had a very powerful, moving experience. I’ve got to be ready to attend to Roots Manuva as it were. It has got quite an emotional pull. It had a big effect on me, going there. It just clears up some of the cobwebs that city life can thrust on people, without even realizing it. The time is coming. I’ve got children now, and I would like to take them there and I would like to have a base there.

Davide Bortot

Would you consider yourself a Jamaican?

Roots Manuva

Definitely not. A UK Jamaican maybe, but definitely not a Jamaican.

Davide Bortot

If you think about it, it is incredible that such a small island can produce such great music and so much influential music as well. What do you think is so special about the place?

Roots Manuva

I always muck about and say, well, it’s one of the first islands to revolt against the powers that be. In the travel and the whole kind of forced movement of the people from Africa to Jamaica, they tend to have put the most troublesome people in Jamaica. So, I think that whole rebel spirit is just intertwined into the social fabric of who Jamaicans are. When you oppress people of any creed, it tends to bring out a resilience that surfaces in their creativity and their ability to still be alive.

Davide Bortot

You were born here in London, when did your parents come here?

Roots Manuva

Probably in the early ’60s.

Davide Bortot

I read your father was a preacher, is that true?

Roots Manuva

Yes, he was a lay preacher.

Davide Bortot

Did you have a very religious upbringing?

Roots Manuva

Not very religious, but the church was the social group or social community activity that I was most attached to. Our church wasn’t like the Church of England or the Catholic Church, where you go for one hour on Sunday and that’s it. Our church was more like you went three times on Sunday, and also did a Bible study on Friday. It was more heavy, it was more encompassing of your whole life.

Davide Bortot

Maybe it’s a bit of a weird thing, but do you think your father being a preacher has ever influenced [your rapping]?

Roots Manuva

Definitely. Growing up and seeing my dad speaking to a bunch of people. And also, having a dad that didn’t like mumbling. A lot of kids just whine. You had to address my dad properly, and that helped experimenting with tonal expressions.

Davide Bortot

So, is there an element of your rapping you can somehow compare that to what your father did as a preacher?

Roots Manuva

Oh yeah, definitely, it’s conveying a message and messing around with the different conceptual nuances and playing with language and being able to deliver a joke. Spinning a yarn.

Davide Bortot

What part is it that you most like about rapping? Is it the writing thing and expressing thoughts or the performance? Because I’ve seen you before maybe five or six times, and to be very honest, I’ve seen great shows and I’ve seen shows which were equally great but you seemed kind of nervous and not a 100% comfortable on stage. Is that true? Would you agree to that?

Roots Manuva

I’m not a natural show-off but at the same time, I like the sound of my own voice.

Davide Bortot

You like the sound of your own voice? Isn’t that very, very unusual?

Roots Manuva

I am not a natural show-off, so I think what is considered the template or the confines of a good performance, I don’t always get right. I need the right elements around me. I have got a one-track mind, when it comes to performance and that’s just to get the best sound out. Even if my back is turned to a crowd, I just want to get the best sound out. My best performances are when I am nervous, and I don’t really get that nervous. I get very irritated by a bad soundsystem, or if morale around the crew is not so good, or if the audience haven’t been treated well. I take things on too much. I really need to work on that and just work on delivering.

Davide Bortot

Do you like the whole traveling part of it?

Roots Manuva

Not really. I like going out and seeing different places, but the waiting around is a pain in the arse. Technically, just filling the space of an hour and 20 minutes, you could be waiting around and then traveling for two days. It is really quite a weird, unnatural scenario to be in. And then to have to have a “switch on” moment and just turn it on and be “Mr Life of the Party,” it’s like, Jesus. It’s mad, because it is so important now. Live is such an important aspect of it.

Davide Bortot

You mean financially?

Roots Manuva

Yeah.

Davide Bortot

Were you surprised when you first played shows outside the UK? Because, Obviously, the music has a very specific UK, maybe even London feel to it. But then again, you are one of those guys who actually tours a lot and is very popular in other countries in Europe – you always play in Germany and these places. Were you surprised to see how people reacted to the music? Or was it like, “Yeah, I’m the shit. I’m not that surprised”?

Roots Manuva

It’s more of a surprise to see different areas. Different areas take to different nuances of tracks. Some audiences are just more into the more obvious things. In the UK, there is a tendency to have shows that are just about the loudness. It’s not about the detail. Just get out there and scream and shout, and everybody shouts back. Shows that I have done recently over the years, because the catalog has grown, have a different intensity and people demand a different kind of performance. They want certain tracks now that are more just about the words. They don’t even want to hear the music, they want to hear the words again, replicated as closely to the record as possible.

Davide Bortot

You said before that you’re very bad with set lists, why is that?

Roots Manuva

I like the spur of the moment. And the stage is where I try to live out those imaginary inner characters, the inner mes, and it changes. For one performance, I might feel like Morrissey, for another performance I want to bring out my inner James Brown. For the next I might want to bring out my inner Snoop Dogg. It changes. I may want to bring out my inner Lady Gaga.

[laughter]

Davide Bortot

I would love to get to know your inner Lady Gaga.

Roots Manuva

It all depends on the circumstances and where you are, and especially with a live band. If I am doing a show at Glastonbury, and the headline act is Oasis, and I am playing in some no man’s land part of the bill, I am going to play into that and I’m going to have a little indie whine somewhere. But if the top of the bill is Basement Jaxx, then I’m definitely going to have a little jam somewhere in the set that is going to be four-to-the-floor, hardcore. I like to mutate.

Davide Bortot

You perform a lot with a guy called Ricky Ranking, is that true? And he is also part of what you call the Banana Klan. What exactly is the Banana Klan?

Roots Manuva

For me, the subtext of it is the soundsystem. But in today’s world, where you can’t just have two turntables and some speakers. It’s all about having a web presence. I would say it’s a multimedia platform, that’s what it is. It’s not just a record label. Yes, we do press up vinyl and have pre-release vinyls, and dubplates that are available for people to buy, limited edition, and there is a download shop that is not connected to iTunes. You have to seek out this shop through the website. And we do podcasts, and we are building up a catalog of music that will be more available worldwide. Because at the moment things are a bit hard to get hold of and releases are sporadic. But that’s how I wanted it. I wanted the whole apparatus of the situation to be less corporate and more like an arts collective, a test marketing ground for greater things to come, before I turn into a crazy, money-grabbing executive.

Davide Bortot

You seem to be quite fascinated with the whole internet?

Roots Manuva

I want to learn. This is the reason I am here today, because I would like to know.

Davide Bortot

So usually, the participants get to ask questions after lectures and maybe we can turn this around: are there any questions you have for those people that know about that kind of stuff, that people our age don’t have a clue about?

Roots Manuva

In my time, it was all about a cassette tape with three songs on it. What is your first instinct or your knee-jerk instinct towards getting the attention of getting your music out there? Because to me now it just seems like, “What the hell do you do?” I wouldn’t know where to start.

Audience member

[inaudible]

Roots Manuva

Oh, blogs. So, you wouldn’t put out a piece of vinyl?

Audience member

For everybody, blogs and podcasts are the most accessible thing that if you want DJs to play records and get it out there...

Audience member

Again, it kind of depends. In your specific case, it does work having the 45s, but if you can’t press a 45 and you can’t even press a dubplate, then you have to get it out there somewhere or somehow.

Audience member

I don’t know the difference on this side of the ocean but in North America, every DJ I know has moved to Serato or Ableton, or some other format. If you’ve got a heater, it’s a heater. And as a new artist, obviously I would love to press 12”s, but it is really hard to find a place in North America where you can get dubplates made, and it is extremely expensive.

Roots Manuva

It’s all about the blog.

Davide Bortot

Do you have a blog, you don’t, right?

Roots Manuva

Yeah, I do. It’s not very good, I’ve been doing it myself. [Laughter]

Davide Bortot

Isn’t that the essence of a blog?

Roots Manuva

The essence of it is not being good?

Davide Bortot

I’m just too old for that stuff… any other questions?

Roots Manuva

It’s too much to ask, really, but what did you think you would get out of this? Not me being here, but out of this whole project? I’m like, “Wow, this is amazing, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is the pièce de résistance.” You’ve got one of the better facilities, you can do everything here, what do you expect to get out of this? You’d been chosen out of 230,000 people across the world.

Audience member

With a lot of people that I know, I’m from New Zealand and I have lots of friends who have done this before, and a lot of them, aside from all the “get connections, learn this and that, blah, blah, blah,” they all seem to have – maybe they would have it before coming here – but since, they have a desire to have their own voice and their own direction. I think maybe the two weeks of just being really intensely creative and being free to do whatever the hell you want can kind of inspire people to go, “That’s where I want to go,” and not be afraid to just go it. And, so I hope to be able to have that sort of focus and direction after coming through this place, which is a very open [setting]. That’s it me for me, anyway. Do you have an idea?

Audience member

I am not very good with the technical side of things and just coming here and listening to the productions of a lot of the participants whose tracks are really good, it has just been really inspiring to try and find your own sound, and to do stuff that you have never actually done before. Kidkanevil… recording my vocals on his record, and I don’t even sing, but he found it cool. It is just truly inspiring to be here.

Audience member

[Referring to fellow participant] She wants me to ask if I can get you to record on a tune of mine later on, so we might be able to get there too [laughter]. We’ll see what happens, you might not even like it.

Davide Bortot

Maybe that’s a question right there even, because you work with a lot with other people?

Roots Manuva

Because of the net and stuff, definitely. The mixtapes and all that other stuff, I am up for doing anything. Just as long as the vibe is there.

Davide Bortot

You feature on a lot of other people’s records, but is that something you naturally try to create when you are in the studio? Being around other people?

Roots Manuva

From the first experience of being in the studio – it was a community recording studio, so there was always a band of people around and a kind of situation like this, but not as formal as this. I had this in another form, a more lo-fi kind of ghetto environment. It was a little bit more dangerous. This is wonderful. This is like… in the midst of the hairier times in Brixton, just trying to just get on and learn how to use the bits and pieces… I wish my first situation was like this.

Davide Bortot

So, how do you expose yourself to new stuff, to get new music and influence? In your records there is so much going into your sound. Is it something you try to do consciously? For me, for example, I tend to stay in my comfort zone when it comes to listening to music. I listen to the stuff that I know, and I want somebody to tell me, “Come on, you need to listen to that.” Are you good at that or do you have people who say maybe you should listen to, I don’t know, Afghan folk music?

Roots Manuva

It’s my biggest fear, not knowing what’s the new thing. I am always listening to it, Regardless of whether I like it or not. I just have my ear out for it. I get more inspired by listening to new things than just sticking to what I know. It has always been something that I had been driven by, trying to find that new form of music.

Davide Bortot

You also run a night at this place all you guys went to yesterday, the Book Club. What is the concept behind that night?

Roots Manuva

It’s called Go Bananas and that is at the Book Club. The concept is there is no concept. It’s just another mutated futuristic soundsystem night. We try and get a PA down there, and upstairs you can’t have too much noise, but there are some laptop DJs going on upstairs and we try and get some visual installations. It is just kind of an informal night that will hopefully grow into maybe a tent and maybe its own festival.

Davide Bortot

So, you have your time now to ask questions, are there any questions from you guys?

Audience member

Hello. I have always wanted to ask you this. You do the production on all of your stuff?

Roots Manuva

Not every last track. The percentage that we generally use, because of the deal that I have got, I have to physically write at least 70% of the album, the Roots Manuva albums.

Audience member

I wonder why the production is never credited to Roots Manuva.

Roots Manuva

Some of them are. When I first started, because of the nature of the community, I always wanted people to think that it was somebody else.

Audience member

It is a UK thing, trying to be an anonymous.

Roots Manuva

It was never seen as a good thing to have the person rapping [getting production credit]. It was an easy target to knock a record off, because the person rapping is producing on it. It was very frowned upon in the early days. Nowadays, it doesn’t seem like it really matters.

Audience member

Hi. Sorry to go back to “Witness,” but I remember you were saying that it didn’t get much radio play and it wasn’t A-listed or anything. But from my memory listening to the radio at the time, it was A-listed by XFM. It was being played three times a day for weeks. You did a live show for them as well, and it was just really weird because for a station that plays and champions indie music, here was you and “Witness.” You are saying you didn’t know about it, but that obviously created a big wave. The first time I heard that track it opened my eyes to a whole new world of British hip-hop, so I just wanted to ask what your feelings on that were?

Roots Manuva

My feelings? On it being A-listed and not knowing?

Audience member

Not just that, but how it opened a lot of people’s eyes and ears to that sound and they wouldn’t otherwise have heard it, in my case anyway, just from listening to XFM at the time.

Roots Manuva

I suppose that is the ultimate quest of me, the artist, is to go on an uncharted journey and entice people that normally wouldn’t give it a second chance. That’s the ultimate compliment.

Audience member

It is quite strange, though, to hear you say that you just knocked that together.

Roots Manuva

I have been told off a lot of times for saying that, because I’ve been sat down in a corner and told, “Listen, you might have knocked it together, but it is the cumulative experiments that you have had over the years that allowed you to do it that fast.” Someone told me that. That song was building in me since I was 15 years old. So, it is not like I’m encouraging everyone to just go into a studio and knock something out in four hours, you still have to experiment to go off like that.

Davide Bortot

Have you ever worked on one song for a very long time? Your music has all the details on there, but it just doesn’t feel like you would spend a very, very long time on it.

Roots Manuva

I’m getting into that now. With the first album, there were things that had been lying about for ages. On the second album, it was my first period of time of having enough money to buy champagne and decent quality weed, so it was a lot of like, “Yeah, let’s record! Come on, let’s get in there, get out, get back to the club.” But I wanted to capture that immediacy. But now I am getting more into the labor thing. The whole process since the last album, Slime & Reason, has been more… I think I’m managing the whole studio torture a little bit. Whereas, back in the day, I would take a basic sketch from home and get to the studio and probably fall asleep or get high and leave it to the engineer. Nowadays, I am painstakingly going through every bit of the process. Spending weeks on just the hi-hat.

Davide Bortot

Do you still go out a lot to clubs? You were saying it before that you had a love affair with narcotics or whatever, but do you still go out and do a lot of partying?

Roots Manuva

No, no, my partying is back to just listening to music or listening to the radio. The days of going out for days and days on end have truly gone.

Davide Bortot

Any more questions?

Audience member

I’m just wondering about your process as an MC/producer. You probably don’t work the same way on every single track, but I guess generally, do ideas come to you more as the lyricist/vocalist or as the producer? Do you make beats and try and put vocals over the top or build your beat around your vocals? The second part of that is, as a rapper, what to you makes a good beat? It is a very broad question, I realize.

Roots Manuva

I find it a lot easier to do the two things in isolation. I find it easy to write a rhyme, but I find it much harder to find a beat to match the rhyme. So, it is easier for me to have the beat first. But it’s a constant jumble. I do get a lot of pressure from the record label. A lot of the time I would love to be able to just deliver an album that just was 12 different beats by 12 people that I like. But, from my label, they are always like, “You have got to do it, that’s what gives it the definitive edge,” or whatever it is. That’s been the thing that has sold me. What’s the other part of the question?

Audience member.

Just, what makes a good beat?

Roots Manuva

That’s really hard. A good beat is something that calls… a tonal value… something that has the space in it for a vocal. Because I think today, with all the technology, there are a lot [of possibilities]. Back in the day you only had a four-track. The music had a lot more space in it, so because today you have an infinite amounts of tracks, music doesn’t really have that much space in it. There is a lot more music that has the lyric – even if there is no words in it – the lyric and the motif and the hook is coming from the clash of samples or synths. To me, a good beat is one that actually leaves the space for words to breathe.

Audience member

You said before that you are more playing with a live band now as opposed to DJs or whatever. As an MC, how does that feel different to maybe what are you doing before, and what do you see as the positive/negatives in the scenario?

Roots Manuva

The positives are that the recordings are just a reference point to work up from and you can literally do a live remix of the recordings. The negative is that for people that are hooked into the recordings, sometimes the live performances don’t stay true to the recordings. It’s not always that easy. Just the general motifs that are in traditional dance music, like the really heavy kick and the over-emphasized snare, you can’t always get that with a live band. That is the only drawback. I am working on it, and I’m trying to do an amalgamation of the live sounds, but still triggering samples and synthesizers. I am trying to get the perfect blend of the organic and the machines together.

Audience member

Hello. Just wondering, as a London MC, what is your take on grime?

Roots Manuva

I love the spirit of it. I can’t say that I listen to it all day, every day, or even an hour of it, but I just love the attitude of it. Just like I like punk records.

Audience member

The energy, really.

Roots Manuva

Yeah.

Audience member

OK. Cheers.

Audience member

Are you looking forward to making records for the next 20, 30, 40 years, being a septuagenarian MC? Or do have other ambitions that you want to do outside of music?

Roots Manuva

Ooh, I would love to make records for 30 years, that would be great. That is a proper dream.

Davide Bortot

Is he trying to say you are too old now?

Roots Manuva

I probably am. Looking at people like Lee “Scratch” Perry and other people that are not here any more, James Brown, and people that have those long careers, it is definitely a model that I aspire to, to be able to get away with it for that long. There are loads of other little things that I’m toying with doing, like getting more into writing. I got into music and the whole studio, the application of the studio… I wanted to do it because I thought I could make a living from making music for adverts. Adverts is one of the things that I haven’t got in my 10 years of actually being signed and published. I haven’t got one advert, so I don’t make much money from sync licensing at all. And that is what I wanted to do. It is weird, you really can’t predict these things. But it has been a nice surprise that rapping pays the mortgage. I pay taxes through rapping, which is a very weird concept if you think of 20 years ago.

Davide Bortot

Any more questions?

Audience member

I am just going to ask you, now we live in a very globalized society. I mean, the UK has a really particular sound, you can trace it back from where all the genres mesh. So, what do you think the future that is going to be? Do you believe in maybe a global sound towards that? In rapping or in any kind of music?

Roots Manuva

Yeah, I think it’s part of a whole crazy tapestry of the abolition of language itself. It’s going to lead to beyond the genres. It is going to lead to a new language because people are so connected. Just the evolution of phonetics will create “Planet Earth” music. I am quite excited about that. Even though I probably won’t be here to hear it. It’s a nice astral projection that I like. And I think an event like today shows where that is going. This is quite an incredible thing that you are doing here.

Davide Bortot

No more questions then? So maybe to round things off, you said before that a good beat needs to have the space to let your words breathe, so do you have a pretty good example of that from your last record? Because we haven’t heard anything from the last record, Slime & Reason. Come on, just pick a song.

(music: Roots Manuva – “C.R.U.F.F.”)

Davide Bortot

Give it up for Roots Manuva.