Roots Manuva interview
HUCK talks to the South London rapper about his live shows, UK hip hop and making a living as a musician.
More like this...
Roots Manuva, AKA Rodney Smith, has been one of the true breakthrough artists to come out of the UK hip hop scene, fusing hip hop, dub, synth and electronica to create his own unique style to much critical acclaim. He has also lent his distinct voice to a huge number of collaboartions with artists including Leftfield, Gorillaz and The Cinematic Orchestra.
HUCK talks to him about his upcoming live appearance at Bloc Weekend and him disowning the scene he came from.
HUCK: You are set to play Bloc Weekend this month. How do you feel about playing festivals as opposed to more informal gigs?
Roots Manuva: Well, playing at festivals pays the bills. Small shows normally don’t cover the cost of flipping doing them. But they’re both necessary. I need to do a string of informal, underground shows to get into the zone to do festivals. But I can’t do too many underground shows because I have to create some suspense for the festivals. There’s got to be some strategy there. A lot of the promoters that used to book me ten years ago are probably quite upset that I don’t turn up and play a little club of six hundred people, but I can’t really do that anymore.
Do you prefer the smaller sort of intimate shows?
No, I prefer the money from big shows! But I need the vibe from the small shows. You know, the more moody shows because you’ve kind of got to do performances in front of your peers. That’s a pain in the arse in London because most people that come to the clubs are either singers or DJs and they’ve heard it all already. I’ve got to do something to win them over as they’re usually either too trendy and too cool for school.
What in particular do you bring to your live shows?
The mesh, the whole kind of evolution of the recordings is a reference point and then what happens on stage is a live remix. If you’ve ever been to see Roots Manuva live and you’ve wanted to hear the records exactly as they are, you’ll be a very disappointed person. When it comes to live shows, we do so much improvisation and reworking of what was already there. You know, things like extended versions, treating the band as if it was a record, rewinds, reloads, breakdowns and mutations. Things like turning ‘Witness’ into a house tune or turning it into a disco tune. That’s been a part of the live package.
So every show varies?
Yeah, of course. I’ve got different live situations for different circumstances. I’ve got a laptop and MPC show which is just comprised of about three laptops, two MPCs and a few synthesizers. Then there’s the turntable show with a laptop and a drummer and the bass guitar. And then there’s a totally live show with like no metronome, no computers. Well, there are computers but there are no sounds coming from the computer, we have to recreate everything live.
There’s a general feeling that it’s a difficult time to make a living as a musician. Have you found that?
No. Well, maybe because I was coming from such a genre, a bastard genre, that I disowned many years ago: UK hip hop. UK hip hop when I was first trying to put out a record. This was 1993/94. I was struggling to sell 300 copies and I’m here now many years later, having been part of records that have sold over a million. For me, I hate to gloat but it’s not been that difficult because back in the days there were no gigs on offer and there were no radio shows playing your stuff. Now there’s so many catalogues of albums, songs, collaborations and invites to do all kinds of things – from theatre, to workshop, to radio. It’s a whole different source of income so I don’t know what musicians are talking about. I’m always looking for musicians.
It’s interesting that you say you’ve disowned UK hip hop because you made Witness and for many people that’s a true anthem of UK hip hop.
It’s not actually UK hip hop itself. It’s more to do with the mindset amongst the creators on the scene. From long ago, I wasn’t hip hop anymore, I was crossover music. Still to this day, even some of the younger people in Banana Klan don’t consider what I do to be hip hop really. Everytime I get behind the drum machine or in the studio, that’s what I’m creating. My understanding or my grasp is that hip hop is going to be totally different for someone who’s a 37-year-old father, than someone who’s 22 and just making their first mix CD. The nature and the resonance of the creative substance changes so rapidly, you know. Today, you don’t give out a demo tape, you just give someone a link to your MySpace account or your Soundcloud account. It’s a totally different age. When I was 15 and in school, it was about making a cassette tape. Do you know what a cassette is? It was going around to record companies, getting up in their face and trying to get them to listen to it. Which is totally different to today. I can’t believe the standard of stuff which is out there. From people’s first mix tape to their MySpace page. It’s unbelievable. Artists today seem to do it all before a record company can do anything for them.
Roots Manuva plays Bloc, taking place from March 12 – 14 at Butlins Minehead Resort, Somerset.
http://klandestiny.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/rootsmanuva
http://soundcloud.com/banana-klan
Subscribe to HUCK for six issues
Only £20 (UK) / £43 (EU) / £58 (Rest of the World).
Roots Manuva interview (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (3)
Please note: Your comment may be held in moderation for approval by an administrator to prevent spamming. This usually doesn't take long, please be patient.
Bless ya ting !