Live Review: Roots Manuva at ABC, Glasgow, Scotland, 26th November 2005

by anna battista

The lights in the venue are switched off while a voice off stage announces that tonight we’re here to celebrate and enjoy, and, soon after this short introduction, Roots Manuva arrives on stage, rescuing the audience from the deep pit of misery and mediocre hip-hop in which supporting act and Eminem imitator Plan B threw us all in.

With a full live band including keyboards, brass, bass, guitar, drums and a turntablist, Roots Manuva’s gig opens with triumphing beats, energetic rapping and a heavy bass drone. With cool graphics and videos as a backdrop, Roots Manuva AKA Rodney Smith, clad in his trademark fur hooded waistcoat and wearing smart sunglasses, walks up and down the stage, dancing, jumping around and rapping. He rocks the crowd with the subtle grooves of ‘Babylon Medicine’ and the pumping bassline of ‘Join the Dots’, performed with co-rapper Ricky Ranking.

Throughout the gig, Smith provides us with cool live renditions of some of the best tracks taken from his three albums: among them, two tracks from his latest album “Awfully Deep”, stand out, the title track and ‘Too Cold’, thanks to their depth and lyrical contents. There is not much of the machismo intrinsic to the hip-hop genre in Roots Manuva’s music, which is mainly characterised by infectious lyrics, pumping beats and some of the best vibes around.

This splendid night closes with ‘Dreamy Days’ and the awesome anthem ‘Witness (1 Hope)’, the best known Roots Manuva song in circulation, during which the MC drives the crowd insane, getting the audience to jump, dance and sing in unison. This gig definitely reconfirmed that Roots Manuva is the most genial and charismatic sonically adventurous UK hip-hop artist around, an unstoppable force of nature worth checking out and, possibly, seeing live.

Photographs by Anna Battista