Roots Manuva named his first album, 1999’s promising Brand New Second Hand, after a song on Peter Tosh’s landmark effort Legalize It. While Manuva isn’t the first artist to use roots reggae as a ...

While there's still no word on a fifth studio record from British dub/hip-hop mainstay Roots Manuva, his label, Big Dada Records, has announced that it will release an LP of his songs reworked by UK ...

When his second album, Run Come Save Me, appeared in 2001, Rodney Smith–aka ROOTS MANUVA–seemed like the great hope of British hip-hop, making a crucial move away from the example set by American ...

It’s not easy to get a handle on what Roots Manuva is about anymore, beyond being a UK hip-hop stalwart. His last few albums have leaned on wonky digi-dancehall, positioning him as a cartoonish party ...

The MC and producer is on a creative roll with his latest album – but says he’d never dare tell his doctor what inspires him The first time I try to interview Roots Manuva, AKA British MC and producer ...

Roots Manuva has had his Mercury Prize trophy returned after moving house and accidentally leaving it behind. Manuva – whose real name is Rodney Hylton Smith – took home the award at the 2002 Mercury ...

Rodney Smith is a diffident man, considering his métier of choice. Though notoriously, nothing is handed to British rappers on a plate, he betrays no sign of the self-assurance or venality we’re ...

ROOTS Manuva, considered internationally Britain's only contribution to the hip-hop canon, has taken his music one step further with Colossal Insight, adding not only making his mark on black music in ...

With his witty wordplay that references such delights as cheese on toast and pints of bitter, Rodney Smith (better known as Roots Manuva) is a rapper from whom you expect something slightly eccentric.

Before the Streets pushed things forward, before Dizzee Rascal fixed up and looked sharp, Rodney Smith — a.k.a. Roots Manuva — set the tone of future-funking UK hip-hop. Back in early ’99, Roots ...

I always thought of Roots Manuva as a mature sort of chap. Sophisticated, poised, not just because of the way he toys gleefully with aristocratic cadences, but through the breadth and depth of his ...

With Run Come Save Me having established Roots Manuva as a vital cog in the engine driving hip-hop from the UK to respectability, this project has been issued as a stopgap as we await what he'll come ...