Roots Manuva, Bleeds: album review

Download: Hard Bastards; Facety 2:11; Stepping Hard; I Know Your Face

Roots Manuva, Bleeds

It’s good to find that Roots Manuva’s rhyming skills and wayward worldview remain largely unchanged on Bleeds, despite his relocation from inner-city London to suburban Surrey.

There’s the same penchant for itchy, unusual beats from the likes of 4Tet and Fred; the same provocative, philosophical flow; and the same undertow of paranoid wariness in tracks like “I Know Your Face” and the disturbing “Crying”, where he warns, “this world cannot be trusted”.

True enough – though as ever, Roots Manuva rejects the obvious and simple in his political analysis, finding the “Hard Bastards” among rich and poor alike, but seeking the good instead, choosing to “write a little bar and show some regard for the ordinary hero, here and everywhere”.

As he observes in “Stepping Hard”, it’s all about perseverance and endurance, about trying to be a mountain in a molehill culture.