After a brief and civilised chat about the weather (“We only get summer for two weeks here in London”) and an obvious quip about Onion magazine (“Is it a magazine about Onions?”), Roots Manuva (Rodney Smith to the tax man) was ready to chat about his new vehicle Slime & Reason.

“It’s my slang for slather,” Roots starts on the album name. “It’s more like a fuzzy logic, the corruption of rhyme and reason. Rhyme and reason is like suave; slime and reason is more like the drunken master. Isn’t there a kung fu cat called The Drunken Master?”

Exploring and working with the mistakes on his fourth album, Roots Manuva was ultimately trying to achieve a sense of musical naivety and remain quite innocent with Slime & Reason. The album cover tells a different story.
“It wasn’t my idea. It was done by these designers. They did the Wiley album that came out last year. They came along to a show and pitched to me half drunk. And I thought these guys would work... It’s a pretty… weird cover.”

His inspiration for the new record has come from looking back to his roots, the music that moved him even before he heard hip hop; dating back when he was a receptionist at the music academy. There’s no shortage of individuality on the album… one of the video clips (Again And Again) even has him playing cricket.

“I always thought Again And Again sounded like a cricket tune. I don’t know why, it always reminded me of cricket.”

Roots’ distinct voice sounds as fresh as ever, making Slime & Reason the most freewheeling summation of the UK hip hop legend’s career so far. But he still thinks UK hip hop is a dirty word.

“Just in terms of commercial circles. It’s a big joke within record industry circles. If you ever go to a meeting or a record company seminar lunch on UK hip hop it turns into a massive debate about ‘why’ and ‘when’ and ‘only if’. It’s kind of the new breed of MCs should come up with a totally new name and separate themselves from all the misfortunes that happened over the years with so called UK hip hop.”
But Roots Manuva and Dizzee Rascal seem to have the UK hip hop genre on lock.

“There’s so much more than myself and himself isn’t it?” he queries. “It’s a pretty massive movement of people making music and putting out music but not really getting that much airplay or press coverage.

“Generally it’s the nature of the culture and it’s a grassroots movement. Many of the artists out there are making their music and have studios. They’re just doing their own thing, their own method and maybe they’re not that skilled in applying themselves to the wider media mechanism. They just do things on a much smaller scale like put out mixtapes and have local shows. It is what it is.”
Look out for a future collaboration with Roots Manuva and James Blunt.

“I said to him if we could hook up and do something and they said yes. But lord knows when we’re going to be able to do it. We haven’t even sorted it out yet. He’s agreed to it. But we haven’t time tabled it or anything. Why is it in the papers already?”

Belinda Pappalardo

Slime & Reason is out now through Big Dada/Inertia