Customer Reviews

Run Come Save Me

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

i really can't believe some of the other reviews of this album. clearly some people just don't get it. any comparison of Roots Manuva and Wyclef Jean simply illustrates the low digit IQ of the reviewer. Wyclef Jean's is simplistic bozo music. and to say roots manuva is pretentious suggests that the person doesn't think hiphop artists should be coming with anything new and unique, because Roots Manuva never says anything remotely pretentious, especially relative to the bragging and chest beating that normally occurs in hiphop.

this album is simply amazing. from the groundbreaking production aesthetic to the groundbreaking lyrical delivery, there is nothing like it, and it doesn't even deserve to be grouped with what currently passes for hiphop. this is a world-informed alien hybrid of dancehall and hiphop that stands alone as something that follows no precedent. it's my favorite hiphop album since .. his last album.

Along with Slick Rick and Tricky, Roots Manuva is the biggest MC's to ever come out of the United Kingdom, but still remains relatively unknown on this side of the pond. His MCing is a gritty combination of dancehall toasting, and old-school rhymes, overlaid with pure abstraction. On "Run Come Save Me", Roots Manuva picks up where he left off on 1999's "Brand New Second Hand", and displays an incredible maturity and knack for crafting rhymes while remaining inherently true to his British roots. This album swiftly breezes through many styles, including (but not limited to): chopped up booty 2-step ("Bashment Boogie"), traditional US style hip-hop ("Join The Dots" featuring Jurassic 5's Chali 2na), experimental electro-grooves ("Hol' It Up"), and lots of funky breakbeats colliding with dancehall inna dub style, all given a soul by Manuva's guttural stammer, coming thick with a UK accent. Cheers for England.

Let me add my accolades onto the pile that Rodney's accumulating these days. This cd has to be one of the best releases of the year. Hip hop was becomming stale for me recently, but thanks to innovators such as Roots Manuva (J5, Dialated Peoples and Azeem are some others), new life has been injected into the music. I would put Roots Manuva up as the best MC out there right now - not just UK MC, but global. His style digs right inside you and permeates out. It's truly amazing.

I've been waiting for this release since I first picked up his Brand New Second Hand. I've had it for a few months now and can't take it off my player. Keep it up.

After wondering for years if England could ever 'do' hip-hop the answer after listening to 'Run Come Save Me' is an un-sentimental 'yes'.
This is an album with a number of tracks that are immediately exciting in that they are unique. The sound is hip-hop but Roots Manuva has found his own sound without pandering to US precedents and also avoiding an over-the-top 'English' approach.
While five or six of the tracks are instantly likeable some others give the impression of needing more time before a true judgement can me made. In truth I would have listened to anyone English who has created a half-decent hip-hop album but Roots Manuva has definitely done more than this. The only question is whether time and more listening will make five or six good tunes into one of those albums you know from start to finish and never think of skipping a track.
Let's hope we have a star to pave the way for what must be hundreds or thousands who couldn't think it could be done.

'Run Come Save Me' is a landmark in not only UK hiphop but hiphop in general, as it is very different to anything else you will come across in its whole approach. Unfortunately the incredible songs are the obvious ones - 'Bashment Boogie', 'Witness', 'Join The Dots', 'Sinny Sin Sins' and 'Dreamy Days' - and the other tracks are merely good. If Roots Manuva had made a 12-track album of this quality, it would have been incredible, but at an overlong 17 tracks some of this is down on standard, though there are no bad tracks. Roots Manuva is lyrically acute as on 'Sinny Sin Sins' which sums up the problems with organised religion extremely articulately, and he also crafts some exciting sounds blending his unique, British rapping voice to influences of ragga, garage and Afro-Caribbean sounds, while staying 100% hiphop. It may not be flawless, but he's a major talent who one day could easily make an album that is.

"One of the albums of the year" - The Independent
"Not just a landmark UK hip hop album, but a landmark hip hop album period" - Mojo "
Superb" - Time Out
"Brilliant" - Blues & Soul
"Charming, erudite, personal, experimental but always approachable... this is a benchmark for UK hip hop" - Muzik
"One of the sanest offerings to emerge from the British inner city and a healthy anitdote to the inanity of US hip hop" - The Observer
"A great album" - The Daily Telegraph "
Too maverick, too brilliantly original a telent to be thethered by mere genre or geography" - The Times
"Breathtaking" - The Guardian "
Truly marking out the way forward for hip hop, wherever it's from" - Jockey Slut
"A triumphant return... absolutely sensational" - The Sunday Times
"Everything about this album is fresh... the sound of someone making a truly personal record in their own original style." - Sleaze Nation
"Album of the year?" - The Wire
"This is unlike anything - hip hop-wise - out there at the mo. Believe it. The hype behind this man is for real" - Echoes
"A fiercely original, hallucinatory masterpiece, a visonary re-imagining of what hip hop can be... among the best albums of the year" - Esquire

The two best hip-hop albums of the year so far aren't American, they're European: French MC Solaar's effortlessly cool but passionate 'The Fifth Ace', and this, the album by the brightest hope of the British underground, Rodney Smith, which finally delivers exactly what we had all hoped from the raw promise of his first album, 'Brand New Second Hand', a couple of years ago.

Introduced by sweeping strings and sweet female vocals, it soon breaks down into a fierce and dark collision of booming bass, breaks and beats the like of which US hip-hop has rarely seen. The stuttering, rolling and bubbling rhythms of British hip-hop (winess also Tricky, ADF, Mark B and Blade etc.) can only come from here, from the messed-up, class and race-riven but fertile magpie culture of urban Britain. There's big-beat, dub, and trip-hop boiling in a magical pot that brews up a sweet and sticky stew of musical inventiveness. Roots Manuva's lyrics are thoughtful, funny and politically-conscious, a long way from the egotistical boastful arrogance that infects so much US hip-hop. He doesn't ape American style or acccent, the delivery is full-on south London, full of the rich hybridity of Caribbean, African, Indian, Cockney and who knows what else, and the imagery uniquely British - where else will you find someone rapping with conviction and style about drinking 'ten pints of bitter' and struggling with cheese-on-toast?

Standout tracks are the Leftfield-like sub-bass grind of 'Witness', the perfect vocal duel / duet with J5's Chali 2na on 'Join the Dots, the subtle story of struggles with religion, 'Sinny Sin Sins, and the initially bizarre but very successful sampling of Ricahrd's Harris' hippy mickey-take, 'MacArthur Park' on the closing track, 'Dreamy Days'. Every track though, whether funny or serious, bustles with scittering, juddering purpose and energy. Awesome. Go Rodney!

Sorry Amazon, but I just picked this CD up at another store. They were playing it over the sound-system and it immediately caught my attention. I'm not a big hip-hop fan - though the Beasties, Dr. Dre, and Run-DMC I love. But after hearing two songs off this album while browsing around the store, I had to ask the clerk what we were listening to. I hung around, listened to another track, and then picked up a copy for myself. I've never bought anything simply because the store was playing it, but this time I did. After taking this disc home and listening to it in full, I'm glad I did. Interesting lyrics and great rhythms. Fantastic!

I bought this album without even listening to one song. didn't regret it, every track on here is truly amazing. it's got funk, hardcore old-skool basslines and reggae. Highest Grade is rather contreversial, with smith rapping and some patoi geezer mcing bout weed. dreamy days, witness, so many more.

He's unique cause he don't chat bout guns and women, he chats about religion, cheese-on-toast and so many other things. he's really not bling-bling (an image i really hate about all dese american wannabee mobsters).

buy it!

This is a classic piece of UK hip-hop, as is Roots Manuva's other album. All the tracks on it, with the exception of 'Trim Body', are great and do not tire after several listens. Of note are the tracks 'Sinny Sin Sins', which attacks organised religion and the hypocrisy associated with it, 'Evil Rabbit', which is slightly strange but great to listen to despite that & the almost obligatory ode..., 'Highest Grade'. We all know it had to be done.
Comparisons to Wyclef Jean made earlier, in my opinion, all missed the point (no disrespect). You don't need to tear down the 'Clef to make Manuva good: he can hold his own. I like 'em both, meself, they both innovate, in different styles, and you may call Wyclef a sell-out, but that was the best Pepsi advert I EVER SEEN. It almost made me want to drink it, honest!
Interestingly, a few UK headz have been aiming criticism at Manuva for this CD. To some of the underground UK scene, he's gone commercial!
I seen the words wit' my own eyes.

Anyhow, this is damnably good music, and if you want some more decent UK hiphop, then check for Blak Twang, Skitz, Phi-Life Cypher, or Mark B & Blade. For your information, of course.