Awfully Deep (Roots Manuva)
from Ninja Tune
Disk 1: - Mind2Motion - Awfully Deep - Cause4Pause - Colossal Insight - Too Cold - A Haunting - Rebel Heart - Chin High - Babylon Medicine - Pause4Cause - Move Ya Loin - Thinking - The Falling - Toothbrush
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Binding/Format: Audio CD
Release Date: 31/01/2005
Index: Music
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Music Pod Price: £6.99
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If you've read any of the speculation surrounding Awfully Deep, you'll be aware that this is the down album from beleaguered Brit-Jamaican rapper Roots Manuva, a troubled work where he battles with the twin demons of depression and mental illness. Luckily, hard times can't entirely keep a good man like Rodney Smith down: barely two minutes into the bashed-up dub-hop of "Mind 2 Motion", he's already exhorting his audience to "Swing your pants!/ Swing your skirt!/ Shake away the hurt!" in an effort to keep the black dog from his door. And truly, this is a long dark night of the soul: on the excellent "Colossal Insight", Smith turns to God to save his sanity; on pitch-black soul number "The Falling", he's lost in an apocalyptic reverie, fantasising about smuggling hand-grenades onto an aeroplane. But luckily, Smith is agreeably incapable of presenting his predicament without moments of dark levity: see the title track, which recalls a stint at a mental hospital populated by "crooked doctors and kinky nurses". A man who dispatches the Reaper with a nudge and a wink, Roots Manuva remains one of British hip-hop's most potent forces. --Louis Pattison
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