Send "Roots Manuva " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Roots Manuva (born Rodney Smith) will turn 40 next year, which isn’t a great sign for an artist like him. The English rapper has yet to build a substantial following stateside and has taken a backseat to peers Mike Skinner (of The Streets) and Dizzee Rascal in his homeland. Realistically, his career has probably peaked, and he now has nowhere to go but down. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to let up. Something about him screams that he’s a gamer, and that he plans on sticking around until he physically can’t, or until nobody cares about him anymore. That deserves some respect. Roots’ sixth proper studio album (and first since 2008‘s Slime & Reason, excluding 2010’s Duppy Writer, English DJ Wrongtom’s collection of Roots remixes), 4everevolution, pumps out some seriously tight grooves without sacrificing authenticity or integrity, which is exactly what it aims for. There are some very solid moments here. When the production is really on—that is, when the perfectly EQ’d drums, wobbly bass lines, and ethereal synths interlock just right, like on “Beyond This World” and “Watch Me Dance”—Roots doesn’t need to do a whole lot, and that’s something he knows well; he’s very cognizant about recognizing when to blend in with a beat and when to stand out. The dude is a veteran of this rap shit, and it shows. The subject matter of the album doesn’t quite align with what its title suggests, as any revolution spawned from this will be for the dance floor only. Still, Roots goes pretty hard when he tries. There’s a slew of savor-the-(subtle-)wordplay lines on opener “First Growth”, including these: “Paranoid people are the most annoyed people / Peeping to see who’s a Peeping Tom / News leaks, now we see where the news is from”. That sort of observational reportage is out of the ordinary here, but as long as you’re not expecting any KRS-One-like insight, or even a whole lot of life-affirming lines, from 4everevolution, that shouldn’t be a huge shortcoming....full text |
| Bbc |
| One of the most agreeable recent developments in the making of long-playing records has been the rediscovery of brevity. Whether the reasons are aesthetic or cynical, the last 10 years or so has seen a gradual return to the short, sharp 40-minute album after all the turgid, filler and skit-filled self-indulgences of the 1990s. So it was cause for concern when one noticed that the fifth album proper by veteran British rapper/producer Rodney Smith, aka Roots Manuva, featured as many as 19 tracks and ran to just under an hour. Especially because its predecessor, 2008’s Slime & Reason, was a somewhat dispiriting affair which sounded like the lugubrious but charming south Londoner had become lost in a world of introspection and self-pity. An hour of dense, low-tempo grumbles about money and disillusion? Not an exciting prospect. Thankfully, it turns out that 4everevolution is long because Smith seems, since relocating to Sheffield and working occasionally with South Yorkshire neighbour and mischievous dance producer Toddla T, to have hit the richest creative vein of his accomplished career. This outstanding long-player is, by some distance, his best yet, combining the squelchy beats and Brit-Jamaican humour he is known for with a musical eclecticism and experimental joy that is entirely new. Unlike the traditional hip hop album, 4everevolution sees Smith plus various members of his Banana Klan crew swapping ‘real’ instruments, mixing them with Smith’s trademark, bass-heavy electronics and building tracks that sound spontaneous, completely un-generic and packed with excitement, adventure and optimism. Amongst these tracks, there isn’t one that feels superfluous. And Smith’s refusal to follow any current trend in pop-rap or urban dance production ensures that every one is a sonic surprise....full text |
| Guardian |
| What started out as a collection of songs for other artists to use has evolved into Roots Manuva's fifth album, and it's a good thing he kept them for himself. Not all of 4everevolution shines – tracks such as "First Growth" feel like Manuva by numbers – but there are some gems here, and it's good to hear the veteran south London rapper adapting his gruff tones to such a wide variety of material, from "The Throes of It", a seven-minute, bleeps-and-bass epic, to dreamy Caribbean number "Wha' Mek?". Meanwhile, Manuva casts a withering eye on "nothing-can-change Britain", riddled with greed and corruption, on the nicely sardonic "Skid Valley"....full text |
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