Roots Manuva @ The Sage Gateshead 7th October 2008

Hall 2 at the Sage is probably my favourite venue in Newcastle; it’s a purpose built intimate venue where the artist can get really close to their audience, it has the feel of a dingy pub without having the smell or the residue from the previous evenings festivities. This, though, was probably the weirdest and most surreal gig that I’ve ever been to.
Roots Manuva, to give you some background, is one of the most prominent and critically successful British Hip Hop artists ever. So you expect a certain stereotypical audience, like you expect old couples to be courted to the theatre, and the 14-year-old tight jeans and scruffy hair ‘emotional’ kid to go and see My Chemical Romance. So when I get to there do I then get a 45-year-old guy (age is a guess, I didn’t ask him) on one side, and a mother and daughter on the other. Looking at the standing area, I see mid 30s couples holding hands at the back as their expecting Damien Rice to spring himself out. I actually had the thought ‘Am I at the wrong gig’. So there was Root’s, his DJs, that guy (the typical guy that fills in the last parts of the sentence to amplify it), and around 300 middle class white guys.
Anyway, Roots was on great form, his lyrics meaningful. There was no bling; no East Coast culture. Just straight up music, the warm britishness of his lyrics (Cheese on Toast and Bitter) brings him away from the Americanisation of British Hip Hop, the need for excessive production, which drives away the uniqueness. Everybody, though, were waiting for Witness the Fitness, and it was done with a huge audience reaction that was surprisingly lacking in the earlier songs (probably seeing if Dad was coming down with his Porsche to pick them up).
Overall, a really solid performance, but in my thoughts as I walked away I thought about the problem that has swept to Indie music specifically. Stop making all your music sound the same! Roots has always been in that slot of critics hip hop without making that ‘one record’, that big song. If he wants to become big, like Dizzie or Sway big, he needs to think about that one song, and maybe go and get some American influences in there. Only for one song though, then he can come back and sit on his rightful place as the spearhead of the British Hip Hop scene.

Review by Izaac Carlisle