100 Greatest songs of the 00’s #5 Roots Manuva – Witness (I Hope)

Released: 2001

Anyone talking about respect from across the Atlantic for British rap can trace a line back to pioneers like Rodney Hylton Smith. As Roots Manuva he carried the heavy loads of both creating a separate identity for it, whilst simultaneously removing its sense of novelty for domestic audiences.

Smith pushed back against even homegrown orthodoxy, citing influences like Smiley Culture, Chas’n’Dave and Ian Dury and the Blockheads in an interview with The Guardian’s Dave Simpson at around the time his second album Run, Come Save Me was released in 2001. Born and raised in south London, his cultural reference points were largely Jamaican as opposed to via The Bronx, the articulation helping to differentiate his music to a greater degree than most of his predecessors.

Witness (I Hope) became one of the emerging phenomenon’s cornerstones. It’s foundations were a weird synth bass and acid whoops, a window-shaking low end that made it unmistakeable. Roots/Smith’s rapping was easy in flow, self deprecating and delivered with humour as well as a relentless energy. It also helped to have a chorus equally made for shouting out in playgrounds and clubs alike. Props to the first ones then, those who drew the map many now jump off from, people who did it their way because there was no other one to know.