Brand New Second Hand

Submitted by Glyn Lewis on 16 February 2013 - 10:03pm

Cover:

Artist:

Roots Manuva

album-ID:

a_56

Nationality:

Year:

1 999

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Movements*Dem Phonies*Juggle Tings Proper*Inna*Soul Decay*Baptism*Strange Behaviour*Organ Skit*Big Tings Gwidarn*Sinking Sands*Wisdom Fall*Roots-Fi Discotheque*Clockwork*Cornmeal Dumpling*Fever*Oh Yeah…*Motion 5000

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_22

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

7J6QYVFWLlLubIeOAWWbu8

Grooveshark-URL:

Brand+New+Second+Hand/310293

Short-title:

brandNew

nominator-ID:

u_1

Meeting-date:

Wednesday, 29 July 2009

MusicBrainz-URL:

8b20c123-fe55-3c20-8700-cc78b4fdc112

Wikipedia-URL:

Brand_New_Second_Hand

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Roots-Manuva-Brand-New-Second-Hand/master/60301

Allmusic-URL:

brand-new-second-hand-mw0000602738

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81

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Things about to get splendid

1-3-5-10-13-17

11-14

These are well-crafted pieces that have a great balance tonally – thunderous bass lines underpinning light percussive touches. There's a nice mix of hip hop with touches of ragga, dub and trip hop. All sorts of influences and unusual sounds are used on the album. Clockwork has this great sort of sweeping distorted backward, rock guitar and Sinking Sands has Fall style megaphone vocals. It shows a much more experimental, pioneering side to rap – like how it used to be back in the day, when it was all about coming up with these new and untried combinations, a race to be the first to come up with a fresh combination. And this is certainly a unique sound, to my ears, very South London and very international.

Rodney also has some smart and interesting lyrics, lots of biblical language and some pointedly mundane references, rhyming Dennis the Menace with table tennis is difficult not to admire. These aren't your typical cliched, dull as dish-water raps. Very non American, very non Hollywood. I think he has a great rap voice, low down dirty and again very English, but convincing and authentic. And I love music at this sort of slow, driving, languid pace. I enjoyed this one.
74

reviewed by

Richard Norbury

Movements - best rap song of the last 15 years. Enough said. Shame the album doesn't kep it going at this level.
29

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

A perfect demonstration of where Hip lost the Hop.

1

2

It's hard work listening to this album. The pace is grindingly plodding, the samples and rhythms are lackluster and lacking in originality and variation. His voice, whilst having a reasonably interesting sound on the first track 'Movements' becomes unlistenable on 'Dem phonies' - so even if he does have a message I find it hard to decipher.

There's better rap out there for the mainstream audience; I guess you have to be a pretty resilient hip hop fan to enjoy this.