i really can't believe some of the other reviews of this album. clearly some people just don't get it. any comparison of Roots Manuva and Wyclef Jean simply illustrates the low digit IQ of the reviewer. Wyclef Jean's is simplistic bozo music. and to say roots manuva is pretentious suggests that the person doesn't think hiphop artists should be coming with anything new and unique, because Roots Manuva never says anything remotely pretentious, especially relative to the bragging and chest beating that normally occurs in hiphop.

this album is simply amazing. from the groundbreaking production aesthetic to the groundbreaking lyrical delivery, there is nothing like it, and it doesn't even deserve to be grouped with what currently passes for hiphop. this is a world-informed alien hybrid of dancehall and hiphop that stands alone as something that follows no precedent. it's my favorite hiphop album since .. his last album.

Let me add my accolades onto the pile that Rodney's accumulating these days. This cd has to be one of the best releases of the year. Hip hop was becomming stale for me recently, but thanks to innovators such as Roots Manuva (J5, Dialated Peoples and Azeem are some others), new life has been injected into the music. I would put Roots Manuva up as the best MC out there right now - not just UK MC, but global. His style digs right inside you and permeates out. It's truly amazing.

I've been waiting for this release since I first picked up his Brand New Second Hand. I've had it for a few months now and can't take it off my player. Keep it up.

'Run Come Save Me' is a landmark in not only UK hiphop but hiphop in general, as it is very different to anything else you will come across in its whole approach. Unfortunately the incredible songs are the obvious ones - 'Bashment Boogie', 'Witness', 'Join The Dots', 'Sinny Sin Sins' and 'Dreamy Days' - and the other tracks are merely good. If Roots Manuva had made a 12-track album of this quality, it would have been incredible, but at an overlong 17 tracks some of this is down on standard, though there are no bad tracks. Roots Manuva is lyrically acute as on 'Sinny Sin Sins' which sums up the problems with organised religion extremely articulately, and he also crafts some exciting sounds blending his unique, British rapping voice to influences of ragga, garage and Afro-Caribbean sounds, while staying 100% hiphop. It may not be flawless, but he's a major talent who one day could easily make an album that is.

The two best hip-hop albums of the year so far aren't American, they're European: French MC Solaar's effortlessly cool but passionate 'The Fifth Ace', and this, the album by the brightest hope of the British underground, Rodney Smith, which finally delivers exactly what we had all hoped from the raw promise of his first album, 'Brand New Second Hand', a couple of years ago.

Introduced by sweeping strings and sweet female vocals, it soon breaks down into a fierce and dark collision of booming bass, breaks and beats the like of which US hip-hop has rarely seen. The stuttering, rolling and bubbling rhythms of British hip-hop (winess also Tricky, ADF, Mark B and Blade etc.) can only come from here, from the messed-up, class and race-riven but fertile magpie culture of urban Britain. There's big-beat, dub, and trip-hop boiling in a magical pot that brews up a sweet and sticky stew of musical inventiveness. Roots Manuva's lyrics are thoughtful, funny and politically-conscious, a long way from the egotistical boastful arrogance that infects so much US hip-hop. He doesn't ape American style or acccent, the delivery is full-on south London, full of the rich hybridity of Caribbean, African, Indian, Cockney and who knows what else, and the imagery uniquely British - where else will you find someone rapping with conviction and style about drinking 'ten pints of bitter' and struggling with cheese-on-toast?

Standout tracks are the Leftfield-like sub-bass grind of 'Witness', the perfect vocal duel / duet with J5's Chali 2na on 'Join the Dots, the subtle story of struggles with religion, 'Sinny Sin Sins, and the initially bizarre but very successful sampling of Ricahrd's Harris' hippy mickey-take, 'MacArthur Park' on the closing track, 'Dreamy Days'. Every track though, whether funny or serious, bustles with scittering, juddering purpose and energy. Awesome. Go Rodney!

I bought this album without even listening to one song. didn't regret it, every track on here is truly amazing. it's got funk, hardcore old-skool basslines and reggae. Highest Grade is rather contreversial, with smith rapping and some patoi geezer mcing bout weed. dreamy days, witness, so many more.

He's unique cause he don't chat bout guns and women, he chats about religion, cheese-on-toast and so many other things. he's really not bling-bling (an image i really hate about all dese american wannabee mobsters).

buy it!