Roots Manuva: Duppy Writer

For the last 12 months, British rappers have found themselves in an enviable and unprecedented position. Artists from Tinchy Stryder to Wiley and Plan B have dominated the domestic charts, and their work has become the nation's de facto pop soundtrack. Only a decade ago, though, such a situation was unthinkable. In fact, back then the average UK MC was far more likely to occupy a checkout at his local supermarket than the number-one spot.

For years British MC culture was lost in the wilderness, either too brash and aggressive for mainstream success or too derivative to stand up alongside its American competition. That is until 13 years ago, when a man by the somewhat inauspicious name of Rodney Smith strode onto the scene. Combining street slang, Jamaican patois and an idiosyncratic observational songwriting style, Smith's work as Roots Manuva was both compellingly realistic and endearingly down-to-earth. While the overwhelming majority of his American counterparts hewed to the twin narratives of street hustle and conspicuous consumption, his 1999 debut album Brand New Second Hand offered a defiantly low-budget and very British take on the genre, filled with references to bus rides around Brixton and greasy-spoon breakfasts. Underpinned by an eclectic and experimental soundtrack that joined the dots between rap, drum and bass and dancehall reggae, it was a true coming-of-age moment for UK rap.

Previously, British interpretations of hip-hop culture had been muddled to say the least. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, artists such as Derek B and Monie Love chose a route of direct emulation, even adopting fake transatlantic accents. Meanwhile, acts including London Posse and Overlord X attempted to stamp a British identity on the genre by rapping in their own voices and drawing on an arsenal of reggae and dancehall samples. Neither approach fared particularly well at home or overseas. (Love, who went on to score a number of US hits and to be accepted into the fabled Native Tongues collective, is probably the sole exception.)

While British rap failed to gather popular support, it did have the effect of energising a number of closely related peripheral movements. By the 1990s, its influence had spiralled outwards and played a considerable hand in the creation of genres such as trip-hop and jungle. In fact, Smith credits the Mobo award-winning success of his debut to a combination of relative poverty and precisely this rapidly evolving musical environment. Thanks to straitened financial circumstances, he had little choice but to eschew expensive facilities and recorded the bulk of it in the Angel Town Community Centre in Brixton, South London.

"If you think about it, most British hip-hop had been made in relative isolation for a long time - it was all put together in home studios and bedrooms to begin with," he explains, over the phone from his London home. "But while I was working at the community centre I was face to face with Jamaican immigrants who had just arrived in London, local kids and even some semi-criminal, gangster-wannabe types. There were lots of people passing through with their different styles of music - hip-hop, drum and bass, all kinds of stuff. I couldn't help but be influenced by of that."

Over the last decade, Smith has cemented his status as both a figurehead and pioneer with a string of distinctive albums - 2001's Run Come Save Me, 2005's Awfully Deep and 2008's Mercury Prize-nominated Slime & Reason - not to mention a healthy quota of guest appearances on singles by artists including the Cinematic Orchestra, Leftfield and Gorillaz. Despite a versatility that has enabled him to successfully straddle an array of scenes, one common thread is clearly discernible throughout his work. Dub, an immersive, pared down instrumental style of reggae remixing born in the studios of Kingston, Jamaica in the late 1960s, has had an extraordinary impact on contemporary music. From punk and disco to hip-hop and minimal techno, elements of its bare-bones aesthetic and textural innovations have now been absorbed into the foundational vocabulary of pop. Smith's early years, however, lend a deeper personal resonance.

Thanks to the strict Pentecostal faith of his Jamaican parents, the Smith family's South London home was a largely reggae-free zone. But that didn't stop his older brother smuggling in imported Jamaican records and copies of the specialist music magazine Black Echoes. Too young to be involved in London's thriving Caribbean music scene, Smith was still fascinated by it and cites as formative the entertainment at family weddings and christenings, and the cassette recordings of leading soundsystems (Jamaican mobile discos) that were enthusiastically traded at his secondary school.

Slightly later came the golden days of Britain's domestic reggae scene. Spending his youth watching artists such as Tippa Irie, Smiley Culture and Maxi Priest climbing the charts, Smith picked on the potential of this grassroots movement. Signed to the independent label Big Dada, he now enjoys considerable creative freedom and encounters few of the pressures that would come with a major deal. In the tradition of his favourite Jamaican studios - Studio One, Prince Jammy's and Lee Perry's Black Ark - he has also released experimental companion projects to two of his albums: 2002's Dub Come Save Me, a reverb-drenched and predominantly instrumental reworking of Run Come Save Me and 2006's Alternately Deep, a collection of more avant-garde work that resulted from the recording sessions for Awfully Deep.

With his latest full-length release, Duppy Writer, Smith ventures even further into this territory. This time, though, he is not responsible for his own production. Instead he has drafted in the curiously named Wrongtom - a London-based DJ and producer who has previously worked with both the rock band Hard Fi, the British reggae group Pama International and venerable label Trojan Records. The key to a complete understanding of this project can, helpfully, be found in its title. In Jamaican patois, the word "duppy" loosely translates to "spirit". This speaks to the producer's role as a kind of ghostwriter, drafted in to bring a fresh perspective to Smith's previous work, and to the hazy, half-remembered past that the album seeks to evoke.

Reimagined as they might have sounded had they been recorded decades earlier in the ramshackle studios of Kingston Town, Smith's songs take on an entirely new character. Less a remix project and more a tribute to the far-reaching influence of Jamaican culture, Duppy Writer emphasises the vital links between British street music, reggae and early digital dancehall. Featuring tracks from all four of Smith's albums, its sound ranges from sun-drenched beachside party tunes to the deepest of dread rhythms. Artwork by Tony McDermott, the man who for more than two decades has been responsible for the visual identity of the famed UK reggae label Greensleeves, adds a final layer of realism to this loving homage.

"My head was already tilted to this kind of idea," Smith explains, making a passing reference to his earlier reinterpretive projects. "It's like a commissioned mash-up, but much more organic and purposeful than that. Tom went away with a lot of my back catalogue and came back with a whole new album. I like seeing what happens when other people work on my records, and I also like working with DJs because they often have an instinctive understanding of what's right. This really works and brings something completely different to the songs."

Smith's affection for Jamaican music is plain to see, especially when one takes into account his involvement in the Dub College: a project hosted with the reggae singer Ricky Ranking that includes a club night dedicated to established and emergent talent and a regular podcast of vintage music (available at www.rootsmanuva.co.uk). Perhaps most impressive, though, is the fact that, he has also recently procured a full Jamaican soundsystem set-up of his own, which he plans to use for future live events. It is an investment that brings him full circle, from wide-eyed childhood enthusiast to participant in and, in many ways, curator of this rich and vibrant culture. "I was drawn initially to making music through dub," he says. "It's has an amazing history but, over time, has also come to mean and influence many different things. All I'm trying to do is to put all this stuff in context, to trace its evolution."

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer and photographer whose work has been published in The Guardian, The Independent, Financial Times.