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"We were never victims of trends," Roots spits, in dat voice of dat riddim, with wiped-out evocations of programmed dancehall dissonance ringing in his ears. Upon saying that, he gets on his high — his, like, totally fucking high, man — horse and rides with pride in a baked-off-his-ass jabbing-and-japing traipse through hip-hop's most freaked-out dubbed-out dudeism. Everything is off the beat as Roots stumbles along, slurring his words, lurching, looking like he's gonna topple from such a tall height (6'2"; 6'3" in high shoes); but the phase and echo and guitar and cymbals that normally color dub's template have been replaced by squeaks and claps and lasers shined from the most synthetic-sounding drum machines, the darkness and dread of dub's earthen heathen spirit only present in the backbone of head-nodding, speaker-shuddering bass. The low-end rumbling comes from the lowest possible tones eked from this inorganic gear, but firing over the top are spasms of corrupted computer-game twill-and-twee sound-effects. In a move unusual for Ninja Tune's Brit-hop family, Run Come Save Me is almost entirely free of any traces of "real" instrumentation, causing Roots Manuva's effect to go two different ways on album number two. The music itself seems more abstract and aggressive, but the mood it renders seems much more silly. Never do the laughs seem like more of a lark than on "Highest Grade," when Manuva plays giggling buddy alongside Seanie T, who turns on the affected rasta lingua to praise the weed — one of many such odes herein — to the appropriated melodies of Craig David's "7 Days" and Destiny's Child's "Survivor."
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