Awfully Deep

And truly, this is a long dark night of the soul: on the excellent "Colossal Insight", Smith turns to God to save his sanity; on pitch-black soul number "The Falling", he's lost in an apocalyptic reverie, fantasising about smuggling hand-grenades onto an aeroplane. But luckily, Smith is agreeably incapable of presenting his predicament without moments of dark levity: see the title track, which recalls a stint at a mental hospital populated by "crooked doctors and kinky nurses". A man who dispatches the Reaper with a nudge and a wink, Roots Manuva remains one of British hip-hop's most potent forces. --Louis Pattison