Roots Manuva Prepares Album, Tour

When Dizzee Rascal gets props from the Shortlist Prize committee for his first of two albums in two years, it feels like that much longer since we've heard from fellow UK hip-hop celeb Roots Manuva-- not counting the dub re-working of his well-received Run Come Save Me, it's been a solid three years. But all this will change, according to the NME, on January 31st when Manuva issues his long-awaited follow-up, Awfully Deep. The record will be preceded by a single, "Colossal Insight", two weeks earlier on January 17th, which will feature remixes from The Soft Pink Truth and Röyksopp. The song currently enjoys an abbreviated, instrumental existence on Roots Manuva's website, while his label, Big Dada, is offering an exclusive download of a non-album track "Double Drat", which they described as "a crazed South London dancehall-afro-dub shuffler" before they ran out of hyphens.

Roots also has a tour for February already booked and ready to go. It'll kick off in England, just one month shy of Awfully Deep's release, and will continue its run strictly within Great Britain. There's no word yet on a North American release date or tour, so while you're calculating the price of plane ticket to the UK, we'll provide the tour dates:

02-23 Gateshead, England - The Sage
02-24 Leeds, England - Met University
02-25 Manchester, England - Academy 2
02-26 Birmingham, England - Academy
02-27 Glasgow, Scotland - The Arches
03-01 Cambridge, England - Junction
03-02 Bristol, England - Academy
03-03 Brighton, England - Concorde 2
03-04 Brixton, England - Academy