Roni Size and his Reprazent crew do not make simple music. And he does not appreciate it being categorized as such. "I got very offended the other day," Size recalls. "I said to someone, 'What is this?' And they said, 'Oh, it's drum-and-bass with a rapper.' I thought, 'Come on! Is that the best you can come up with? Drum-and-bass with a fucking rapper?'"

Fair enough, such lazy categorization does a disservice to Size's furiously paced, multi-layered hybrid of hip-hop, drum-and-bass and jazz beats, a potent combo that earned his groundbreaking 1997 album New Forms England's coveted Mercury Prize for Best Album and remains just as stunning on his new disc, In the Mode. Highlighted by collaborations with Method Man, Zack de la Rocha and the Roots' Rahzel, as well as Size's growing understanding of American hip-hop and a dense layer of beats he refers to as a "wall of sound," In the Mode is as ambitious a release as any album in 2000.

But to merely recognize Size's recorded output is to miss a big part of the picture. As an artist, Size says he is driven by a desire to create something his fans can spread the gospel about with conviction. He wants them to believe it when they say to someone, "It's all about fucking Roni Size." And however impressive his albums may be, that kind of conviction comes from experiencing Reprazent live. Following in the tradition of bands like Led Zeppelin, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and U2, Size takes pride in the fact that most of his faithful have been converted at his concerts.

While it's unusual for an ensemble (Size emphasizes that Reprazent is a "collective," not a band) in one of the sub-genres of electronic music to be lauded for their live performances, Size says it was after witnessing another electronic band -- Prodigy -- that he made the vow to take Reprazent's stage show to the next level. "I ended up DJing in Amsterdam at a show with the Prodigy," he explains. "I knew of Prodigy years before that, and I've always DJed at certain gigs with them, but it wasn't until we got to Amsterdam and I saw them perform in front of like a 10,000 deep crowd and they smashed the place to fucking bits that I realized that I wanted to do what they're doing."

To Size, people finding the ensemble by seeing them play live keeps the music real, and not a product of the media. "We go onto a stage in the middle of France before an audience who have never heard of us and at the beginning of the show they're like, 'What's this?,'" he says. "Halfway through the show they start moving; and by the end of the show, they are going crazy. The beauty about what we are is we've been discovered rather than hyped."

There has been some hype surrounding Reprazent -- a lot, actually -- that's the flip side of winning the Mercury Prize. And though Size is shrewd enough to realize that collaborating with the likes of Method Man and de la Rocha will only add to the hype, he shrugs it off. "I'm just doing what I'm doing," he says. "I love Method Man, he's a true hip-hop character. And I'm excited not just by the thought of him on my album, but for him to actually flip it and bust a flow on there . . ."

As for de la Rocha, Size almost seems at a loss for words. "Zack is a fast-talking political agenda b-boy," he says. "It's like, 'What is he?' You put Zack on a Roni Size track, where it doesn't even sound like me, what does it become then? Tell me please. It's great that no one can actually pinpoint what it is. I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with."

Perhaps feeling a bit sorry for us though, he relents and provides a small clue as to how he would depict his music. "No matter what, a Roni Size track is not a jungle track. It's not a hip-hop track. It's fucking something else."

STEVE BALTIN
(October 24, 2000)