Manga Saint Hilare should be out touring his new album Make It Out Alive but, like the rest of us, he’s at home using his time to learn new things. “I’ve been learning how to make beats, improving my Photoshop skills and designing Instagram filters for promotion,” he says. “Things that can help my ting, really.”
He even jokes about jumping on TikTok and starting a career there – funny because at 34, the London rapper is now a lot older than the platform’s fresh-faced dancers and meme-slingers. While drill and Afro-swing are the current dominant sounds of UK rap, Manga belongs to a previous generation: the grime MCs who built their credibility earning reloads in raves, the likes of Dizzee Rascal and Kano who paved the way for Stormzy.
He joined Roll Deep in 2004, the grime crew who crossed into pop for two UK No 1 singles in 2010, but he always considered himself an outsider and kept a low profile compared with other members such as Wiley. “One time I released a solo single and made £3.58 on iTunes, and this was proper digital downloads,” he says, self-deprecatingly. But being outside of the spotlight can pay more than financial dividends. Despite – indeed, perhaps because of – grime not being in fashion as it once was, Manga has made Make It Out Alive one of the most brilliant UK rap releases this year. He sketches out a hopeful future, but references the doubts and difficulties he’s had along the way – this graceful and contemplative outlook is the album’s highlight.
He says his 2019 album with rapper Murkage Dave, We Need to Look After Us, was about slowing down and looking inward, and Make It Out Alive continues this self examination – themes of wellbeing and self-care thread them together. “It’s about remaining grounded in everything you do and not allowing this world to kill you. Everyone’s issues vary depending on circumstances, but it’s about always keeping in motion.” Hence the moped on the cover.
While many other MCs are world-makers with their lyrics and themes, there’s a feeling that, when you listen to Manga spit, he’s in conversation with his listeners, inviting them into his world to share his experience. “It’s my clearest project in terms of the message I’m trying to convey, and I’m happy that people are collectively understanding,” he says. Even on the more explosive tracks such as Trample, the sharpness in his tone makes it feel like he’s speaking directly to you: “First things first, let me say from now we are not similar / I am not like dem,” he raps. And so it proves: whether fretting about the grim financial realities of an independent artist on Less Money More Problems or struggling with bouts of depression on Escape Plan, he touches on topics other MCs sometimes shy away from. His writing is purposeful, precise and often funny, and each word has its place as he challenges the idea of a single narrative within grime.
As he says on Black Man Timing, “not giving a fuck is my skincare routine”, but this clarity of purpose came out of a long stretch in the wilderness. “I felt lost for a long time – there wasn’t any direction in my life,” he says. As one of the younger members of Roll Deep alongside some big personalities, he arguably joined ahead of his time – too early, in fact. “There are people like Wiley who just get it and have that energy. But I was lost in every area of life and I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t earning anything really, I wasn’t making any impact, but at the same time I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t very good, and sometimes I wondered whether I should’ve got a job. It was a struggle back then. As I got older, I learned more about myself.”
Each project since has encapsulated each stage in his life, gradually adding more detail to an overall portrait of a man. “I have the room to talk about my fears and insecurities about finding my place in the world,” he says. “There’s no extra songs recorded when I make a body of work – the first line you heard is the first thing I wrote, and it’s the same with the last. Everything in that project is me. That’s why I feel it’s sick when people tell me they like certain songs, it’s like there’s an understanding on a deeper level.”
After 20-year-old Mancunian rapper and chart star Aitch said “no one younger than me is bothered about grime”, the style’s popularity has been called into question. While I don’t fully believe it’s waning, Manga has another take. “Kids don’t know what grime is. They could like [2014 grime hit] German Whip, but not necessarily the whole sound, because of how music’s presented to them: there’s no separation between sounds.” Even grime itself is a melting pot, and now it is 20 years old and no longer just a youth-led genre, it is becoming more mature, conceptual and diverse in its narratives – if it can avoid nostalgia. “Go and make some stuff that transcends the diehard grime fans, that speaks to something higher,” Manga says, addressing his peers. “Otherwise it’s going to end up like garage or jungle where we start saying, ‘You weren’t there’ to a bunch of kids who weren’t old enough.”
Manga’s name as a solo artist has only blown up in the last five years or so, following those years he spent figuring out what kind of MC he wanted to be. His golden age could unexpectedly come in his mid-30s. “I just wanted to tell my story and now people have gravitated towards me, from me being myself,” he says. “I’ve got nothing to pretend about any more. I’ve learned more about myself and the more I speak about the realities, the more people see me as Manga and not just a grime MC. I don’t have to play a character.” Grime’s wallflower will continue to blossom.
