When they first emerged as part of Bristol sound system collective The Wild Bunch, the members of Massive Attack claimed to be at the vanguard of a new genre, telling The Face that they were purveyors of “minimalist lovers’ hip-hop”. Though the descriptor never caught on, the West Country collective’s sonic language definitely did. Their chilled-out and sensual take on electronica – which dabbled in reggae, jazz and even prog rock at points – instantly turned heads on debut album Blue Lines. Copycats emerged within just a couple of years, leading to the media identifying the group as the leaders of a new ‘trip-hop’ scene, also featuring the likes of Tricky, Portishead, Morcheeba and others.
However, Massive Attack’s boundary-busting vision always kept them ahead of the curve, even when their line-up began to in-fight and crumble in the late ’90s. “We just wanted to firmly establish our own identity,” Robert Del Naja, aka 3D, stated, and they did so emphatically with 1998’s massively influential Mezzanine.
