Take It There
by Massive Attack (featuring Tricky)

Album: Ritual Spirit (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the lead single from Ritual Spirit, an EP containing four tracks that were previewed on the Fantom app. The song features Massive Attack's fellow trip hop musician Tricky. It was his first collaboration with the band since leaving them to pursue a solo career in the mid-1990s.
  • Tricky and Massive Attack's Robert "3D" Del Naja are the joint vocalists on the track. They recorded them at Tricky's Parisian home, sharing the one microphone.

    Del Naja told The Guardian how Tricky insisted he should rap his lyrics, something the Massive Attack vocalist shunned years ago. "It's always going to be slightly odd working with someone after so much time has passed," he recalled. "But after half a day, you revert to type, all the veneer's stripped, all the posturing's gone and you're just what you were back then, 20 years ago, whether you like it or not. You just realise: 'Oh, I haven't f--king changed at all, I've got all the same issues, he knows how to push my buttons, I know how to push his.'"

    "But that's the nature of it. It's kind of funny and difficult at the same time," Del Naja continued. "He literally forced me to rap – 'Chap, you'd better start bloody rapping again!' We did it in one take, and afterwards, Tricks goes, 'You'll never do that again', and I said, 'Let's hope not.'"

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