A BRIEF, SWEET, ANCIENT PREVIOUS ENCOUNTER WITH HHC ASIDE, THIS IS NEW TERRITORY FOR TRICKY - talking hip-hop to a bona fide hip-hop mag. He's done all the stlye mags, eh says, been interrogated by the music inkies, had a dissection from every major newspaper broadsheet going. "And I'm bored of speaking to them," he moans. "They ain't saying nothing new." It's up to us, it appears, to save the day. Thou shalt not bore your interviewee.
  The tray, complete with the food, and Tricky are on the king-sized med in one of the two huge rooms. Tricky has to himself an achingly chic hotel just off London's Hyde Park. After a few half-hearted bites at the mustard yellow-coloured roast chicken on his plate, Tricky begins to entertain the room. The HHC photographer directs him to a corner of the hotel room to sit, stnad and pose buit already Tricky's off. "Look Paul," he grins, "I ain't doing no funny shit. Just take pictures of me.. I ain't into posing. Fuckin' 'ell, that chicken tasted like shit," he continues, removing remnants of the chook from his mouth with a wipe of his arm. "It's corn fed. You can taste the corn."
  As he continues to chew at the last remaining morsels, his head jerks around with the effort, like he's twitching, observing, owl-like everyone else within these four walls. Photos finished fornow, he jumps back onto the bed, passing comment about two famous hip-hop names he's met in New York (Tricky now lives in New Jersey). He then, unprompted, recalls the infamous tale of the beating he gave to a journalist at Glastonbury last year who he says put into print aspects of Tricky's life that the artist deemed had got too personal.
  "It's the only thing they understand, some of them," he offers. Wheather this is meant as a warning to us, not to fuck with Tricky, is unclear, but by the end of our time together it seems entirely innocent. Besides, the story is common knowledge in press circles - tabloid-esque tittle-tattle, of course, never really being HHC's chief concern anyway.
   After more photos in the lobby and more Tricky banter - "He's on good form today lad," warns the press officer - he pulls us into the adjoining hotel room where he's joined on the sofa by a chief collaborator on the new Tricky album, 'Juxtapose', Mad Dog. Both his rhyming voice and slim, trim ragga kid appearance and gait make it wasy to guess this emcee's identity - although the man formerly known as Bionic of London Posse (still purveyors of Britain's best ever hip-hop album) winces at his old moniker and at mention of his former crew. He keeps quiet for now, only coming forward to talk later with Tricky's constant cajoling. For now, however, the garrulous Bristolian holds sway.

THIS PART OF THE CONVERSATION IS PLAYED OUT TO THE CHINK AND FUZZ OF TEA CUPS AND GLASSES OF COKE, with Mad Dog doing the pouring honours... temporarily distracted from his spliff-biulding - some things never change with Tricky - he talks to the waiter like an old pal, thanking him profusely for his help.
   Does he see himself as a hip-hop artist? We have to ask him. Surely he agrees that this is his first proper stab at a hip-hop album in his own right, or are we setting ourselves up for a tongue-lashing here?
   "No, no, no, you're right.," he says reassuringly. "There hasn't been beats on the other albums but then they weren't really hip-hop [Tricky, with that West Country lilt pronounces this "'ip-'op" somewhat engagingly]. People said they were hip-hop 'cause I was black. ANd I was rhyming yeah, 'cause I can't sing. But I started off as a rapper but then it went somewhere else. It went into like spoken word, so no-one's considered me rap at all. But this is a hip-hop album, definitely. That's why I got Grease."
   Grease, Tricky explains, is the man bedind DMX's first two albums, and his employment came from a conversation taht Tricky had with his close confidants about selling records to the hip-hop market - "and the only way to do that is to do hip-hop," says Tricky. "You can't get into the hip-hop market by making something contrived. You get in with an authentic stamp and Grease is that."
   So it's here, being in New York, surrounded by hip-hop, that has facilitated thsi has it? No, says Tricky.
   "'Angels With Dirty Faces' [Tricky's last 'dark, bluesy album'] was made in New York, and it doesn't sound like a hip-hop album," he argues. "I don't get influenced that much. I don't listen to hip-hop so much that it takes over my life. For me to do hip-hop I needed a hip-hop producer in. If I do a blues track, it won't come over like a blues track. If I do a hip-hop track, it will come over like me. Grease is the real deal He is hip-hop., he lives it, he breathes it. He is it."

'JUXTAPOSE' STARTS WITH 'FOR REAL'  IT DOESN'T TAKE A BUDDING FREUD TO RECOGNISE THAT THIS IS a statement if intent. Musically it's Tricky in gentle mode. muted drum patterns gurgle underneath a simple keyboard break, with Tricks rasping, in what sounds like a beatdown to fake emcees: "You watch too many films - for real." There's even a line where he quotes a female admirer coming up and offering the immortal words, "You look much bigger on the video..."
   "Ah, you see, some poeple seem to think that I ain't got a sense of humour. I have got a sense of humour."
   And that seems to be a real point of annoyance to Tricky. His explanation is simple and direct.
   "After a while you get used to it," he spits. "I just think - fuck it. If you think I am like that, then fine, that fives me more opportunity to be like that. If you come into my world thinkin I'm a moody bastard [he rolls the 'r' on the first syllable here deliciously] then I'm going to be a moody bastard to you. So it don't really worry me - people get what I want."
   Elsewhere on the album, there's the occasional more tradinally Tricky cut. 'Contradictive' revolves around a subtle swell, a looped male vocal. It's quite gorgeous. Okay, not the sort of description you'd normally associate with a hip-hop artist, but we already know quite why Tricky is different. It's the Mad Dog-collaborated cuts like 'Hot Like A Sauna' and 'I Like The Girls' that will initially be the most accessable to fans of more mainstream hip-hop. 'I Like...' is an off-kilter, shuddering, booty-shaking tale of lap-dancing lesbians, narrated by Mad Dog, full of references to 'breasts', 'clits' and 'whipped cream'.
   The album ends with 'Luv,' a metronome neat joined by military stabs. Tricky whispering his way through the cut. "It's been some time since I've seen Luv," he raps with dual meaning. There's a few emcees around, in the states at least, who'd be brave enough to be so introspective.
   "I'm talking about a girl," Tricky explains. "But it means 'love' as well... like once I had my head mashed up by a girl

THE SAME MIGHT BE SAID OF TRICKY, EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE PLACES WHERE'S HE SOMETHING OF A HERO. The Mayor of San Francisco has just named December 2nd 'Tricky Day' in the city and he will see in his millennium there with a concert. It's a long way from the prototype Tricky, the little b-boy from Bristol.
   "I was a b-boy yes, like I was a rude boy when I first started hearing The Specials. But you could be a b-boy from Bristol - it sounds ridiculous but we tried to breakdance, body pop and hang out and listen to hip-hop. And it led to this." And via his two vocal heroes Terry Hall and Slick Rick.
   There was time when everyone who made music in Bristol was investigated for some sort of familial link. Ask Tricky about the hip-hop scene there and you might expect him to yawn. He doesn't.
   "I haven't really talked a lot about this because when people talk about Bristol they talk about the 'Bristol scene' and there ain't no Bristol scene. All there is, is hip-hop. They talk about Massive Attack and Portishead. Look, when I started off in it, those kids weren't around... I remember on a Saturday afternoon, 30-40 kids would come from all different neighbourhoods and watch each other dance in the windows at Woolworth's. There was no Massive Attack, Portishead or me around back then so there was no Bristol scene, apart from that. Groups of kids used to get together and dance together. I had a half brother and he used to have a crew of dancers and that's how I got to know him, because he had a crew of dancers. And they used to dance against all these kids from London, Bath, Swindon and that, to me, was the Bristol scene. It depends on what you call it. The Bristol scene with me in Massive Attack was me, pissed up in bars, trying to make some money. That ain't much of a scene."
   The scene for now, for Tricky, remains the US, and another album - provisionally entitled 'Street Dog And Scrappy Love' - with Mad Dog, for Durban Poison. "The plan is to just grow. Keep learning. And growing." No more films (at the moment anyway) after the flop that was The Fifth Element ("I didn't know it was going to be a shit film - loved 'Nikita'"). 'Juxtapose' won't be easy listening, but it's insidious, worming its way through to your brain like no other Tricky album before. It's either one more step along the way to deciphering the enigma that is Tricky or yet another revision of the code. But when it comes to music, maybe it's best left to Tricky to describe himself. "My occupation? I'm a trier - I can't sing, I can't rap... but I try."