Tricky is unhappy. He doesn't want to be here. This week sees the release of his new album, "Nearly God". To promote it, he agreed to do three interviews. A style magazine, a listings magazine and music magazine, The Face, Time Out and Melody Maker. In that order. The Face interview cast him as an ex-petty criminal, an itinerant father and a paranoid spliffhead/drinker. It described his singer and sometime real-life partner Martina (who Tricky famously met sitting on a wall outside her Bristol school and who is mother to his one-year-old kid, Malsey) as suffering from "the fatigue associated with bringing up a small child more or less on her own". An accusation that Tricky later denied. Vehemently. It implied he'd had carnal knowledge of Björk It mentioned his past as a petty criminal, detailed his fucked-up relationship with his dad (who left home after his mum died when he was four), the supposed strain in his relationship with Martina, his overwhelming distrust of people-friends included.

"A friend said it was no wonder I'm paranoid," he tells me later, rolling up his fourth joint of the morning, in his New York hotel bedroom. "I smoke so much fucking spliff. I smoke over an eighth a day, everyday." Tricky absolutely hated the finished article.

So much so, in fact, that he told Interviewer No Two (Time Out), "I was so angry that I just wrote a song about [the journalist], about putting him in the boot of a car and shooting his face", before going on to issue dark threats against the journalist. Time Out also mentioned his past as a petty "silly" burglar, who would break into houses simply to make sandwiches and watch TV. It too dwelt heavily on Tricky's strange relationships with both Martina and his child.

In both pieces, Tricky talked about the delusions of Godlike grandeur from which many cannabis smokers suffer. He was also reported as saying he would've smashed a particularly annoying yuppie across the knees with a pool cue a couple of years back. Another accusation which Tricky later refuted. Vigorously. "The thing is, I'm a musician," he says in his throaty croak. "I make music, I write lyrics. I might drink and go to clubs, get mouthy and get into bad situations, but I ain't no bad boy. I'm a musician." Tricky thought the Time Out piece, in particular, painted him as a self-regarding thug, a wannabe gangster. He couldn't understand why the journalists suddenly wanted to dig up the dirt on his past, why they couldn't concentrate on his music. He knows that he's responsible for some of the most innovative, exciting music around: surely that was enough to talk about, no more? Tricky hated The Face/Time Out articles so much, they made him not want to do the final interview, the interview with Melody Maker. He couldn't face any more prying and what he saw as a relentless process of misinformation. So he ran away. Literally. To New York. Which is where The Maker finds him after a week of determined negotiations, reassurances and arguments.

NOW you know why Tricky's records sound the way they do. Paranoia and distrust. Of people-journalists, the media, in particular-who he perceives as fucking him over. The pressing need to strike back, any which way he can. Now you why "Nearly God" sounds so dark, wary, full of fear and foreboding, almost drenching in dread.

And now you now why he's in New York, swanking it up in the uptown Four Seasons hotel (at $500a night, well may they give us remote-controlled curtains and cute l'il TVs in the bathroom.

Yeah, I know why he's here, all right, but I'm going to ask him anyway..

 Why are you in New York, Tricky?

"I'm here cos of the last couple of interviews I've done," he says (and this is the last time he'll refer to any of the preceding madness today). "No one writes the truth. Neither The Face interview nor the Time Out interview had anything to c[o with anything. People can't explain me, so they try to suss me out. Everybody's fucking trying to split my head, crawl inside and find out what's going on." The journalist makes placatory noises, well aware of the strangeness of the situation -that Tricky is telling HIM all this, revealing more of himself, revealing -oh, the irony -that he doesn't want to reveal any more.

"Like that stuff in Time Out where it said I would've hit him across the knees with a pool cue... that's not exactly what I said," he continues, skinning up, lying sprawled across his bed. "I told him I wished I was like that. But I'm not. That's so, so very different. It makes me look like I think I'm somebody or that I'm a thug. It just didn't read right. So I thought, 'Let's go!"' To New York.

EVER thought of travelling to New York for just 24 hours? Three words of advice: don't do it. Lt fucks you up good and proper, man. Spins your head around and makes your body feel like it's gone through several levels of purgatory. Kinda like the feeling I get from listening to Tricky's tales of diseased relationships on "Nearly God", now I think about it, only nowhere near ~s pleasurable.

Tricky's press agent wants -understandably-to make sure that I understand the ground rules for this interview. "No personal stuff. No questions about Martina or the baby. It'd be nice to have some questions about the music for a change. 'Nearly God' is a great record: why can't we have something on that?" I don't ask, but I realise I won't be allowed the same access to Martina that The Face enjoyed. Any access, in fact. (Tricky later reveals that he called this new project Nearly God "because Tricky is me and Martina. There'll be a new Tricky album this autumn", so perhaps her presence in the interview would be an irrelevance anyway).

I don't ask, but I realise that questions about Tricky's alleged relationship with Björk are off-limits. It is suggested, however, that I could interview some of Tricky's collaborators on Nearly God -Terry Hall, Neneh Cherry, Alison Moyet, ex Stereo MC Cath Coffey, Damon Albarn, even (although Damon refused to allow his contribution to be released, feeling that it was too rushed perhaps) - about what it's like working with Tricky.

I refrain from any extracurricular investigations, however, simply because it seems right that this interview should be about Tricky and Tricky's music only. I'm not even interested in the child.

TRICKY, it seems that your whole approach to "Nearly God" -to record the album in under two weeks and bring in plenty of outside singers -is very different to that on "Maxinquaye" (Tricky's first, widely acclaimed, LP, MM's Joint Album Of The Year 1995, alongside Pulp).

"Yeah, because I wanted it to be more extreme again. 'Maxinquaye' was extreme when it first came out, but after everybody got all of it, it became pop, it was no longer strange. I want to get music in the charts that just shouldn't be in the Top 10. I've already broken down some barriers in the English charts, there's been big changes since 'Maxinquaye'. So I have to make records that are more extreme-more leftfield, more abstract, whatever they want to call it.

"The reason it's got all the different singers on it was to stress the fact this ain't a Tricky record. I'm not gonna promote it, I'm not gonna do it live. There's one single ['Poems' and these interviews. That's it. I'm already working on my third album."

Who was the most fun to work with?

"Björk, because I make her laugh and she makes me laugh. She thinks the way I work is ridiculous. And Terry Hall, because he's got-such a dry sense of humour." That reminds me of a story I once heard about you -that you were flown all the way over to Seattle to DJ, and when you got there all you played was the first Specials..... "Yeah, that's true. It was because the other DJ was trying to steal the show. It was like he wanted to show who was boss. I hate that! It weren't no competition. So I just put that one album on, lit up a spliff and sat there. People I'd come

up to me and ask if I was going to play any more music, but what they wanted to know was whether I was going to change the music. So I just told them no, and carried on sitting there. I had a really good time listening to that album. MI love Terry Hall, cos he was one of the first geezers who couldn't really sing, to sing. He hasn't got a naturally beautiful voice, but his personality makes it sound beautiful. When I first heard it, it gave me hope - cos I can't sing, either."

IF you couldn't sing, why did you decide to become a singer?

"This is mad," Tricky starts, momentarily diverted. This is typical Tricky-getting side tracked by a passing thought he can't wait to pick up on, so that he can junk the main conversation altogether. The enthusiastic way he does it can be highly infectious, though.

"I trained as a boxer for a while, and the doctor asked me back then whether I exercised. So I told him I'd work out on the bags. And he said, 'Nah, that's not good. Life is not a free cheque. Every time you hit that bag, it hits you back. Physics. Every time you punch that bag, it punches you back up, through your arm, down to your heart and kidneys. That's why so many boxers get heart and kidney failure.'

"So now my doctor says to me-maybe that's why I sing. It exercises or my weak lungs. I ask Tricky (jokingly) whether he does vocal exercises before he gets up onstage. 'Nah, nah. That's mad! Sometimes I think I might try that shit when I'm older, but currently all my mistakes and things I don't know about singing I think of as my gems.

Same for the music. I keep telling people I'm naive, and I think that's the secret of it. I can only do it my way." Perfection's boring anyway.

"I think so. I've worked in bands who were on that perfection tip, and we used to spend is hours a day working one vocal. That's not pleasure!" You've referred to this album as "a collection of brilliant unfinished demos". What's the difference between a demo and a finished track? I don't understand the distinction. MI know. I don't understand, either. But now I'm in a situation where if I have a shit I have to explain that to people. People want to be told what this record is. You're right. What is a fucking demo? A demo is an industry fucking slave tactic. Certain kinds of music make a lot more money than others, so they want you to make that kind of music and then they call it the finished product. All it is is conditioning. A producer is just someone who makes your music radio-friendly. Someone asked me the

other day what I do for a living and I said, 'I'm an arms dealer' and they laughed cos they know I'm a musician. But I work for Polygram and Polygram is associated with Phillips which makes arms, so in away that statement is true.

UNDERSTANDABLY, I'm a little nervous about meeting Tricky. How's he gonna react on meeting me? He didn't even want to do this interview, remember?

In the event, I need not have worried.

Ten o'clock in the morning, I get the call: Tricky's ready to do the interview. "Whaaa?" I try lifting myself out of bed: I'm in so much pain, it's all I can do to stop the tears streaming down my face. How many tequilas

and vodkas and God-knows what did we have last night? What the fuck is that bottle of $200 red wine doing threequarters finished in the bathroom? And why is the mini-bar empty?

I crawl back under the sheets and weep. Ten or 20 or whatever minutes later, there's an insistent knocking on the door.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with this," I hear the press agent ask through my agony. "First, the artist won't do the interview, and then, when he agrees, the journalist is incapable. What the f*** am I supposed to do?" Miraculously, I manage to crawl up to Tricky's room within half an hour. He takes one look at me, and his face breaks out in a broad grin. "You're wicked, man!" he croaks delightedly. "You're wearing nail varnish and you've got a hangover. Have a seat."

NAIL varnish and drink. We must be talking sex. People have described Tricky's music as sexy - perhaps mistaking the slowness of the beats on "Maxinquaye" for sensuality, perhaps equating a whispered, hushed vocal with intimacy, perhaps confusing Tricky with fellow Bristolians Massive Attack (whom he once used to be part of) and Portishead. I don't know, I can't quite see it myself.

To me, his music is far more about the unsteadiness of night, the creeping fear one suffers walking back in deepening shadows along dimly lit streets in the still of the early morning, a natural distrust of intimacy itself. Horror. Paranoia. Coldness. The distant slurp of a tongue in your lover's throat. Whatever. People still equate Tricky's music with sex (perhaps misinterpreting his natural salaciousness, his willingness to talk openly about sexual desire, his references to anal fucking in his songs).

Anyway. I decide to ask Tricky whether he think his music is good music to have sex to.

Ridiculous," he laughs throatily. 'I can't see sex in music, full stop. Obviously I've been in situations when you put a moody tape on with your girl, but I don't know if ifs for the sex. Music and sex in the same breath don't go. Sex is one thing and music is another and to f*** to music is... you're supposed to be fucking each other.

If I'm having sex and she was more into listening to the album, I'd be offended. Sex is so personal. I can't see how you'd be listening to music." Have you ever found yourself telling jokes during sex, almost like there's an appreciative audience behind you?

"Mad!" Tricky laughs, delighted. It's a funny life, mate. Sex is a weird thing. I think people are really only supposed to breed and we've got too technical about sex, about everything. Sex is fucking. Animals fuck and breed. I don't know if we're supposed to be enjoying it as much as we are, and using it for therapy and exercise and all that stuff.

"People make a big deal out of life," he continues, unabashed. "People make out life is important. I can't see it myself. We're all fucked up, we're all guilty, we're all suspects. When you're born into this world, you're not a good person. People say life is sacred. That's selfish. Who made that up? Only a person could make that up. Who says that? We do. Because we're living. And we want to make ourselves really fucking important. We're all so insecure. Did you ever go through that thing as a kid of believing you'd been adopted, and that you were from another planet? "Yeah, but not that scenario," he smiles. "Not even as a kid now! I feel really alien, the more spliff I smoke." I'm like that after I've been drinking for a few... years?!

"Drink makes you depressed. The last seven rnonths, I've been on a binge-and I haven't been drunk for about four days now. The first few days I was so depressed, it scared me. I felt like I was coming down off fucking cocaine or smack. I just felt like crying the whole time." Tricky pauses to take another dragon his spliff before going off on another tangent.

"We went to Australia," he says, "and we got really good reviews, except for one. There was this one gig where I was tired, the crowd pissed me off they were too fucking nice. I was hung over, feeling bad and all these people were applauding, shouting out for their favourite songs. So I started singing, 'I hope you get cancer and die' ..." Don't expect too much. And don't expect me when you come to a gig to want to give you anything. If you're going to get into it, I need your help as well."

YOU don't like people being nice to you, do you? "No, cos it's boring and it's dangerous. We've all got egos. I don't want to lose my fucking mind. This is business. You like my record, fair enough, but don't put me up on a pedestal and say that I'm Nearly God. The way people treat you sometimes is just too good. No person should be treated like that. It's not good. It just leaves your mind in a mess. You don't know who to take seriously. People think they can treat you a certain way cos you're in the public eye. "The other day I was playing pool in London," the singer continues, "and there were these two lads there trying to impress me. I could see them out of the corner of my eye, acting tough, being loud and mouthy, fucking grabbing girls... and it's all cost hey know who lam and they think they know what I'm about, that I'm a lad. This went on all night and it was really getting on my nerves. So one of them comes up to me and goes, 'You're Tricky, aren't you?' And I go, 'What if I fucking am? What the fuck does it have to do with you?' And he goes, 'Don't be like that.' And I say, 'I can be any way I want. I don't know you. You went out and spent 12 quid on one of my records and now you meet me and you don't like me. That's your fucking bad luck. Get out of my way.

Those kids were idiots. What the fuck are they trying to impress me for? I don't give a fuck. So what? Fuck off. Go and get a life."

Are you a lad?

"Yeah, I can be. But only with other lads. If I'm not drinking, I'm really calm and mellow, but if I am... I'll show you who the lad is, know what I mean?"

SO. Tricky, then. Nearly God. "Nearly God". As close to unfinished, unpolished perfection as I'd care to tread this year. I haven't talked about many of the songs. I don't apologise. I shouldn't need to. You should be able to recognise true innovation, true inspiration, when it makes a rare appearance. Checkout current single "Poems" -a muted, beautiful trio of voices (Tricky, Terry Hall, Martina) singing wearily, huskily about letdowns, both personal and professional -for proof if you need to. Check out the album, and get lost within its charged, torpid, spookily claustrophobic grooves for weeks.

For me, for now, Tricky's non-de-plume Nearly God is as good a description as I'll allow of this man's genius. Godlike. Well, they always said Jesus would come back as a. black man...

"What's that?" Tricky asks, slightly perturbed. "Who said that? Who's to say Michael Jackson ain't Jesus? People say, Michael Jackson -who does he think he is? But... who does he think he is? I'll tell you one thing. Just the fact he can get 'I'm not scared of your bombs' and songs about the environment on TV does make him Jesus. Because no one else is doing it. Everyone says it's corny, but no one else is fucking doing it. Why is it corny? Just cos he's got loads of money? "People are too quick to point their fingers, especially when they've done fuck all themselves. When I see one of his videos, it does make me think about kids dying in wars, it does make me think about racism. Out of 20 minutes of MTV, five minutes of him does make me feel sad, puts a bit of love in my heart-so in away he is Jesus. He's got that lyric, 'I'm not going to spend my life being a colour' and that is fucking Godlike.

"If there is such a thing as Godlike, then those words are close to it." Amen.