 While songs such as " Overcome " and " <unk> Love " dealt with themes of " sexual paranoia and male dread of intimacy " , the rest of Maxinquaye explored the psychological tolls of the British recreational drug culture , which Reynolds said served as a " temporary utopia " for a generation of users who otherwise lacked a " constructive outlet for its idealism " . He felt the album 's cover art , featuring rusting metal surfaces , represented the cultural decline explored in the music 's themes . Tricky drew on Rastafarian ideas about end time for the record , although unlike adherents to that movement he did not disassociate himself from " Babylon " , or the degenerate qualities of Western society , writing lyrics such as " my brain thinks bomb @-@ like / beware of our appetite " on " Hell Is Round the Corner " . He later told Reynolds , " I 'm part of this fuckin ' psychic pollution ... It 's like , I can be as greedy as you . The conditioned part of me says ' yeah , I 'm gonna go out and make money , I 'm going to rule my own little kingdom . ' " Christgau deemed the album 's songs " <unk> of someone who 's signed on to work for the wages of sin and lived to cash the check " , while O 'Hagan said Tricky 's " impressionistic prose poems " were written from the deviant perspective of the urban hedonist : " Maxinquaye is the sound of blunted Britain , paranoid and obsessive ... This was the inner @-@ city blues , Bristol style " . 
