Streets

Streets, the project of Mike Skinner, a white British rapper who jumped on the bandwagon of the dance fads of the late 1990s ("garage" and "two step") and turned them into tools to construct generational anthems, such as his debut single Has It Come To This (On, 2001). Despite being frequently tedious and monotone, Original Pirate Material (Atlantic, 2002) turned Streets into the English equivalent of Eminem, despite the fact that he was not rapping but simply reciting his verses in an ordinary register, and despite the fact that the beats were not exactly groundbreaking. However, his down-to-earth lyrical prose struck a chord with an entire generation the way punk-rock had done in the late 1970s. It was a documentary art just like punk-rock had been. It radiated a calm desperation, a sense that everything is hopeless, just like the nihilism of punk-rock. But, being colloquial and subdued, it lacked the violent edge of the punk era. Songs like It's Too Late even sound melancholy and nostalgic, engaging in a call-and-response with an uplifting choir. He opens the album, in Turn The Page, spitting out his dark vision of England with the tone of the Biblical preacher in a regional pub. One can hardly dance to the lo-fi epileptic beat of Has It Come To This?, and the comically pseudo-reggae march of Let's Push Things Forward (a "message" to the music scene) is almost anticlimatic. Secondary elements are often more important than his spoken word, like the robotic backing choir that weakens the momentum of Don't Mug Yourself and the sense of tragedy that emanates from the beats of Geezers Need Excitement. He ends up dueting with a shadow crooner and a chopped orchestral sample (Dvorak's "New World Symphony") in Same Old Thing (a song about boredom with which thousands of young people identified). His talent shines in absurd frescoes of humanity like Weak Become Heroes, in the ability to make you feel that you are walking with him in drug-infested streets into alcohol-fueled pubs. The album ends with the funereal Stay Positive, which celebrates his overcoming heroin addiction but sounds like an ending, not a beginning.

A Grand Don't Come For Free (Atlantic, 2004) is a sort of hip-hop opera, all the songs being related to each other by the story of a some lost money. The plotline is only a pretext for a Kinks-style sociological analysis and diagnosis of British society at the turn of the century. The music is more adventurous than on the debut: the bombastic orchestral sample of It Was Supposed to Be So Easy, the Frank Zappa-esque choir of Not Addicted, and the melody sung by the female singer in Blinded by the Lights are calculated moves that greatly enhance the show although they may detract from the lyrics. The scornful haringue of Fit But You Know It (a standout) harks back to the pub-rock of Joe Jackson and Ian Dury (late 1970s). All songs are half sung, and the singing is not always an attraction (robotic and zombie-like in What Is He Thinking?). There is an album within the album: a set of somber and slow tunes that create a quasi-suicidal mood, Dry your Eyes being the most stripped-down, and the place where the singing (a feeble lament) best complements the rapping (and also his first smash hit). The eight-minute Empty Cans is a slab of moving emo-rap. In that downbeat vein, the melancholy litany Could Well Be In is the hip-hop version of Don McLean's American Pie.

After these two albums, the poetic vein completely dried out. Mike Skinner's third album as the Streets, the autobiographical The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living (Vice, 2006), was more self-indulgent and exhibitionist than documentary. The result was vastly inferior to the first two albums. Never Went To Church borrows from the Beatles' Let It Be in a desperate search for another hit.

Everything Is Borrowed (2008) is a mediocre collection of predictable raps over weak beats. I Love You More is the one song to save.

Computers & Blues (2011), announced as the last Streets album, lazily rehashed old ideas, with Puzzled by People evoking the street-wise glory of the first album.

After a long hiatus, Streets returned with The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light (2023).