It's Latin and It Says We Must All Die

Sometime in 2002, I was drifting in the 'electronic' section at Borders in Dearborn (Detroit area). In my experience, the electronic or dance or club music sections in corporate chain stores are a fucking mess. You can rarely find what you're looking for unless the hype machine is churning madly for it. Instead of looking for what you want, you end up treating it like used CD/record shopping i.e. you flip through all of it.

So, that afternoon, I was in the mood for something different. I came across a CD with an interesting night-time shot of a 'urban renewal' style apartment building that seemed British (full disclosure: I'm into architecture and the way it interacts with society). The CD has a little sticker on it with quotes from the British hype machine. I believe it was NME that said "The Streets are reinventing hip hop the way the Sex Pistols reinvented punk rock," or something like that. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what it said. I was hesitant, I'm quite familiar with the way the British elevate mediocre musical acts to saintly status. But, I needed something new, so I decided to check it out despite my hesitation.

Note that: the little label said 'hip hop', but the album was in the 'electronic' rack. Mike Skinner, who is The Streets started out making 2-step and garage music. Two-step is a variant on jungle and in the UK, garage is almost synonymous with two-step. For more on that, check out this Wikipedia article on the subject. Now that Skinner is on his third album, The Streets are referred to more commonly as hip hop, but that's difficult. British rap fans dismiss him as electronic and American rap fans dismiss him as indie rock, but none of that makes sense. Music critics will define it as hip hop, and that's mostly because of the vocal style. Even that is difficult because it's more like he's talking and rhyming, but not rapping.

So, back to 2002. The album was Original Pirate Material. I listened to it for weeks and weeks at a time. Without fail, I played several tracks every Saturday when DJing, but people weren't all that into it. I didn't get it. That album was very dense with lush strings and piano sounds. The rhymes were good, but nothing special. Lots of cockney patois and British slang.

In 2004 OPM was still in regular rotation for me while DJing. The shit's just too good. Not quite hip hop, not quite electronic, but done so well, and with this British guy doing a stream-of-consciousness thing over top of it. Then A Grand Don't Come For Free came out. Holy shit. Seriously. This one was a concept album, but he took a chance because the concept was that the songs were sequenced to tell us about a day in the life of an individual who's quite boring and unambitious. He's going through his day to day stuff, loses a thousand pounds, hangs at a bar where he meets a girl, gets addicted to sports gambling despite knowing nothing of the sport, starts dating the girl, has problems with her, starts knocking her down (verbally), loses her and gets depressed over it, gets mad at his friends for stealing the thousand pounds and then finds it again. That's it. That's the story being told. It would be boring if he wasn't such a goddamned good storyteller. And the beats! The music is stripped down and simple this time around, but still really good.

Finally, it's 2006, and people are starting to pay attention. Mike Skinner's shining star shone so bright last year that P. Diddy asked him to record a song to be used on the Notorious B.I.G. 'Duets' album. After realizing that the sounds clashed too much, Diddy decided not to use it, and maybe that's good for Skinner considering how much that 'Duets' album was hated. Instead he took that track, left out the vocals from Biggie and put it on his new album "The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living." The track is called "Two Nations," and it's an examination of the differences between hip hop in the UK and the US. "Understated is how we prefer to be, that's why I've sold three million and you've never heard of me," that's him 'talking' to Biggie. But the person being addressed ends up being American hip hop as a whole. But this track is later in the album. As a whole, the record is about the problems Skinner has encountered as a result of fame. It's bold, and it's harsh, he lets it all out.

Right from the start he's going on about being strung out (Pranging Out) after getting back from being on tour. And he ain't talkin' 'bout being tired. "I'm panicking a bit, frightened of fuck-all"

The title track "Hardest Way To Make an Easy Living" is more or less a rundown of the costs of being a musician. It's not so easy. A whistle in the chorus helps make it irresistible.

The first two albums each had at least one tearjerker ballad type song. On this album there are three. "All Goes Out the Window" is how not to fuck up a good relationship, i.e. don't lie to her, and you won't have to remember anything. "Never Went To Church" is a ballad about how Skinner misses his father who passed away and how they didn't get along. "Two Nations" (mentioned above) is the third ballad.

On "Memento Mori," he quotes a latin phrase meaning "remember that we all must die" to show us that if you have money, have a good time. When he says "I never think about money, in fact I have no idea how much money I have," it's hard to relate for most of us. But his point comes across, you can't take it with you. Also in this song he says "driving a Ferrari is fucking book." The first time I heard it I assumed it was more British slang and quickly forgot about it. Then I was texting my girlfriend awhile ago and I typed 'cool' and noticed that when using T9 predictive text input, 'book' is the first word that comes up. Finally, I figured out some British slang without having to look it up online!

The first single "When You Wasn't Famous" is all about being famous and dating famous women and how it makes you feel like you aren't famous. This one is something new for Skinner (as The Streets), it's a lot more upbeat like a club track. Of course, the lyrics are clever as all hell.

Last is a medium tempo groove with "Fake Streets Hats." He's out of his mind on tour, the drummer is leaving trailing gaps in songs, he's fighting with the audiences, he sees Streets merch that he thinks is bootlegged but it's real. There's a nice Japanese-sounding flute loop all throughout. Plus lots of samples of live audience cheering.

This is the thing, though: on the first albums, Skinner was humble. Very humble, and you felt like you could relate to him even though he was portraying a British street tough. We now know that it was a character he was portraying, but now that he's being himself, he's cocky as hell, and it's harder to feel something. Don't get me wrong, I love this record, and I've listened to it obsessively since I got it. I even bought it on Amazon UK to get it a week early. I'm definitely a fan and that hasn't changed. But, as Skinner has exposed himself for who he really is, he's opened up a new can of worms. Musically he's tighter than ever. Not as sparse as the second record, and more hip hop than the first. But despite the amazing music, the sound of The Streets has always been wholly dependant on Skinner's stories and his stream-of-consciousness. I'm not writing him off, but my view has changed.

Curious? Want your own copy of the CD? Looky over there to the right for my email address and send me your name to be entered in a contest to win a free copy of the CD as well as some other Streets stuff. Winner will be chosen at random. I love you. No I don't. Yeah, I do.