Streets signs
2002's Original Pirate Material not only announced the emergence of North London-by-way-of-Birmingham's Mike Skinner -- sole lyricist, producer and MC of Vice Records signing the Streets -- but also, according to both critics and garage enthusiasts, signaled that the U.K. had finally found an answer to U.S. hip-hop. Most U.K. hip-hop MCs seemed satisfied with hopelessly aping their transatlantic cousins. But with a stilted flow delivered in a thick cockney accent, and lyrics that referenced backstreet brawlers, birds (i.e., females) and hopeless louts, Skinner took the genre's lyrical template, spliced it with two-step and speed garage's frantic beats, smoothed it out with a raga-cum-R&B sheen, and crafted something wholly original. To paraphrase the man himself, the Streets ain't your archetypal street sound; this is a day in the life of a geezer.
Although Skinner's recently released follow-up, A Grand Don't Come For Free, solidifies his standing as one of the U.K.'s hottest exports, it also further blurs the line between U.K. garage and U.S. hip-hop. Hip-hop works best when pasting and stitching ghetto mosaics, eschewing narratives for sudden, visceral discharges, and feigning authenticity while embracing materialist exaggerations. A Grand Don't Come for Free illuminates a tedious (by hip-hop standards) day in the life of the narrator through a central story that weaves in and out of the entire album, adopting a cast of characters that bear more resemblance to the inhabitants of an Irving Welsh novel than anyone on a Rakim Allah album.
"I got kinda carried away, I suppose," says Skinner, when explaining why he attempted a concept album. "It's a fictitious story, but I took things from my own life and added little elements to make it interesting."
Although Skinner took a full two years to record the album, slowly crafting his seemingly offhand flow, painting the album's sparse stripped-down sound in tight, controlled strokes, the album's narrative structure -- a deceptively simple plot involving a girl and a missing $1,000 -- was developed ad hoc. It's a surprising approach considering the literary influences that one might imagine from a suite of songs that build off one another and contain a variety of plot twists, subtle foreshadowing, and a decidedly unreliable narrator.
"I don't really have the concentration for reading. I watch a lot of films for influence," says Skinner, citing such movies as The Sixth Sense and The Usual Suspects. "I just kept on putting things into making the songs talk to one another."
While American films have helped mold the tone and scope of the album's lyrics, Skinner's production increasingly adopts the razor-sharp dissonance of "grime." Grime is an emerging U.K. genre roughly hewn from garage and dancehall, built on bulbous sub-bass shudders, viciously twitching beats, queasy synth shards and concussive toasting that originated from the tower blocks (slums) of East London. It has found its most celebrated practitioner in the mercurial and critically lauded Dizzie Rascal.
"[Grime] is what I'm most involved in," says Skinner via phone, although he admits that he's only a grime artist "sometimes, sorta, but not really all the time." While the grime influence is evident throughout the album's minimal soundscapes and dance-phobic rhythms, the song "Get Out of My House" -- which harkens back to Dizzie Rascal's breakthrough hit "I Luv U," with its he said/she said bickering and searing string stabs -- is the clearest signifier.
While all the Anglo influences haven't scared away American audiences -- Original Pirate Material made it near the top of many year-end top 40 lists, and A Grand Don't Come For Free has received a similar reception -- Skinner feels the Yanks still must work to grasp the nuances of his music.
"American audiences don't quite get it," says Skinner. "The thing with American audiences is that they don't understand us and they just stand there and watch. But with the London crowds, they get more involved because they understand our language."
There may be a seemingly vast divide between British roads and American street cred, but the scenery keeps getting better as the Streets keeps merging.
