The Streets album Mike Skinner is most proud of: “I’ve always been good at being a bit weird”
The Streets‘ fresh blend of UK garage and East Coast hip hop inspirations, coupled with frontman and chief creative force Mike Skinner’s astute, lyrical vignettes of working-class life brought universal critical acclaim throughout the 2000s and propelled singles such as ‘Has It Come to This?’ and ‘Fit but You Know It’ to the fore of the national songbook, rubbing shoulders with The Specials or Oasis as an artist with his finger firmly on Britain’s cultural pulse.
What distinguished The Streets from their contemporaries was the thematic embrace of humdrum England in all its grey, drizzly mundanity. Growing up in Birmingham’s West Heath, Skinner remarked on his background to the BBC after winning several Brit Awards in 2007: “Barratt class: suburban estates, not poor but not much money about, really boring”. None of us were Romeo Dunn, but we all could relate to Skinner or had a mate like him.
During an interview with The Guardian earlier this year in anticipation of his debut film The Darker the Shadow, the Brighter the Light, Skinner elaborated further on his sense of “ordinariness”. He said: “In terms of the lyrics, I didn’t feel as if I had anything interesting to say or had an interesting life. I thought everyone in music had a really glamorous life. So I tried to make normality feel glamorous.”
That he did. The Streets’ sophomore effort, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, offered a conceptual piece of grime drama recounting a downtrodden protagonist trying to recoup a lost £1,000 against the backdrop of a nondescript part of south London, Skinner pouring as much focus on the narrative arc as he was the bedroom beats crafted with Logic Pro. While earning greater critical platitudes with his second album, it’s not the album Skinner declares he’s most proud of.
Skinner asserted: “Original Pirate Material because it took courage and nobody expected it to happen. I’ve had a similar feeling making the film – feeling really embarrassed all the time because everyone thinks you’re mad for stepping out of the normal. At the time, some people thought that the first album was a joke, but it’s been a great friend to me. I’m not always good at making music, but I’ve always been good at being a bit weird.”
It’s no surprise Skinner derives the most pride from his 2002 debut. Capturing the UK milieu in every detail, even the manner of its recording feels like some conscious creative exercise in ensuring every fibre of its being is forged in the utmost authenticity, creating its tracks entirely from his rented Brixton room via music software on a laptop and recording his vocals in his wardrobe, using mattresses to reduce echo.
Reflecting on the album’s special atmosphere: “The sound is something I think about a lot more than anything else – I wanted to be a producer when I was younger. I spectacularly failed and became an artist, which I wasn’t envisaging. But I’ve always wanted to be minimal to the absolute extreme, which can probably feel a bit stark to pop DJs.”
Finding the drama in our everyday lives and providing its authentic soundtrack is a unique gift The Streets’ mastered, delivering a debut album that sits confidently within the UK’s rich musical tapestry.
