The Streets: Original Pirate Material : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The Streets now have a name, and it's twenty-three-year-old musical mastermind Mike Skinner. He's audacious enough to title a track on his first album "Let's Push Things Forward" -- and inventive enough to deliver. The relentlessly smart Original Pirate Material blends two-step garage beats with conversational rapping, low-key in effect but bold in content: "We first met through a shared view/She loved me and I did, too." Skinner is from Birmingham, England, which means that some of his monologues sound like Ozzy Osbourne, only with better beats. The rhythms are spare but groovy; Skinner enhances them with melancholy keyboards and orchestral samples.

The United Kingdom has produced very few rappers of note (Slick Rick and Monie Love are among the exceptions). But Skinner's raps are not only fluid and clever, they're pervaded with Britishness; guys are "geezers," girls are "birds" and weak rhymes are "rhubarb and custard verses." That sense of place goes beyond vocabulary: Original Pirate Material evokes the gray British skies and details the mundane world of English youth -- broke and wasting time on the PlayStation. Skinner has said that the name the Streets was not meant to evoke the mean streets of tough urban life but rather, empty, anonymous concrete.

On "The Irony of It All," Skinner stages an argument as good as Eminem's "Guilty Conscience," playing both Terry, a drunken lout, and Tim, a mellow engineering student who likes to smoke weed. They debate criminality and provoke each other; on the evidence of this excellent debut, few people can challenge Skinner right now except himself.

GAVIN EDWARDS
(RS 908 - October 31, 2002)

(Posted: Oct 8, 2002)

News and Reviews

Your Turn

Give us your review of Original Pirate Material

Review 1 of 3

5of 5 Stars

Without a question Turn The Page is my favorite song from the album, the rhymes are awesome. I can`t wait too hear something new from Mike!

Dec 27, 2007 04:59:05

Review 2 of 3

5of 5 Stars

Mike Skinner - true original

Check out FRETWIDE.com

Oct 1, 2007 20:39:28

Review 3 of 3

5of 5 Stars

Original Pirate Material is most certainly in my top five albums. Mike Skinner's album is a genius culmination of rhythmic and lyrical mastery. I listen to this album in a variety of moods, as cuts 'Geezers Need Excitement' and 'Stay Positive' are dark and bitter, cut 'It's Too Late' reveals a relationship level message, and cut 'Irony of It All' holds an anti-governmental pro-legalization message. It is a dark, political masterpiece.

I went looking for more music like The Streets, and was recommended Cornershop and Dizzee Rascal, but I found both artists incomparable, as neither held similar characteristics. The Streets sits on my playlist as entirely original, though fitting.

Jan 9, 2006 18:41:25

Previous Next