The Streets
Original Pirate Material

THE REVIEW

Cover on NME for Mike Skinner, a 22-year-old from the outskirts of London, the "one man band" behind the name The Streets. Streets he wants to talk about, among adolescent drunkenness, trash, beatings, the streets he knows. In press photos, he is portrayed with a Roland-e-mix-studio in hand: he does it all by himself with preset sounds from the sequencer, static, serial. He lays a rap à la Eminem on top, the similarity is striking, even though Skinner has a distinct English accent. In "The Irony of it All" he sings towards the end “my name is my name is T” aware of the comparison. In "Has it come to this" with a chorus of silly "oh oh" with a "funny voice," a comical little voice, like someone who has inhaled helium, he raps about the "…the original pirate material" which gives the album its title, as rappers always do, auctioneers, heralds of their own product. That is also the concept, to convince others that the product is cool. And he continues to tell of trash, alcohol in "Too Much Brandy," with a poor-quality base. I repeat, stuff taken straight from the presets of drum and bass machines. Perhaps some young person from the suburbs will identify with him. Somewhere in the lyrics “…being 16 and feeling horny…” and assorted drugs. He will become the English Eminem, but this stuff doesn't interest us even for sociological study purposes. Simply, the overall effect does not give more than the sum of the parts.