He might have had one of the worst fall-offs in recent memory, going from rapping about returning DVDs to how annoyed he is by people taking pictures of him with camera phones in the space of one album, but still, there are few people you’d prefer see make a great album than Mike Skinner. On this, the ‘last ever’ Streets album, he gives it a decent shot, whether it turns out to be a Jay-Z retirement or something serious.
The beats are dominated by hard-cornered synths and driven, aggressive drums. A journalist recently misquoted Skinner as saying that the album sounds like Lou Reed’s Berlin. He was corrected. It sounds like Berlin, the place. “Ravey.” And as a rapper, the endearing quality is still very much present, but the approach – straight, hard rapping over beats – feels like a return to the kind of verbal play and confidence on his debut as a freshfaced emcee in 2002.
Consider Outside Inside, on which Skinner ruminates on the stresses of being in unfamiliar circumstances while stoned. It’s this kind of access to the pool of non-clichéd common human experience that has always made The Streets’ sometimes lethargic rhyming so fresh. And yes, opening with a song called I Love My Phone is a little annoying. But there’s no sign of whimsy, no gimmicks.
“Don’t give them what they think they want, just give them what they need,” he says on Where Has My Heart Been, and that’s the vibe of Computers and Blues. There’s no immediate pop classic, sure, but these are bangers, not anthems.
See Also: The Streets – Original Pirate Material, Saul Williams – The Inevitable Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust, Professor Green – Alive Till I’m Dead
Words: Karl McDonald
