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Album Review: The Streets - All Got Our Runnins (Vice Recordings)
Reviewer: Lucy Whitehead
I’m a little weary of flavor-of-the-month ‘underground’ artists. Especially ones that profess to come from
‘the streets’ and quite probably aren’t. Last year Mike Skinner became that industry darling, the new ‘urban poet’.
While he rhymes with a slightly downcast provincial northern accent, the reference point is London places and things -
Bounds Green, Ealing, the tube. Home is his Yard. It could all be a charade, but he spits out his lyrics with a
certain raw honesty, a cockney-meets-rudebwoy via the Midlands slang that doesn’t seem to fake the funk: he’s a skinny,
white, beer drinking, fag smoking, junk-food eating, spliff rolling, pill popping geek, and he knows it. Girls are birds and
boys are geezers, fools are twats and divs. Whilst the young Skinner was getting drunk and spewing up in pub toilets, he was
probably also hanging out at jungle raves, tower blocks, greasy caff’s, his mums. Dropping E’s and getting euphoric.
Scrabbling for extra change. Getting ditched by girls. His beats and rhymes reveal a grimy slice of UK city life where black
meets white to unite around the X Box, Red Stripe and
a haze of high-grade.
His new 8-track collection, All Got Our Runnins (available exclusively online), features unreleased
B-sides and remixes, and delivers a rougher chunk of The Streets than last years Original Pirate Material. It's
somewhat of a stop-gap
release before his sophomore album drops next spring. The selection successfully reworks favorite tracks such as Lets Push
Things Forwards, featuring young UK garage stars Roll Deep and Dizzee Rascal (whose heavy presence makes Skinner sound even
more rural). The new Give Me Back My Lighter is a humorous dig at a thrifty friend who’s pockets are longer than his
arms and never puts credit in his phone. It’s Come To This (The Streets Vs Contrast) borrows from the original
Has It Come To This, whilst serving a dark helping of UK Garage that harks back to the bygone days when two step was
still awash with invigorating jungle. Black Science Orchestra’s DJ don dada Ashley Beedle is in there with his house remix
of Weak Become Heroes (Skinner’s homage to illegal raves) - and is pretty much the only diversion from the other
garage-style tracks. As it happens, in the final track, the atmospheric Streets Score, Skinner states “I’m a fake. I don’t
live the streets. But there’s only so many hours in the day and I use them to make beats”.
This new collection brings us
some rough and ready club-friendly mixes, and another slice of The Streets life, though I think we have to remember the
term is used loosely and really its more about the life and times of the young Mr Skinner, whose moniker one should perhaps
view as being slightly satirical.
Note: this album is only available online, from Apple’s iTunes store, Liquid, Buymusic,
Rhapsody, Musicmatch, Musicnet, Fullaudio. US only.
RELATED LINKS:
The Streets
PUBLISHED: Tuesday 23 December 2003
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