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Streets Credibility

Loosie interviews Mike Skinner of The Streets.

by Douglas Passion | 2002.10.30

In Manhattan for a few showcase performances at The Bowery Ballroom and The Mercury Lounge, the Birmingham-born one-man group known as The Streets was spending a day or two at the Marcel Hotel (better known as the place above Spread). When no one answered the door of his room I recalled the little guy who had slipped into the elevator as I had gotten off on the seventh floor. He might be recognizable in England, but I had walked right by Mike Skinner without breaking stride.

“I think the kind of crowd I had last night wasn’t really Hip-Hop,” says Skinner after I return downstairs to find him waiting in the lobby. He’s gaunter and older-looking than the pictures in his album jacket indicate. He speaks slowly but not deliberately. He often trails off. “In London you’ve got the garage scene, which is sort of like the Hip-Hop scene,” he explains, “it’s urban and it’s quite unforgiving.” The crowd at The Mercury Lounge apparently consisted more of merciful meshed-out Williamsburg hipsters than discerning platinum-chained Club NV denizens. He’s virtually unknown, but it seems The Streets have already been assigned to the dreaded alternative Hip-Hop sub-category.

But he doesn’t really consider himself Hip-Hop anyway. Which is a probably a good thing – with the notable exception of Slick Rick, British rappers haven’t exactly made waves across the Atlantic. Skinner makes it clear that he doesn’t hold his country’s attempts at Hip-Hop in the highest regard. “I don’t think it’s been as good as American Hip-Hop,” he says. “It’s been trying to be American Hip-Hop. The difference between UK Garage and UK Hip-Hop is that the people making UK Hip-Hop will always look to the US for approval. But in UK Garage, no one even thinks about America. Not to say that I don’t have any respect and love for America for the music it has given us, but when I make a record – you can probably tell – I don’t think of approval from America. If I did, I wouldn’t have made the record so hard for Americans to understand.”

If you’ve heard his music, you know exactly what he means by “hard for Americans to understand.” The album Original Pirate Material is a collection of up-tempo tracks with dense quasi-Cockney vocals. He frequently uses localized slang editorial. His homies are “geezers”; broads are “birds”. Song titles such as “Don’t Mug Yourself” sound silly in the Lower 48. But these are only cosmetic distinctions from American music. “Essentially, I’m not talking about anything. I’m just English. ‘Cause I’m English, to you, it’s different. There isn’t a lot to talk about. Hip-Hop’s been going for what, 15 to 20 years? It’s life music. So the life of an Englishman might sound interesting.”

Is he then, a beneficiary of simple curiosity? “I think I earned and deserve that novelty because I’ve been an outsider,” Skinner proclaims. “What people now are interested in is what they were never interested in before. Before it was like ‘Why do we want to hear about some cunt from England? Who cares?’ For years, as a rapper, you’re held back because people only want to listen to American records.”

And now the goal is to make Americans listen to an album that was decisively not created for their ears. And Skinner believes he can offer a brand of wittiness that is lacking in American music. “I don’t know what it’s like to live in New York,” he says, “but it’s like people are almost trying to be ashamed of being intelligent. Grandmaster Flash was clever, Gil Scott Heron, he was clever. Public Enemy, they were clever. Since then, there really hasn’t been anyone. All these big rap guys, I believe that they’re just as clever. They’re just dumbing it down.”

The gaping holes in his Hip-Hop history timeline notwithstanding, he does propose some interesting ideas. “It’s not necessary to talk about how wild the streets are every time,” says Skinner. “But life is so complicated and so complex. I do believe that if I was an average Black geezer from Black America, I still think I could come out with an original Hip-Hop album, if I just thought about it. And I don’t believe Americans are stupid, I just don’t think they have the courage to step outside of the McDonalds Hip-Hop brand, which is bitches, hoes, guns.”

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