March 25, 2002 by A.S. Van Dorston

Genre names are a tricky business. It’s hard to tell which ones will stick and be embraced by both fans and artists (techno), while others will induce bristling sneers (post-rock). Trip hop, for example, was sort of in between. I could see the need to create a name for the seminal work of Massive Attack. Portishead popularized it, Tricky perfected it, but everyone else watered and dumbed it down, forever tainting those words. As far as I can tell, UK garage has not had a solid start. The music seems weakened by soul clichés and hollow B-boy posturing. While it had a So Solid to trip hop’s Massive Attack, garage had no Tricky. That is, until 22 year-old beat taker and rhyme maker, Birmingham’s Mike Skinner, a.k.a. The Streets arrived on the scene. On his debut, Original Pirate Material, Skinner addresses the scene’s decrepit creativity in “Let’s Push Things Forward,” calling for his peers to put their money where their mouths are, and support or create music with substance rather than buy the same old crap and complaining that “everything sounds the same.”

Skinner backs up his words with skillful rhymes and a rubbery space-synth reggae rhythm with haunted trombones. Acknowledging that most people don’t’ listen to their music in trendy big city clubs, but rather at home, in the car and on headphones, “Has It Come To This?” proclaims “Cuz this ain’t a club track/Pull out your sac and sit back” while they take their herb or drink of choice and plug into their videos, 64’s and Play Stations. The song is the first single, the perfect introduction to The Streets as he clearly states his M.O. in a strong yet understandable (even to us Yanks) Brummie accent. Thankfully he stays within his stylistic range without trying to mimic black British patois. The rhymes are well put together, sweetened by very musical backdrops, from catchy choruses to symphonic strings and inventive beats. It took over a decade, but it seems the potential of Massive Attack’s Blue Lines is finally being realized. The Streets offers new chapters of Massive Attacks “Unfinished Symphony.” Nearly every cut tells a meaningful, compelling story, except “Who’s Got The Funk,” which is “just a groove.”. The snapshots of working class life as Skinner knows it are populated with booze, birds, geezers and herb. “The Irony Of It All” is an amusing clash of classes, between Terry the boozing lout and Tim, an annoyingly smug stoner with an engineering degree. Skinner brilliantly method acts between the two, and you almost cheer when Terry gives Tim a beat-down.

“Weak Become Heroes,” spurred by a memory flashback to ecstasy-fueled house days, resembles Renton’s soliloquies in Trainspotting, with Skinner seeking to get beyond life’s problems by finding transcendence in his art and individualist ambition. He bridges the gorgeous chorus “Weak become heroes/And the stars align” with his own beatific “We all smile/We all sing” set to an uplifting piano loop that evokes the ecstatic feel of Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” He’s not exactly a hippy dreamer though. “Stay Positive” acknowledges “the dark shit” where he veers away from both political involvement and hard drugs, keeping his eye on individual dreams and true love. The music belies the tension, with hard, doomy beats and lilting music floating above it. At a time when expectations in hip hop (and garage and grime) have been diminished, The Streets offers a new benchmark worth striving for.

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