The Streets Original Pirate Material Vice Records brought to you by Egg Boy White boys doing hip-hop are all the rage these days. BRITISH white boys doing it and sounding like Ewan MacGregor’s character in Trainspotting, however, are a bit more rare. Enter The Streets, chock full of loopy beats and Anglican Pub culture angst reflecting ‘a day in the life of a Geezer’ in England. It’s unique and kitchy for sure, and 8 miles ahead of the bummer, ‘superstardom-is-so-hard topics’ of Eminem. Mike Skinner, the 22-year-old snotty Brit who basically is the band, produces off-kilter beats and blips using his laptop, then spats off on topics like smoking weed and video games, all this in between tipping pints and checking out the ladies, as in the hooky ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’(‘around here we say birds not bitches’). Skinner’s thick accent initially sets the record up for a tongue-in-cheek, ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’ affair. But both musically and lyrically, The Streets rise above mere novelty and engage the listener to consider the life and times of the young and male middle-class Brit. Lines like ‘Whose round is it? Down that beer quick, smash my glass back down, fall over the table all rowdy and pissed’ are as funny as they are informative, in many ways more universal than the on-wax lives of most modern American hip-hop artists. Lest you think Skinner just a drunk with a microphone, witness ‘Irony of it All,’ a clever back-and-forth dialog between a jock beer drinker and a video-game playing, pot-smoking pseudo intellectual. Like most of Original Pirate Material, it succeeds in toeing the line between mere entertainment and political statement, succeeding on whichever level the listener decides to perceive. And after all, its all good fun and smiles, and somewhat nostalgic: we haven’t heard a skinny whitey ask ‘Who gots the Funk?’ since Beck burped unto the scene in 1994 with Mellow Gold. While The Streets might be a one-trick pony, Skinner has the goods. Barring liver failure, expect OLM to be the first in an innovative career of genre-twisting hip-hop. Pros: excessive use of the word 'geezer' Cons: sometimes it gets too serious Useful for: drunken bar brawls and hip party mixes Metric Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? Goldfrapp Black Cherry Fleetwood Mac Say You Will DJ Dara Breakbeat Science Exercise 01 The 88 Kind of Light The Kills Black Rooster EP The Libertines Up the Bracket Jettatura Squadra Fantasma Tone Ambient Metals The Streets Original Pirate Material Grand Buffet Cigarette Beach Roni Size Touching Down Rolling Stones 40 Licks Brendan Benson Lapalco Anticon Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop copyright © 2000-2005 - www.stellargirl.com