The Streets: On The Mike.

Original Pirate Material is in stores now.

If you’ve listened to Triple J over the past couple of months, chances are you’ve heard of The Streets. The brainchild of one Mike Skinner, a 22-year-old South Londoner, The Streets debut album Original Pirate Material has had the English press reaching for the thesaurus for new superlatives, one magazine going so far as to dub Skinner ‘The British Eminem’. The single that the Js have been flogging is Has It Come To This, a spritely, elasticised take on UK garage, or 2-Step, the sound that’s been so prevalent in British dance music lately, thanks to its major exponents So Solid Crew. But the album works with a much broader musical palette, and is topped with Skinner’s distinctive rapping style, all dry wit and personable delivery. His focus on the everyday in his lyrics sets him apart from the hip-hop pack. As Skinner says on the album, it’s all about ‘a day in the life of a geezer’.

Much has been made about how Skinner represents a new kind of dance/hip-hop musician, how his lyrical perspective is that of the dance music consumer as opposed to the dance music maker. The kind of person who will groove to some slamming beats at home with friends rather than brave the clubs. Certainly, his concerns are more mundane than the typical ‘bitches and bling-bling’ bluster of most US rappers; Skinner’s far more likely to rap about being poor than being rich, and, as he says on the album, ‘around here we say birds, not bitches’. Hell, there’s even a love song of sorts on Original Pirate Material – It’s Too Late is a surprisingly tender and perceptive analysis of how one’s inaction can bring about the end of a relationship. Subject matter like this makes the British Eminem tag somewhat inappropriate, and Mike agrees that it’s a rather lazy comparison.

“They’re going to compare me to something, and I’d rather they compare me to that than someone who’s shit,” he asserts. “They’re gonna compare me to someone, so that just seems, I s’pose, like the nearest thing to what I’m doing even though we’re not really very similar, the nearest thing is Eminem probably.”

Was it a conscious decision to stay away from the kind of macho posturing that characterises so much American hip-hop?

“Well I mean I don’t really have that in me, to be honest,” Mike laughs. “I just don’t think I could back it up. I don’t feel that threatened.”

While the sound of UK garage informs a fair chunk of the album, it’s far from one-dimensional, with dollops of funk, dub and Bristolian trip-hop added to the mix, and much more besides. With such a variety of influences informing his work, it’s not surprising to learn that Mike has always been a music nut.

“It’s always been an obsession all of my life,” he says. “You know, I really live it. So it wasn’t really one thing that got me started, it was just always happening. Just logical progressions from one thing to the next. You know, getting into one sort of music, getting into another sort of music, mixing it together.”

So what’s floating your musical boat at the moment?

“I think the garage scene is the most pioneering,” Mike begins. “Well, not pioneering, just out there. It’s starting to become quite led by MCs now. It’s all based around pirate stations and it’s become like a UK rap music, with MCs chatting over beats basically. You’ve heard of the So Solid Crew and all that? So Solid were pretty much the first crew who got the big record deal and did it properly, but it’s changing, there’s other people talking about other things, like me really.”

What about live? How do you reproduce such a densely textured album on stage? Mike says he’s working on a band format for touring that’s almost ready to go.

“We’re rehearsing the band at the moment and that’s gonna be ready in about August. So that’s basically a drummer, keyboard player, bass player and me. And a singer! It’s not live, in the sense that they’re playing samples on the drums and on the keys, but it is live cause they’re playing it, kind of thing. Know what I mean?”

Indeed. So, can we expect to see you down our way soon?

“Yeah. There’s nothing on paper, but it’s something we know we’ve got to do really, well, no, something that we want to do. As I say, we’ve got to get the band sorted and then as soon as that’s done we can really start to… you know, it’s not just Australia, it’s everything… we’re not planning anything for the band yet until we know what the band’s doing.”

Although Original Pirate Material has only just been released, Mike says he’s already thinking about the next batch of tunes.

“I’m about halfway through a second album,” he reveals. “I’m just kind of working out how I’m doing it really. It’s a long, long process, but it’s a fun one.”