Mike Skinner Don't Come For Free

Ha. Isn't that a funny play on words? See Mike Skinner is the guy behind The Streets, and his new album is called "A Grand Don't Come for Free." See what I did there? I am a genius. A true artistic genius. Represent, yo.

So you know how everyone hates Eminem? Please don't be hatin'. Seriously, even though I know some of his songs are really offensive, what he's able to do with rhyme and theme and all that is really stunning, whether you love him or hate him. So take all the highly offensive bits out of Eminem, put him in London, and basically, you've got Mike Skinner.

What Skinner has done on this latest album is to present a sort of rock opera of an ordinary, banal life. He starts the record out with a song about how he had a list of things to do in one day, but everything kept getting fucked up, and nothing got done, so he should just be lying on his couch, like he knows how. To quote. From there, it takes you through a week or a month or a year in the life, from meeting his girlfriend, to taking drugs one night, to finding out his girlfriend's cheating on him (in the truly beautiful "Dry Your Eyes")... running the whole gammot of ordinary boy events.

To be honest, when I heard the first cuts off of Skinner's debut, "Original Pirate Material," it took a while for his cadence to grow on me. With "A Grand Don't Come For Free," the whole thing is so effortlessly conversational and so endlessly relatable, I had no choice but to fall in love with it. It's another one of those albums that I can't listen to in the background... I just love the way Mike Skinner forms his thoughts and rhymes, and I love the stilted choruses. One of my favorites, from "Could Well Be In," is the chorus, "I saw this thing on I-TV the other week. Said if she played with her hair she's prob'ly keen. She's playing with her hair, well regularly. So I reckon I could be well be in." Doesn't that sound like an e-mail you'd send a friend after your first date with someone?

If the old gangster rap was a commentary on life in South Central LA or the mean streets of New York, The Streets is a commentary about the life of being in your 20s and living paycheck to paycheck. But whereas most gangster rap was only relatable to a small percentage of the population (i.e. people who live those specific experiences in those specific areas of the world), Mike Skinner is talking about things that literally every person of a certain age can point to and say, "damn, yea, I've had one of those days," no matter which corner of the globe you're from. And it's all done beautifully, with an ear for not only classic rap, but R&B and New Wave and even a little modern techno.

Skinner might write about being average and living an average life, but this is not average talent. This is a masterwork. And still, I can't get "Fit But You Know It," out of my head...