The Streets
A Grand Don’t Come for Free (Vice)Britain’s Mike Skinner has thrown down a one-of-a-kind hip-hop album, bursting with heart and Northern soul. So sharp are his rhymes, you could eunuchize 99% of the gall that passes for rap in the States and still have enough edge to shave your willie for your big date next weekend. Clever segue that, since A Grand Don’t Come for Free is one of the most knowing breakup albums ever cut, one that slices deep into your battered romantic psyche. Skinner’s sophomore opus is also a concept album, on which he plays the hapless Mike, an East End geezer who, in the course of a single day, loses £1,000, his girlfriend Simone (voiced by MC C-Mone), and very nearly his sanity. His ongoing woes sputter out in the flat cockney accent of a mate with too much time on his hands and not half as much smarts. There’s more story than songs, but between the garagey UK beats of “Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way,” which finds Mike stoned and joyous on his girlfriend’s couch, and elegaic closer “Empty Cans,” with Mike mentally waging war against the world, there’s a wily narrative previously unheard in any genre. Of course, this being the Streets, it’s all about being, at the end, in the dark, all by your lonesome. “This is the beginning of hard times to come,” sings Skinner, but he’s wrong. This is the ending of the first hip-hop classic of the new millennium.
This article appears in June 4 • 2004.