The Streets Issue #28

The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (679/Vice)

By Amber Drea
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

Mike Skinner sure is a hard worker: putting out three albums in four years, starting his own label called The Beats, and squeezing in the obligatory drug, gambling, and lady problems. Following up his ingenious storytelling masterpiece, A Grand Don’t Come For Free, is no small feat, but at least Skinner has the bollocks to admit his faults and come through a little bit wiser.

On his third full-length, Skinner waxes lyrical about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Over the usual sparse, grimy beats with catchy hooks and bangin’ bass lines, he complains that camera phones make it impossible to do cocaine in front of strangers, instructs on the ways to properly destroy a hotel room, and compares running a record label to being a con artist. He shows his softer side on “Never Went To Church,” a ballad about losing his father, and reveals his detachment on “Fake Streets Hats,” the account of losing his shit over knockoffs that were actually legit.

But the track that will probably raise the most eyebrows is “Two Nations,” in which Skinner nonchalantly blames America for John Lennon’s death and sings, “We were the ones who invented the language.” Ironically, he’d probably be speaking Celtic if the British Isles hadn’t been conquered by Germanic and French tribes a thousand years ago, but who’s keeping tabs?