28th April 2004 | The Streets: A grand don’t come for free
I didn’t know what to expect from “A grand don’t come for free”, the second album by Mike Skinner (A.K.A. “The Streets”), but it certainly wasn’t this.
The Streets’ debut, “Original Pirate Material”, was a low-fi, high energy blend of UK Garage and Hip Hop (if we must pigeon hole), spinning stories about regular geezers in the UK. Rather than rapping about bitches, blunts and bling “Original Pirate Material” talked about birds, bookies and bottles of Stella.
In short the first album was funny, honest and felt truer than anything that’s ever come out of the UK Hip Hop scene. It took me a while to get past the geezer attitude and I hated Mike Skinner’s voice for a long time before it clicked for me, but after a month or two it got pride of place in my collection.
So, with that in mind, I was hoping for a great follow up from The Streets with the new album, “A grand don’t come for free”. I don’t think even the most rabid fan could have hoped for an album as good as this though.
“A grand don’t come for free” kicks off with a stomping anthem about the bad day to end all bad days then spirals out from there. Half way through the opener my head was nodding and I was grinning like mad at a story that could happen to any bloke in Britain. So far so good.
The next track drops in with Mike rapping about meeting a bird in a pub over a gentle swinging beat, and about half way through you get an inkling of one of the things that makes this album so special. A throwaway reference to the character in the last songs fucked TV establishes it’s the same guy in both songs. And now we’re off.
Over the next fifty minutes we get a selection of top notch tunes, at least two of which are as good as anything to come out of the UK in years. Each song stands up on it’s own, but when he begins to drop in fragments of previous songs you realise there’s a narrative thread throughout the album - we’re being told a story here - and that’s what makes “A grand don’t come for free” the best album I’ve heard this year by far.
I paused the story at track four, “Blinded by the Lights”, ’cause this song about another pilled up night down the club just grabbed me and made me relisten five or six times before I could move on, and it’s here you realise “A grand don’t come for free” is a quantum leap beyond the first album musically as well as conceptually.
When I could finally stop pressing the replay button the rest of the story unfolded, encompassing wicked little love songs like “Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way”, menacing tunes like “What Is He Thinking?” and the absolutely out of this world ballad, “Dry your eyes”.
Each song is threaded through with The Streets’ trademark humour and an eye for the language that real people speak. The lyrics are as sincere as it gets, funny as fuck, and delivered in Mike’s Brum-by-way-of-the-East-End accent that just underlines how close to reality the music is.
By the time the final track of “A grand don’t come for free” fades out my jaw was almost on the floor. The gradual unfolding of a story of love, loss and redemption makes this simply the most cohesive album I know of and musically it’s outstanding, with even the weaker tracks seeming just right in context. Overall it’s far and away the best album I’ve heard this year.
I could gush some more but this is one you really need to listen too to get a handle on. Go buy a copy. Borrow it from a mate. Steal it from HMV. Even if you didn’t like the first album or the current single you need to give this album a go.