The Album That Changed My Life: The Streets 'Original Pirate Material'
Recorded and released at the beginning of this millennium, Mike Skinner, frontman of The Streets released the cult-classic, genre-bending, garage-influenced Original Pirate Material – the most important album I have ever listened to.
Admittedly, the first time I heard this album was around 2007, five years after its release, when I was ten years old and a primary school friend recommended that I watch the British drama film Kidulthood which had been released in 2006. The closing track of Original Pirate Material, Stay Positive, is featured in one of the opening scenes of the film. Skinner’s poetic, layered disenchantment posits existential crises, all too common in life, over a scene where a young girl sadly takes her life – hauntingly memorable at age ten.
Prior to this, the British music I listened to revolved exclusively around what was being played on the iconic, now defunct British digital satellite TV music channel Channel U, nothing at all comparable to what I heard on Original Pirate Material. In fact, Mike recognises this as he says on Lets Push Things Forward “this ain’t your archetypal street sound”. How did a kid who spent hours each day listening to Kano and Dizzee Rascal suddenly become overwhelmingly inundated in awe of the stylistically incomparable Mike Skinner? Of course at a young age I did not realise that this album would be as important as I consider it to be now. It’s only in retrospect, whilst listening to this album in my late teens and early adulthood that I admire Mike for expressing the typical British youth in a better medium than I ever could.
Beginning with the ostentatious fanfare on the opening track Turn the Page and ending on the sobering piano loop on Stay Positive, the whole album was produced entirely by Mike. Left to his own creative devices and artistic freedom, you have a Brummie geezer, dressed head to toe in Aquascutum, speaking over two-step garage productions.
The best example of this is the elegy to delinquency Has It Come to This? where Skinner produced a garage beat, on par with Jeremy Sylvester and DJ EZ at their best and couples this with a monotone yet absorbing flow showing Skinner to be so far ahead of his time and paving the way for a revolutionary change in both British garage and British rap. Furthermore, Skinner’s creativity is shown by being one of the first British artists I am aware of that the used comedy and roleplay in their music drawing comparisons to Marshall Mathers. The Irony of it All compares the societal consequences of both cannabis and alcohol use. The eponymous irony lies in alcohol abuse taking a superior toll than cannabis despite cannabis being illegal – a fantastic playful, yet serious lyrical endeavour.
What I love about Skinner is the fact that he is so quintessentially British. Not that I consider him a “rapper” necessarily, but I have always had the feeling that some British rappers have tried to Americanise their music to varying degrees of success. Mike never attempted this – immortalising his music in an ironic originality. His Britishness is best shown in the ninth track from the album, Don’t Mug Yourself. The video which is set in a series of British cafes and pubs sees Mike orders a predictable full English adding a twang to the line “plenty of scrambled eggs and plenty of fried tomatoes” with a distinct Birmingham cadence. The subject matter of this song revolves around Mike being advised by a friend not go too mad over a chick in the hopes that being coy and reserved will make her swoon over him. This is particularly interesting because compared to our stateside cousins, Brits are consistently positioned as borderline prudes in popular culture, which I am sure Mike is making a reference to.
Despite a music career now spanning two decades, Skinner’s magnum opus remains one of the lead singles released from Original Pirate Material – Weak Become Heroes. The twelfth track from the album perfectly captures the zeitgeist of a hedonistic youth, centring on Skinner’s halcyon days of drug taking. The most striking aspect about this song is that over four verses, not only does Skinner manage to express the ecstatic cocaine induced reverie of raving, he artistically dichotomises this with the comedown which inevitably follows, painting a picture that reminds the listener that their experiences may just be a requiem for a wasted youth. Not many people are able to continue the debauchery of their early twenties much longer than five years after its inception as Skinner kindly reminds us and this prompts a phrase I heard in passing:
“Remember to look after yourself and your friends when the lights come on and you’re coming down. Live for the weekend if you like, just don’t get too depressed in between. Love and peace.”
Throughout this seminal album, Skinner turns morbid, humorous and heart-breaking songs into nostalgic snapshots of ordinary life as a young British resident, regardless of whether you’re from the Midlands or London. Released in the midst of an increasingly, growing, diverse pop-industry, Skinner blends an assortment of genres and cultures, such as Ska, Birmingham and Brixton effortlessly as exemplified on Let’s Push Things Forward. This album’s gritty artistic expression and ability to evoke such deep emotion has yet to be replicated for me, cementing its place as the most important album I have listened to.
Written by Glenn Gowdie
Glenn is a 23-year-old history graduate who now works in finance. Self-prescribed as 'not much of a scribe’.