The States didnt much embrace The Streets. Mike Skinner the leader, rapper, poet was a UK hero and a US nod. The Streets have called it quits but Skinner decided we all needed to know about his life and times so he wrote a book.
A chornicle of boy to man of drugs and antics and the same old rock star thing we get whenever someone with a record contract tells their story. What makes this so different is the sense of humour its delivered with.
For those of you unfamilar with The Streets there is no shame in going back and discovering them. Amusing is a good word, engaging another appropriate description. There is something in the unpolished sound that makes it interesting and addictive. Although I consider myself a fan, do I really want to hear about Mikey Skinners life? At 33 years old he is a bit presumptious in memoir dont ya think?
But I am a fan so the release of this book could be interesting to me and others who dug their sound.
Here's an excerpt:
"It didn't pan out the way I thought it would at all. At the time I thought it would be successful with people in Birmingham; they'd go, yeah, it's garage and we're talking about, like, smoking weed and stuff – and that's all we do – so we're going to have some music that we like. That was what I wanted to hear, and I was so arrogant I thought, well, everyone else I know will want to hear that, 'cos everyone listens to garage and smokes weed, so I'm putting it all together. It's very straightforward.
"But what actually ended up happening was that hipsters in London thought, wow, this is amazing, and hipsters in Williamsburg and hipsters in Berlin were like, wow, this is cool. And meanwhile people in Birmingham were like, well, no, we kind of like whoever the big rap thing is. And you're not UK hip-hop, mate, 'cos it needs to sound American."
Metropolitan hipster fans were the last thing Skinner had expected, and his sudden popularity in fashionable circles threw him completely. "It was like, I didn't know how to get my bearings. I guess the people who got into it, if I'm honest, were the sort of people that we didn't really like."
Is that even cohearant? The book will hit the selves March 29th.