Track Listing

1. Turn the Page
2. Has It Come to This?
3. Let's Push Things Forward
4. Sharp darts
5. Same Old Thing
6. Geezers Need Excitement
7. It's Too Late
8. Too Much Brandy
9. Don't Mug Yourself
10. Who Got the Funk?
11. The Irony of It All
12. Weak Becomes Heroes
13. Who Dares Wins
14. Stay Positive

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62717 in Music
• Released on: 2002-10-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Enhanced, Explicit Lyrics
• Dimensions: .19 pounds

Amazon.com
In a thrilling UK Garage scene, blighted only by a reliance on drippy soul cliché and tiresome braggadocio, The Streets' eminently quotable Mike Skinner may just be the voice to take it to the next level with Original Pirate Material. This debut is a staggeringly eloquent and fearlessly honest snapshot of gritty street-level existence, as experienced by an ordinary bloke. At first listen, the Birmingham-born Skinner's cheeky cockney affectations grate slightly. But for every line that makes you squirm, there are 20 that drop your jaw. "Has It Come to This?" is "A day in the life of a geezer," a seductive encapsulation of London lifestyle, presented raw as a bootleg, but bulging with sharp wit and feverish detail. "Stay Positive" weaves a fearful tale of heroin addiction, while "The Irony of It All" makes a beguiling case for legalization, presenting a fictional exchange between a beered-up, self-righteous lager lout and a fey student weed enthusiast. Original Pirate Material is a milestone, the real voice of British youth set down on record. Don't miss it. --Louis Pattison

From URB Magazine
There are two primary reasons why dance music — the revolution-waiting-to-happen that inspired this magazine’s founding — will continue to have a hard time "breaking" in America: 1) instrumental music hasn’t been wildly popular here in nearly 80 years (for better or worse, more people identify with Springsteen or "American Idol" than Coltrane and Rachmaninov), and/or 2) it’s just not very sexy for a genre of music — for lack of a better term, electronic dance music — to be internally sub-divided along neat, tidy increments of beats per minute. Imagine trying to explain "garage" (or any of dance music’s petty sub-genres, for that matter) to a total novice: It’s like nothing you’ve ever heard before . . . It’s a few beats per minute faster than that other genre, which itself was defined by being a faster take on the genre from which it sprang.

With Original Pirate Material, Mike Skinner, the 22-year-old garage producer and British rapper behind the Streets, has succeeded where many others have failed: He’s made a dance record with pathos. His much-ballyhooed debut fuses two of the globe’s tried-and-true musical success stories (rapping and the much-hyped "Next Big Thing" of the moment — in this case, two-step garage) and is already being hailed as one of the most important (white) British albums in decades. It’s easy to select reasons why they are onto something — where much of electronic dance music is predicated on city-in-the-sky visions of utopia and perfection — grandiose, commendable and over-ambitious visions that often inspire escapism rather than politics — Skinner has done something so painfully obvious and simple that it borders on genius, and it’s a significant argument in favor of dance music as music for thinking, feeling, living people.

On the teetering and vaguely Specials-sounding "Let’s Push Things Forward," Skinner half brags, half warns that "This ain’t your archetypal street sound. " No kidding. As a producer, the sound of the Streets is built on bouncy garage rhythms, deep and stabby bass lines and RZA-ish string lines; it’s annoyingly catchy, shiny and sugary. The glassy, clip-clopping "Has It Come to This?" is one of the year’s great pop tunes, and the ambient drum & bass of "It’s Too Late" and the urgent orchestral dash of "Turn the Page" aren’t far behind. Lyrically, Skinner writes about the mundane and everyday (video games, drugs, parties, friends), and he’s unapologetically British-sounding. He’s a terrible rapper, but what he lacks in coordination he sort of makes up for with his dainty, oddly endearing flow and the fact that even the most pedestrian of his stories sounds interesting when set among Tube stations, flats, water closets and council estates. His lyricism entitles you to a day in the life of a white kid from the suburbs weaned on black British culture trying to maintain in post-industrial London. But where most British MCs of any hue quiver ever so gently because, deep down, they know they sound nothing like their stateside idols, the Streets sounds self-confident and self-confidently white, bad flow (and teeth) and all. The self-confidence — the awareness that this is different, that we’ve indeed "turned the page" — makes a great deal of difference.

As such, Original Pirate Material is also the most genuine expression yet of post-hip-hop, white-kid British lyricism. Where fellow garage stars So Solid Crew or Roots Manuva, New Flesh and their unfortunately named "Bouncement" contingent of hip-hop/dancehall/soul fusionists all embody a black Atlantic/black Briton sensibility, the Streets is British like Blur, Pulp or the Smiths ("Sounds like Arab Strap over two-step," complains my roommate) are British — full of suffering and pomp, malaise and the ambition to be anthemically emotional. The Streets’ novel pairing of dance music and wordplay hits the mark more often than not and it’s a step in a potentially interesting direction, but ultimately Original Pirate Material is not the lone answer to our future music culture prayers. America ain’t ready for a geezer who lamely shouts out Paul Oakenfold and references Carl Jung. It’s taken long enough for America to warm to the white rapper, and remember still, nobody listens to techno.

Hua Hsu