Sneak Preview: New Streets Album

Mike Skinner don't get no respect. With good reason.

By Fred Mills

Damn. It's hard out here in the streets for a pimp. Or, more accurately, it's hard for The Streets - a/k/a/ Birmingham, England, beatmaster/rapper Mike Skinner - to get pimped. His new album Everything Is Borrowed is due out next week, Oct. 7, on Vice (conflicting reports at Amazon.com say Oct. 14), and already the critics are sharpening their knives.

To wit, your friendly neighborhood BLURT, in a scathing 5-out-of-10-stars review published online today, claims that the album "toes the line between clever and cheesy, mediocre and superb, but comes out boring more often than not [and] sinks under its own weight... With hip-hop, it's quite simple: You either got it or you don't. In the case of The Streets' latest album, Everything is Borrowed, it's a lot of the latter."

Yow. Harsh.

Meanwhile, over at the Streets MySpace page, Skinner's blogging has been taking on Courtney-Love-drunk-and-agitated overtones of late. Reads one choice entry:

I had a dream that my friend invented a new, much more efficient method of lift, enabling helicopters to elevate in altitude. I know good invention is supposed to be simple but this involved 200 Scalextric motors, a circular PCB and many, many right-angled gearbox-style cogs. It was a very small device but we needed to make a prototype ourselves in order that we could patent it. I told my friend that it was important that we didn't use expensive components as the bog standard Maplin ones are good enough. It was quite fiddly work but the feeling it gave us when the thing switched on and sucked more air in the top than it did the bottom was euphoria. I have been watching too much Dragons' Den.

Fans, of course, love to read about their heroes' dreams, natch. Also about their random thoughts transcribed while out jogging:

I was running through the park this morning and I swallowed a fly. A pretty big fly. My first thought was that it could have been a wasp actually, as it wriggled down my neck. It seemed to quickly die or play dead though. I wanted to put my fingers down my throat to bring it back up but why should I be so fussy about what I eat? It is a creature of this earth and whatever taboos or disgustion I felt about its breed, I shouldn't make decisions about whether it's right or wrank to eat based on subjective thought

Hey, we've all felt disgustion at one point or another, Mike, don't feel bad.... His confessional mode befits him, as evidenced in this one in which he admits to shoplifting:

I'm lying by a canal in a massive haze. I got into bed last night and as I nodded I started thinking about all the hard work I put into this album and how meaningful the day of its release should be. I called up my people and fought for my right to paartay. Got them up from deep slumbers. We fought till the sherry end. 6am pizza express sloppy guiseppe and some fucked up jokes. Today we are shooting a video for 'never give in'. Not really sure what the video is about to be honest but Mayhem is well focused and his video idea for 'love you more' was hench. We are way more hungover than when we did that video though. I got really thirsty all of a sudden and all Mayhem had was these fucked up sour sweets. Made me slightly gag. Especially combined with the sound of the new Usher CD I stole yesterday.

‘Nuf said. Don't you love it when celebrities do all the legwork for us?

Fight for your right to paartay with Skinner on his tour, which kicks off this week in England:

Oct 5 2008      8:00P

            Academy (www.gigsandtours.com)   Manchester

Oct 6 2008      8:00P

            Plug (www.artistticket.com)   Sheffield

Oct 9 2008      8:00P

            Academy (www.gigsandtours.com)   Birmingham

Oct 10 2008    8:00P

            Academy (www.gigsandtours.com)   Newcastle

Oct 11 2008    8:00P

            Academy (www.gigsandtours.com)   Oxford

Oct 13 2008    8:00P

            Guildhall (www.gigsandtours.com)   Southampton

Oct 14 2008    8:00P

            53 Degrees (www.gigsandtours.com)            Preston

Oct 16 2008    8:00P

            UEA (www.gigsandtours.com)          Norwich

Oct 17 2008    8:00P

            Academy (www.gigsandtours.com)   Bristol

Oct 18 2008    8:00P

            Rock City (www.gigsandtours.com) Nottingham

Oct 19 2008    8:00P

            Academy (www.gigsandtours.com)   Leeds

Oct 23 2008    8:00P

            BBC Electric Proms (on sale Sept 17th)         London

Oct 25 2008    8:00P

            Rockefeller      Oslo

Oct 27 2008    8:00P

            KB Hall           Copenhagen

Oct 28 2008    8:00P

            Gross Freiheit Hamburg

Oct 29 2008    8:00P

            Ringlokschuppen        Bielfeld

Oct 30 2008    8:00P

            Strasse E         Dresden

Nov 1 2008     8:00P

            Kraftzentrale, Ruhrnacht radio show             Duisburg

Nov 2 2008     8:00P

            Hugenottenhalle          Frankfurt

Nov 3 2008     8:00P

            Huxleys           Berlin

Nov 4 2008     8:00P

            Stodola            Warsaw

Nov 6 2008     8:00P

            Paradiso          Amsterdam

Nov 7 2008     8:00P

            Den Atler        Luxembourg

Nov 9 2008     8:00P

            Muffthalle       Munich

Nov 10 2008   8:00P

            Longhorn        Stuttgart

Nov 11 2008   8:00P

            Live Music Hall          Cologne

Nov 12 2008   8:00P

            Rota Fabric     Zurich

Nov 13 2008   8:00P

            Fri-son             Fribourg

Nov 15 2008   8:00P

            Joy Eslava       Madrid

Nov 16 2008   8:00P

            Razzmataz 2    Barcelona

Nov 18 2008   8:00P

            Laiterie            Strasbourg

Jan 29 2009     8:00P

            Brixton Academy       London