Michael Geoffery Skinner
(born 27 November 1978), more commonly known by his stage name
The Streets, is a rapper
from Birmingham
, England
.
Early life and beginnings
Skinner began experimenting with a
keyboard when he was five years old. As
a teenager, he built a miniature recording studio in his bedroom.
He began
writing hip hop and garage music in
his home in West Heath
in Birmingham, with a crew of other rappers
including best friend Chris Panton. He describes his
background as "
Barratt class:
suburban estates, not poor but not much money about, really
boring." Skinner started making songs at the age of fifteen.
He has suffered from
epilepsy since the age
of seven.
In the
mid-1990s, following secondary education at Bournville
School
, Skinner became a student at Sutton Coldfield
College
, in Sutton Coldfield
, and was working in fast food jobs while trying to
start his own independent
record label and sending off demo.
Despite having been raised in Birmingham, an area with a
distinctive
regional accent, he speaks with
a London-influenced accent. Some critics have accused Skinner of
using a "
Mockney" accent. He can be heard
speaking in his normal accent at the beginning of the song
"
Fake Streets Hats". Because of
his accent, Skinner is identified with Birmingham; a keen supporter
of
Birmingham City, he even
wore the club's replica shirt on stage.
Music career
Original Pirate Material: 2000-2003
The Streets started out as a group project but quickly became a
one-man act as band members fell away. At the end of 2000, the
Locked On label, who had success with
The Artful Dodger featuring
Craig David, agreed to release "Has It
Come To This" under the name the Streets.
Skinner moved from
Birmingham to Brixton
to pursue
his recording career, he then moved to Camden Town for three years
before returning to Brixton.
"
Has It Come to This?" proved
to be a breakthrough hit for the Streets, going top-twenty in March
2001. For his debut album,
Original Pirate Material,
Skinner wanted to take
UK garage in a new
direction with material reflecting the lifestyle of clubbers in
Britain. The track "
Let's Push
Things Forward" reflects the philosophy of the album. The album
was released and proved to be successful both with critics and the
general public alike. In the UK, the album was nominated for the
Mercury Prize and was favourite with
the bookies to win it (it was later won by
Ms. Dynamite). The Streets was nominated for
best album, best
urban act, best
breakthrough artist and best British male artist in the 2002
BRIT Awards. The
NME named it as one of their top five
albums of 2002. The cover image is
Towering Inferno by the
acclaimed photographer
Rut Blees
Luxemburg.
Subsequent singles included "
Don't
Mug Yourself", "
Weak Become
Heroes" and "Let's Push Things Forward" which all reached the
top forty in the UK. Many of his songs have a
UK garage feel but have in the main found
popularity in the '
indie' scene.
Original Pirate Material had debuted and peaked at number
twelve in the UK album charts, and wouldn't reach any higher until
his next album was released.
The success of
Original Pirate Material in the UK led to a
US release of the album through
Vice/Atlantic in late 2002. Though the
album was not a commercial success in the States, it was received
positively by
Rolling Stone,
Spin, the
New York Times,
Blender,
USA Today and the
Los Angeles Times all nominating it
as one of the albums of the year. The album was named
Entertainment Weekly's "album of
the year". The album reached number two on the
Billboard
electronic charts and the top 20 on the independent and Heatseeker
charts in the US in 2003.
A Grand Don't Come for Free: 2004-2005
In May 2004, he released a new single, "
Fit But You Know It" which became his
highest debuting and highest selling single to that point, reaching
number four in the UK.
"Fit But You Know It" is from his second album,
A Grand Don't Come for Free
which is a
concept album about a short
period in the protagonist's life. The events depicted include
losing a thousand
pounds, the start
of a new relationship, going on holiday, breaking up, and
eventually finding the grand again. The MC's remix of "Fit But You
Know It" features formerly underground MCs such as
Kano,
Tinchy
Stryder,
Donae'o and
Lady Sovereign.
The album debuted at number two in the UK album charts, but later
reached the number one position. Soon after the album was released,
his success grew even larger in July 2004, with the second single
"
Dry Your Eyes" debuting at the top of
the chart in the UK. The success of this album and its singles led
to a re-kindling of interest in the first album
Original Pirate
Material, which re-entered the UK album charts and beat its
original chart peak of two years earlier. "Blinded By the Lights",
the third single from
A Grand Don't Come for Free, hit the
Top 10 in September 2004, and a fourth and final single, "Could
Well Be In", was released in late 2004.
The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living: 2006-2007
Skinner's
third studio album under The Streets moniker, The Hardest Way to Make
an Easy Living, was released on 10 April 2006 in the
United
Kingdom
and on 25 April 2006 in North America. In
the UK it debuted at number one on the album chart. It was a change
in direction from his first two albums, the lyrical theme moving
away from the stories about
working
class Britain and instead focusing on the ups and downs of the
fame that Skinner encountered after the huge success of his
previous album.
The lead single, titled "
When You
Wasn't Famous", was released two weeks prior to the album. The
song is about Skinner's troubles with trying to date a famous
person, following his new found fame. It was also named 'Track of
the Week' by NME in early March 2006, but when it came into the UK
singles charts, it only reached the latter course of the top 10,
peaking at number eight. There has been much speculation over which
celebrity "When You Wasn't Famous" is about -
Rachel Stevens and
Cheryl Cole are two names that have been ruled
out, despite Skinner dedicating the song to Cole on
Top Of The Pops. This reluctance to reveal
the subject may be more than simple politeness, as some of the
descriptions of the unnamed starlet in the track are potentially
damaging. At one point, Skinner discloses "my whole life I never
thought I'd see a pop star smoke
crack."
The second single, "
Never Went to
Church", is a tribute to Skinner's late father, and appears to
use the chord progression of
The
Beatles' "
Let It Be" as a
backing beat.
The Streets appeared on
The Late Show with David
Letterman on 26 June 2006 to promote the new album.
Everything Is Borrowed: 2008-2009
In September 2008, Skinner released his fourth studio album,
Everything Is
Borrowed. One song from the album, was on Skinner's
MySpace page for a while before being
replaced by a cover of "
Your Song". In a
posting on his MySpace blog, Skinner noted that the group's
upcoming LP would contain "peaceful, positive vibes" in comparison
with 2006's
The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living.
In a blurb about the album on Skinner's MySpace, he says "This
album started off life as parables but then I realised that it
might get a bit cheesy so I got rid of the alien song and the devil
song and replaced them with more straight up songs. I've pretty
much kept my promise that I made to myself not to reference modern
life on any of them though which is hard to do and keep things
personal at the same time."
Computers and Blues: 2010
It was originally reported that Skinner said that the fifth record
would be similar to
Lou Reed's
Berlin.
He later stated in a blog that he was
misquoted, and that the album would sound like the city of Berlin
, not the
album by Reed. He went on, saying that the album will be
"ravey".
"The final Streets album (the fifth one) will be dark and
futuristic. This could not be further from [
Everything is
Borrowed], but it's what is on my mind at the moment. I feel
inspired by the synthesizer exhibition we just visited in Graz
[Austria] after the gig we just did."
On 6 August 2008, Skinner stated on his MySpace blog that the title
of the final Streets record will be
Computers and Blues,
and that it will likely not be released for at least two years. He
has repeatedly stated that it will be the last Streets album,
remarking that he is "fucking sick" of the name and connotations
that come along with it. In a
Beat Stevie episode where he
describes the making of
Everything Is Borrowed, Skinner
says that the final Streets album will be "one more banger" and
will be "dancing music to drink tea to".
On 14 April 2009, Skinner announced via
Twitter that he would post three new songs over
three days. The tracks were "I Love My Phone", "Trust Me" and
"David Hassles". Since then he has posted ten more songs, "Long
Working Day", "See if they Salute", "A Blip on a Screen", "Outside
Inside", "Skills on Toast", "Lovelight of My Life", "Infamy",
"Where My Heart Has Been", "The Robots Are Taking Over" and "In The
Middle". Most of these songs were released on
bln.kr or
zshare.net with
an announcement of Skinner on Twitter. He also posted the video for
a song called "He's Behind You, He's Got
Swine
Flu" to YouTube. On 11 June 2009, Skinner announced that
"
Computers and Blues" will be
released in February 2010 and that he was releasing a song with
up-and-coming UK rapper
Giggs.
Live line-up
The Streets regularly plays live, and has also performed at several
festivals.
Up until recently his playing line-up was Mike Skinner,
Leo the Lion singing backing
vocals, Eddie "The Kid" playing keyboard, Johnny Drum Machine
playing drums, and long-time friend
Morgan Nicholls playing bass and guitar.
Morgan has since left the band to focus on playing with progressive
rock band
Muse, playing a variety of
instruments as part of their live show.
His current live line-up consists of
Kevin Mark Trail on backing vocals, Wayne
Vibes on guitar and bass, Chris Brown on keyboards, Magic Mike on
samplers and Johnny Drum Machine as drummer and musical director.
Skinner has credited Johnny Drum Machine as the only other member
of The Streets to have appeared on all the albums.
Performance trademarks include crowd controlling "Go Low" (the
whole audience drops to the floor) and "Go Moses" (audience parts
down the middle, Skinner runs to the back and crowd surfs back to
the stage) with variable success.
Other projects
The Beats Recordings
In 2005, Mike Skinner and Ted Mayhem launched the independant
record label The Beats Recordings. A subsidary of
679 Recordings, The Beats was home to
British hip
hop acts such as
The Mitchell
Brothers,
Example and
Professor Green. The label closed in
2007.
Beat Stevie
An online channel currently presented by Mike and business partner
Ted Mayhem, Beat Stevie is an anything
goes blog/music show also shown on
Channel
4 in their
4Music late night strand. The
episodes often include backstage footage and onstage hijinks.
In one of the episodes Mike and Ted get trained by pickup artist
and dating coach
5.0 of
Love Systems on how
to approach and talk to women.
Promotional and campaign work
- Skinner is an ardent fan of Reebok
Classics shoes; he is often seen
wearing a pair of white Workout Plus trainers, and has even
mentioned them in the lyrics for his song "Let's Push Things
Forward", in which he raps, "Let's put on our Classics and have
a little dance, shall we?". In 2005, he signed up to appear in
a twelve-month ad campaign for Reebok, joining other prominent
celebrities in Reebok's "I Am What I Am" campaign.
- Skinner collaborated with PETA2 in a
campaign urging KFC to demand that chickens
raised for them be treated more humanely.
Discography
References
- The Streets to split after fifth album
- Mike Skinner Twitter status update, 11 June
2009
- 5.0 and Beat Stevie
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search