But Skinner insists there’s no problem with American listeners’ hearing — in fact, he says the problem may be what we’re missing visually. “In England, we’ve got this kind of low-budget video culture going on. It’s like the continuation of pirate-radio culture, I suppose, similar to your mixtape scene. But with us, it’s low-budget videos, and kids download ’em onto their phones and stuff. There’s these new videos coming out all the time. There’s a lot of collaborating going on. But it’s difficult to see what it looks like from outside of England, or sense how big these artists can become without even putting an album out.”
Then there’s Skinner’s shambling, off-beat delivery, which is often taken by first-time Streets listeners to be a defect — a reflection of his lack of MC skills. Actually, it’s the only voice suited to tell his often disoriented and disorienting tales of nights/weeks/years lost to the addictions that plague our culture and that he’s had his own experiences with. He insists, however, that his take on hip-hop has its roots firmly planted in American soil. “I’m not American at all, so there’s not going to be anything American about me,” he admits when I doubt his claim that he’s been influenced by Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan. “But I think, in terms of my production and the structure, that it’s very American. All the elements that are being added up in a track I record — even though they’re being added up in a bit of a strange order — I think that they do come from America.”
One Hardest Way track even takes a cue from an American rap legend in a more direct sense: it wasn’t meant for the album at all but rather for the posthumous Notorious B.I.G. collection Duets. “I spent an evening with P. Diddy and they asked me to write something. I was over in New York, and because I’m the biggest guy in England or Europe or whatever, I guess they just thought that it would be a good fit.”
Although Skinner doesn’t go into detail as to why the finished product wasn’t included on Duets, it’s not hard to figure, especially once you’ve heard the track. Set against sputtering drums and a melancholy guitar loop, “Two Nations” gently ribs us about the differences between US and UK rap, explaining that “the differences in language are just the bits [America] got wrong.” He hits a rawer nerve when he argues that the English “build up our stars and then papers swoop on ’em/And you build up stars and then maniacs shoot ’em.” And then? “I’m proud we gave you people like John Lennon/Even though you shot him as well.”
It’s all very tongue-in-cheek — Skinner even suggests as much during the song. Still, you can see why Bad Boy declined to put it on what was supposed to be the final release from a slain rap idol. What’s harder to understand is why Skinner chose to include “Two Nations” on The Hardest Way. Tacked next-to-last on an album full of sex, drugs, and other tabloid fodder, it seems completely out of place. But when you revisit “Memento Mori,” the picture becomes a bit clearer. What seems to be a track about his out-of-control spending habits has a hook that hints at a bigger issue: “Memento mori, memento mori/It’s Latin and it says we must all die.” And the hymnlike “Never Went to Church” addresses the death of Mike’s father, and how Skinner sees reflections of his old man in himself.
