CD Reviews

The Streets | Everything is Borrowed

Vice (2008)

By CHRIS FARAONE | October 22, 2008

3.5 Stars

I’m suspicious of cool kids. When I mention The Streets around aggressively opinionated hipsters, most dismiss Mike Skinner as expired cockney trash. But when I bump his joints for open-minded two-step virgins, they sop it up like pancakes. Those who deserted after Skinner stopped building bangers for marathon barbiturate benders might find his fresh posi-grime rhymes on cuts like “The Escapist” too distant from Original Pirate Material. Lucky for me, I’ve matured with Skinner. Aside from looming debt, I, like Mike, am doing fine for once — and it’s fabulous to see him off the ledge as well. Even though his heavy drug phase seems to be largely over, Borrowed is his Sgt. Pepper — not because he’s spelunking far-flung experimental trenches, but because he finally understands that life is larger than his ego (self-depreciating as it was). Sure, he’s softened since the money hit, but he still pens such gloriously cheesy nuggets as “I want to go to Heaven for the weather, but Hell seems like fun to me.” Our entire Britpop vernacular was culled from such gems; it’s just that some folks are too sweet on history and themselves to admit that Skinner is almost as enlightened as John, Paul, Sting, and Bernie. That’s fine with him, though, because, in his words: “I came to this world with nothing, and I’ll leave with nothing but love.”

Brit-hop
For all the ink that’s been spilled over him around the world, you’d think Mike Skinner would be a little better known in the US, a country where TomKat’s new bundle of joy trumps suicide bombings on the news and new American idols are minted each and every season, only to be cut down the next.
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When Boston Marathon runners cross the Copley Square finish line next Monday and sponge the diarrhea off their thighs, Will Thomas and Seth Bradbury will have even more to celebrate than their fellow soiled athletes.
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Edu Leedz wraps up Boston hip-hop with Mass Movementz
Fightin’ words
Rudy Giuliani ran his city the way a bachelor does his pad — shoving clutter and disaster out of sight while showcasing redeeming qualities.
Jews and Latinos get cozy
While US Senate Republicans dropped politically prudent bombshells on Sonia Sotomayor during her Supreme Court–nomination hearings this week, watchdogs from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Latino Professional Network (LPN) kept extra close ears on rage speech bubbling through conservative media channels.
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Without Solillaquists of Sound and the holistic hip-hop hamlet that its members cultivate within Orlando, their city would be home to little more than methadone retreats and plastic rodent ears.
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Topics: CD Reviews , Mike Skinner, The Streets, The Streets

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