Review of The Streets: A Grand Don't Come For Free
this entry brought to you by wolf parade, "i'll believe in anything"
The Street's first album, Original Pirate Material, is certainly off-putting initially. Mike Skinner, who is The Streets (taking on both MC and production duties), with a back-up singer for choruses and, on Grand, occasional guest rappers that play various characters, is British, and comes with a mean British accent, and uses lots of weird cockney-isms like "geezer" for common, bored everymanm and "aerial" for antenna. Of course, this mattered for exactly three tracks. Skinner's down-to-earth themes of boredom in under-class life, smoking weed not as anything glorified but because there's nothing else better to do, and losing a girlfriend because of not paying any attention to the relationship, really ring true and are totally refreshing in the otherwise stayed, dried-up hip-hop genre.
My initial listen to A Grand Don't Come For Free, The Streets' second LP, didn't quite fair as well. The first record, despite being self-produced, sounded much better than it had any right to be. The beats were fantastic and, most importantly, derivative of almost nothing else. Despite being produced by a kid in London, Original Pirate Material sounded better than most mainstream million-doller hip-hop. Grand, on the other hand, is a much different pill to swallow. The beats are more lumbering, lazy, and amateurish, the synths buzzy. Skinner himself sounds as if he's got a cold (especially so in the opening track, "It Was Supposed to be So Easy"), and he often seems to stick too many syllables per line. Despite this, the songs have a much more traditional verse-chorus-verse style about them. Upon my first listen, I wasn't sure what to think.
A Grand Don't Come For Free is a concept album, a nearly extinct prog-rock idea that has been making a big comeback in the rock world, but is especially unheard of in hip-hop. Skinner spins the tale of an everyday geezer losing 1,000 dollars, and, in the process of trying to find out what happened to it, ends up breaking up with his girlfriend and feeling that his friends have turned on him. A second listen revealed a lot more than a downgrade in beat quality, which, while never sounding anywhere as good as Pirate Material, show their wit by being completely different song-to-song and covering a variety of subgenres from grime ("Not Addicted"), house ("Blinded By The Lights"), and bouncy pop music ("Fit But You Know It").
This isn't a concept album that tells an abstract, pompous tale like the prog-rock of yesteryear. In fact, it's not an over-the-top concept album like R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" (an album, that, by the way, came out after Grand, and I would bet dollars was inspired directly by this). This is a story told in multiple acts, with multiple characters, dialogue, inner monologues, plot-twists-- the whole package. The story is what you would expect, for example, in a movie playing at a British double feature opening for Trainspotting, because it has every bit of character as movies like that, and there's even a twist ending. During the gorgeous, mournful "Dry Your Eyes", and I'm not afraid to admit this, I cry. Every damned time. And for a hip-hop concept album about every day life, that's possibly the highest compliment I could give.
with love from CRS @ 8:21 PM
Friday, March 10, 2006
The Street's first album, Original Pirate Material, is certainly off-putting initially. Mike Skinner, who is The Streets (taking on both MC and production duties), with a back-up singer for choruses and, on Grand, occasional guest rappers that play various characters, is British, and comes with a mean British accent, and uses lots of weird cockney-isms like "geezer" for common, bored everymanm and "aerial" for antenna. Of course, this mattered for exactly three tracks. Skinner's down-to-earth themes of boredom in under-class life, smoking weed not as anything glorified but because there's nothing else better to do, and losing a girlfriend because of not paying any attention to the relationship, really ring true and are totally refreshing in the otherwise stayed, dried-up hip-hop genre.
My initial listen to A Grand Don't Come For Free, The Streets' second LP, didn't quite fair as well. The first record, despite being self-produced, sounded much better than it had any right to be. The beats were fantastic and, most importantly, derivative of almost nothing else. Despite being produced by a kid in London, Original Pirate Material sounded better than most mainstream million-doller hip-hop. Grand, on the other hand, is a much different pill to swallow. The beats are more lumbering, lazy, and amateurish, the synths buzzy. Skinner himself sounds as if he's got a cold (especially so in the opening track, "It Was Supposed to be So Easy"), and he often seems to stick too many syllables per line. Despite this, the songs have a much more traditional verse-chorus-verse style about them. Upon my first listen, I wasn't sure what to think.
A Grand Don't Come For Free is a concept album, a nearly extinct prog-rock idea that has been making a big comeback in the rock world, but is especially unheard of in hip-hop. Skinner spins the tale of an everyday geezer losing 1,000 dollars, and, in the process of trying to find out what happened to it, ends up breaking up with his girlfriend and feeling that his friends have turned on him. A second listen revealed a lot more than a downgrade in beat quality, which, while never sounding anywhere as good as Pirate Material, show their wit by being completely different song-to-song and covering a variety of subgenres from grime ("Not Addicted"), house ("Blinded By The Lights"), and bouncy pop music ("Fit But You Know It").
This isn't a concept album that tells an abstract, pompous tale like the prog-rock of yesteryear. In fact, it's not an over-the-top concept album like R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" (an album, that, by the way, came out after Grand, and I would bet dollars was inspired directly by this). This is a story told in multiple acts, with multiple characters, dialogue, inner monologues, plot-twists-- the whole package. The story is what you would expect, for example, in a movie playing at a British double feature opening for Trainspotting, because it has every bit of character as movies like that, and there's even a twist ending. During the gorgeous, mournful "Dry Your Eyes", and I'm not afraid to admit this, I cry. Every damned time. And for a hip-hop concept album about every day life, that's possibly the highest compliment I could give.
