The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free

Ok, wrap your head around this one: A British Rap Concept Album. Sound impossible? Nah, it’s the new disc from Mike Skinner’s alter ego project The Streets. A Grand Don't Come For Free is the follow-up to The Streets’ 2002 critically acclaimed debut Original Pirate Material, and it gives us another view into the common life in London. Bordering on something akin to spoken word with a cockney accent, Skinner weaves a sordid tale of losing a thousand quid, meeting a girl, popping pills, battling with his mates, and brings it all full-circle at the end by finding his cash and feeling a little wiser and a little exhausted. It’s sort of hard to describe what The Streets do because the natural rhythm of Skinner’s speech is not at all like anything in American rap. (A friend of mine who's much more hip on terms than I called it "dancehall," so I'll go with that.) I would recommend that you check out the disc at your local indie store before taking the plunge if you don’t already know you like it. Save the surprisingly radio-ready “Fit but you know it,” most of the tracks are basically conversational vocals laid down over heavy beats that vary in tempo. For me, the whole record is brilliant, but there are a few tracks that really need to be pointed out. The pouty girl sharing vocal duties on “Get out of my house” trades nasty snipes with Skinner in what is easy to peg as the breakup scene in the story. This is followed by the aforementioned “Fit but you know it.” I can’t get enough of this punky song and can definitely attribute some of that to sort of feeling like I’m in on the joke. (There are definite pluses to know what to “pull” means and what the TopShop is - one of my fav stores for trendy gear) But even if you’ve not got the background in British slang, you can figure out pretty easily what’s going on. So when the chorus says, “I’m not trying to pull you, even though I would like to. I think you are really fit. You’re fit, but my gosh, don’t you know it?” He’s basically saying, “Yeah, you’re hot, and I’d like to get with you, but you totally know you’re hot…so perhaps not.” See? It’s easy. Although it would be easy to go into a grand… assuming that this is just another slice of British life, don’t think that this is simple music, or for that matter, trite. Songs like “DRY YOUR EYES” show a softer side of Skinner, and presumably all men, at the end of a relationship without being wimpy or seeming out of place. Basically, the storytelling on this record is superb, and I’m truly impressed by not only the catchiness of the beats but the quality of the lyrics. At its core, it’s Truth, and I think that’s probably the main edge that A Grand Don't Come For Free has. Strip down the cool accent, the good beats and the funky rhythms, and you’ve got one hell of a good story. Universal truths in vivid color. [www.the-streets.co.uk]