The Streets - Streets Score
Writing about The Streets earlier really got me in the mood for giving them a listen on the way home this evening. Although I waxed lyrical about how good ‘A Grand Don’t Come For Free’ is, tonight I put on the ‘All Got Our Runnins’ EP.
It was released between ‘Original Pirate Material’ and AGDCFF, and to some extent deals with the issues raised by the first album, specifically criticism of Mike Skinner himself and just how much he was accurately portraying life for the modern-day twentysomething guy. It also had a couple of remixes of tracks from OPM, of which the ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ remix is the standout. That remix features Dizzee Rascal and members of Roll Deep, and is such an offshoot of the original that pretty much only the title lyric remains intact.
The track I’ve posted here is the best song on the EP. The beat is a prototype/fore-runner of that on ‘Blinded By The Lights’, and the lyrics are intensely introspective. Skinner deals with a few criticisms of his first album, and in tongue-in-cheek fashion also addresses a couple of issues with the videos from that album.
But it’s powerful because it simply comes straight out and hits these criticisms face on. Skinner admits (sort of) that he’s not out on the streets 24/7; he’s a “beat junkie”, not someone face-to-face with the world around him. But how is this any different from gangsta rappers who live in a world of bling, bitches and bounty, yet rap about how hard it is on the streets?
This track is right up there in my favourite Streets songs, on a purely lyrical basis.
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