Everything is Borrowed by The Streets

After the runaway success of 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come for Free and 2006’s The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living, local city poet Mike Skinner, was doomed to follow in the tragic footsteps of so many artists before him. This pattern begins with your gritty debut, then comes the rise to stardom and finally the release of an ‘album that means something’. A shudder must have run down the spine of every right-minded Streets fan, when the words “This album started off life as parables” spilled onto Skinner’s Myspace page, and sure enough Everything is Borrowed is his painfully over thought attempt at profundity.

Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against the brummy boy rapper. His dry mockney wit paired with harsh danceable beats was once a lethal combination, but now it seems he has taken the label ‘urban poet’ far too seriously. Everything is Borrowed reflects Skinner’s fatal misconception; he now thinks he is qualified to comment on such topics as faith, suicide and the fate of humanity.

This latest album sees Skinner joining the ranks of aging rappers, who have attempted to breathe new life into their established style, by replacing brash beats and bass with big band brass and elaborate arrangements. The opening title track is reminiscent of Jay-Z’s ‘Izzo’, but where there should be slick rhymes and smoother-than-butter bravado, there is Skinner’s monotone drawl. Whilst his change in backing is admirable, it does draw out the inadequacies of his writing and delivery.

One group this album is sure to please is those who have despised The Streets from day one. Those who found his legendary status as a great pop writer laughable, have plenty of evidence to support this view within the words of Everything is Borrowed. In his attempts to make a more focused and socially valid work, Skinner finds himself making broad sweeping statements, using the most clichéd imagery imaginable. ‘The Way of the Dodo’ is a prize example, which is so ineffective that it becomes very difficult to believe that this song about global warming is at all sincere.

There is some solace to be found in the more danceable tracks, which hark back to his prime. ‘Never Give In’ with it’s funky bass line and chorus “I’ll never give in ‘till your laying with me/ You may as well tell me when that day will be”, sounds like he got slap bass lessons and a rhyming dictionary for Christmas, but it is nevertheless enjoyable. The likes of ‘The Sherry End’ and ‘Alleged Legends’ are further successes and the closing track ‘The Escapist’, reminds us of what made The Streets such a phenomenon in the first place. This song with all its orchestral splendour really shouldn’t work alongside the vocal, yet somehow it does.

Skinner has announced that he is “fucking sick” of all that is expected and associated with ‘The Streets’, as he has repeatedly said the next album will be his last under his famed alter ego. Whilst this is surely not what he meant, it seems that the expectation for him to be the poet he is so often labelled, has indeed been detrimental. The music is powerful, and at times exquisite but the lyrical content suggests delusions of grandeur. If there is indeed a message behind Everything is Borrowed it is this: don’t believe your own hype and under no circumstances rhyme jets with best.