Cast your mind back to the summer of 2004. Mike Skinner – that then-rarest of things, a British rapper who had found not only a uniquely British voice, but a huge mainstream audience – is virtually inescapable. His second album as the Streets, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, is on its way to going quadruple platinum. Reviews have placed his wry, warm depictions of everyday early twentysomething life – drink, drugs, clubs, kebabs, package holidays – in a grand songwriting lineage that includes the Kinks’ Ray Davies and Ian Dury. The attendant single Dry Your Eyes has become ubiquitous: one rumour claims its omnipresence was aided by Skinner’s record label deliberately delaying its release in order to capture the national mood when England inevitably crashed out of Euro 2004.
It was the commercial zenith of Skinner’s career. Nine years after calling time on the Streets, he finds himself in a markedly different musical world from the one that bore him to fame: a British rapper with both a uniquely British voice and a huge mainstream audience is thankfully no longer a novelty. As with Kano’s cover of Has It Come to This? and laudatory tweets from Skepta, the guest list of None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive is testament to Skinner’s impact: a wide-ranging array of younger rappers – Ms Banks, Jimothy Lacoste, Dapz on the Map – alongside Tame Impala and Idles. Furthermore, while rooted in garage, his production style never linked itself explicitly to one musical trend. The beats on None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive are impressively rough-hewn – there’s no sign of the commercial choruses that powered Dry Your Eyes or Never Went to Church – lurching from abstract hip-hop on the title track to post-dubstep on Eskimo Ice, its title presumably a nod to Wiley, to drum’n’bass on Take Me As I Am to Falling Down, based around a piano part that sounds not unlike Heart and Soul, the Hoagy Carmichael song beloved of kids beginning to learn the instrument.
But the passage of time has impacted on Skinner in other ways. Now a 40-year-old father of two, the kind of youth reportage that his most famous songs dealt in are clearly off limits. In addition, some of his more laddy reflections on relationships probably wouldn’t fly in the current moral climate: it’s hard to imagine Fit But You Know It or When You Wasn’t Famous escaping without provoking angry op-eds today. To his credit, Skinner clearly realises this: you couldn’t accuse None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive of being an attempt to revisit former glories.
Instead his lyrics adopt a more scattershot approach. He’s very good at musing on relationships, middle-aged hedonism and technology (Skinner still seems as obsessed with mobile phones as he did during his early 2000s appearance on Later With Jools Holland, where he paused midway through a song to check his messages, a brilliantly insouciant bit of stagecraft) and more than capable of coming up with snappy lines and images: a greasy spoon offers “Brexit breakfast, DayGlo stars”, a moneyed, coked-out nightspot is sharply summed up with the observation that “everyone in this club is smelling their keys”. But they’re frequently lost amid a brand of philosophising that probably sounds more profound when you are, as Falling Down puts it, “three Rizla sheets to the wind”.
It’s not entirely clear how serious Skinner is being when he says “If God had have dropped acid, would God see people?” – probably not very, but the presence of this stuff is still frustrating. You wish he’d stick to what he’s good at, not least because he keeps offering you evidence that he’s still very good at it indeed. I Wish You Loved You As Much As You Loved Him’s domestic violence saga starts with the kind of strong narrative line that used to be his speciality – that made Blinded By the Lights one of pop’s greatest evocations of the ecstasy-fuelled clubbing experience – but Skinner unexpectedly cedes control of the song to his guests Greentea Peng and Donae’O after one verse.
In fact, there are moments where None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive feels more like a showcase for younger talent than a Streets comeback: the best line on You Can’t Afford Me comes courtesy of Ms Banks (“I ain’t gonna lie to you, mate, not even a little / I’m M&S, babes – you got a better chance at Lidl”) while The Poison I Take Hoping You Will Suffer really takes flight when Oscar #Worldpeace takes over the mic. Perhaps that’s to be expected: promoted as a mixtape rather than an album proper, it’s the sound of an artist working out where he fits into an altered musical landscape. The moments of inspiration suggest Skinner should fit in somewhere, but a more conclusive answer doesn’t come.
This week Alexis listened to
McHifi: Bunker to Bunker
DJ Sean Dickson – AKA Hifi Sean – surrounds the gorgeous vocals of David McAlmont with electronics: the end result somehow manages to be both understated and anthemic.
