UK HIP-HOP: LEGEND STATUS

Mike Skinner. Also known as: THE STREETS. He has an odd, jump cut flow. Everything he cuts out of his lips is pure fucking gold. I love Mike's style. I'm going to give you guys a bit of catch up on the best UK guy in the game. Yeah, he's white. No, he isn't UK Eminem...Even though they call him that in America. He's more the UK Mos Def. It's Wednesday at around 5AM CST, 3AM PST, 6AM EST...But regardless, here's the most blow your mind, I shouldn't like this music but I love it list of Mike Skinner's finest. Enjoy. Oh...Before I Start, I should remind you that this cat isn't underground that I'm trying to boost. SOURCE Magazine loves this cat. So does Q. And Rolling Stone's review of his debut album, ORIGINAL PIRATE MATERIAL, was 4/5 stars. Here's the review.

The Streets now have a name, and it's twenty-three-year-old musical mastermind Mike Skinner. He's audacious enough to title a track on his first album "Let's Push Things Forward" -- and inventive enough to deliver. The relentlessly smart Original Pirate Material blends two-step garage beats with conversational rapping, low-key in effect but bold in content: "We first met through a shared view/She loved me and I did, too." Skinner is from Birmingham, England, which means that some of his monologues sound like Ozzy Osbourne, only with better beats. The rhythms are spare but groovy; Skinner enhances them with melancholy keyboards and orchestral samples.

The United Kingdom has produced very few rappers of note (Slick Rick and Monie Love are among the exceptions). But Skinner's raps are not only fluid and clever, they're pervaded with Britishness; guys are "geezers," girls are "birds" and weak rhymes are "rhubarb and custard verses." That sense of place goes beyond vocabulary: Original Pirate Material evokes the gray British skies and details the mundane world of English youth -- broke and wasting time on the PlayStation. Skinner has said that the name the Streets was not meant to evoke the mean streets of tough urban life but rather, empty, anonymous concrete.

On "The Irony of It All," Skinner stages an argument as good as Eminem's "Guilty Conscience," playing both Terry, a drunken lout, and Tim, a mellow engineering student who likes to smoke weed. They debate criminality and provoke each other; on the evidence of this excellent debut, few people can challenge Skinner right now except himself.

#10: THE STREETS...WEAK BECOME HEROES


#9: THE STREETS...PRANGIN' OUT


#8: THE STREETS...CANT CON AN HONEST JON


#7: THE STREETS...WHEN YOU WASN'T FAMOUS


#6: THE STREETS...DRY YOUR EYES


#5: THE STREETS...TURN THE PAGE


#4: THE STREETS...HAS IT COME TO THIS?


#3: THE STREETS...GEEZERS NEED EXCITEMENT


#2: THE STREETS...IRONY OF IT ALL


#1: THE STREETS...FIT BUT YOU KNOW IT