Heave Media

Everything is Borrowed Lacks a Return

Skinner’s success skins him alive.

The Streets

Everything Is Borrowed

Released on Oct 14, 2008

It’s hard to hate Mike Skinner, the name behind London’s cold-cutting hip-hop artist known as The Streets.  There’s a certain bit in everyone that never wants to put the underdog down, always wants the guy who isn’t about arena-rocking and sex/drugs/rock n’ roll, who would rather rap about exactly what’s going on in the London streets.  In past albums, we’ve heard all the stories of the streets straight from The Streets’ mouth: getting mugged, being drug-addled and addicted, fighting his way out of the gutter – through it all he remained unabashed.

Everything is Borrowed presents us with a Mike Skinner who’s gotten over all of that.  He has money.  He has a family.  His philosophizing doesn’t involve the state of heroin acquisition, rather, the state of the world.  Mike Skinner is stable.  Unfortunately, this makes for a record that’s stable, standard and boring.

With an increased budget and plenty of studio time, Skinner moves away from his typical drum machine beats that pleasantly fell to the background when coupled with his tense, visceral lyrics.  Nearly this entire record, however, lacks that fuzz and grizzle that defined his sound.  He populates every track with real musicians and real sound loops that ache to step to the front of your ear.  In fact, these arrangements might be the pinnacle of Skinner’s musical career, with poppy loops and brilliant string arrangements that would sit just as well in your ears while grocery shopping as they would to get people past that awkward introduction at a crowded but dying party.

Everything is Borrowed, lyrically, isn’t so much a document of the streets of London as it is a document of suburban apathy and self-prescribed nouveau philosophy.  Vocally, he puts forth what we’ve come to expect.  His voice still carries that distinctly British syncopation that makes him annunciate every syllable and, thus, make his rapping feel more like a spoken word piece than a musical movement. 

This usually works well for The Streets, as it provided the listener with an acute and accessible vision of what he was talking about.  Now, however, with money in his bank account as well as rolled in his sock, his lyrics center around things like the most bland parts of existentialism (as in the lead-off and title track).  The empty morals continue on “Way of the Dodo,” reminding us that the Earth will be here after people are gone along with a pathetically base critique of Western belief on “Alleged Legends.”

In the end, Everything is Borrowed simply fails to deliver.  I hate to say that glitz and glam kills artistry and base an entire review on that, but with Skinner, it appears to ring true.  He has no hardship left to rap about and this record reflects the complete lack of struggle and angst that made him so interesting, accessible and downright scholarly.  With his life change to the upper class, Skinner has been forced to go back to undergrad. 

 

 

Posted by Mark Steffen on Oct 21, 2008 @ 7:00 am

the streets