THE STREETS

As the new millennium's cockney Samuel Pepys, Mike Skinner's 2002 debut album, Original Pirate Material was a fresh and witty take on British urban life - via the bookies, the nightclub and the late-night kebab queue. 2004's brilliant concept album, A Grand Don't Come Free was, similarly, a spellbinding narrative with single, Fit But You Know It a perfect distillation of package holiday mating rituals. North London born Skinner moved to Birmingham with his family when he was five where he spent most of his adolescence trying to make music which sounded like Run DMC and Snoop Doggy Dogg. His most recent album, The Hardest Way To Make A Living, detailed our hero's trials and tribulations now he's a bona fide pop star. Consequently cries of self-indulgence followed but ultimately, Skinner is just trying to tell us how it is, sending himself up, as he always has..