May 15, 2009

Hip Hop Happens in Britain

Filed under: Hip Hop — Tags: — Alex @ 12:38 pm

The Streets

I’m writing a feature about hip hop concept albums for my friends at Snap! Magazine right now and as a result I’ve been listening to The Streets album A Grand Don’t Come For Free lately. The album is about a guy who loses 1000$ dollars and his trials trying to recoup it. I was surprised to see Pitchfork give it a whopping 9.1, it’s the kind of album that is slowly growing on me. It took me some time to get used to Mike Skinner’s voice and cadence. This is one of my favourites, the story is simple and believable. The chorus talks about how the character heard on tv that when a girl plays with her hair, she really likes you. The girl he’s with is playing with her hair so he reckons he “might well be in”.

I found this video the other night which is apparently some “experiment” mike skinner undertook with a bunch of his friends. I can’t really understand what the experiment is because all that happens is he buys drinks for everyone and pours huge amounts of alcohol into the mouths of women. Good scientific method Mike Skinner.

The Streets – Could Well Be In (zshare)

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8 Responses to “Hip Hop Happens in Britain”

  1. Be Rad says:
    May 15, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    A Grand…was my my first Streets purchase. The rest is history. Mike Skinner is well versed and close to genius. I really like what he is doing with the twitter platform as far as putting out new songs.

    I always loved this song because it reminds me of all those times getting lost in conversation…

  2. Prova says:
    May 15, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Welcome to Blighty. We do a good line in concept hip-hop over the other side of the pond. In a similar vein you may also want to check out Skinnyman’s debut ‘Council Estate of Mind’ — Samples from the 70s Borstal movie ‘Scum’ throughout. It doesn’t get any more British than that me old china.

  3. stuart says:
    May 16, 2009 at 3:15 am

    just gotta agree with prova, council estate of mind is an excellent album, well worth checking out, skinnymans never got the recognition he deserves.an mike skinner aint just close to genius, he is there, musically anyway

  4. Damian says:
    May 16, 2009 at 10:30 am

    Council Estate of Mind by Skinnyman is an awesome record but it doesn’t sample ‘Scum’; it uses the film ‘Made in Britain’ starring a young Tim Roth.

    This is probably the best Streets record, wonderful scope, humour and pathos at its core, work of genius.

  5. Osc. says:
    May 16, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    Can I please bring Dutch hip hop to your attention? It’s from Holland aka The Netherlands (of all places). Yes yes oh yae. Check out De Jeugd Van Tegenwoordig or The Opposites. The best thing is you don’t understand a word of it cause it’s in Dutch! :D

    I hope I can include html code here or else this would look stupid:

    Peace.

  6. Alex says:
    May 16, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    I will take a look at the dutch hip hop. thanks for the tip and for reading.

  7. Osc. says:
    May 17, 2009 at 1:01 am

    Here’s the youtube channel of Holland’s premier hip hop label TopNotch: http://www.youtube.com/TopNotchNL.

    Btw, Skinnyman rules big time. Also listen to Taskforce, he was in that outfit as well.

  8. The Streets’ Could Well Be In | stinkytofu.org | Andrew M. Lin says:
    May 18, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    [...] Via: The Heart Attack Club [...]

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