Original Pirate Material by The Streets

“Grab something to eat: Maccy D’s or KFC”
Times 100 Best Albums of the Decade: No.12
NME 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade: No.9
Guardian Albums of the Decade: No.1
Pitchfork Top 200 Albums of the Decade: No.36
Uncut 150 Albums of the Decade: No.43

There are so many reasons why this record should be risible: the jarring Estuary English, the forced messing around in the studio with the lads, the mundane subject material …and yet, and yet, it’s quite brilliant. The Streets’ 2002 debut album was (and is) totally of its time, combining consistently amusing or poignant lyrics with some extraordinarily powerful samples, loops and original music. More than anyone before or since, Mike Skinner showed that you didn’t have to be straight outta Compton to make a great spoken-word record (I hesitate to call it rap). More importantly, you didn’t have to put on a false accent and pretend you were from some ghetto thousands of miles away.

Original Pirate Material reflects everyday English life so well that it’s not at all unfair to say it inherits the tradition of The Kinks and Madness. Whether you like rap or not, this reinvents and localises it into something we can relate to here. Well done to the NME for hitting the nail on the head by describing it as “an album that owes a lot to garage, but also quite a lot to the all-night garage”.

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