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MP3 Live: The Streets is waning
Mike Skinner's performance at The Fillmore was the embodiment of a talented rapper gone woefully awry.
"I make bangers, not anthems/leave that to the Artful Dodger."
Mike Skinner
Rarely before has an artist so eloquently predicted the course of his own demise as UK rapper The Streets did with that lyric, from "Push Things Forward" off his 2002 debut album, Original Pirate Material.
His performance at the Fillmore in San Francisco last night relied heavily on his new songs, most of which are more anthems than bangers, including smoothed-out R&B and songs that would fit into a cheesy off-Broadway musical.
The Streets--real name Mike Skinner--made his well-deserved rep with exceedingly clever and witty aural glimpses of life as a pint-loving, club-going 20-something in the UK. Pirate Material was chock full of deft lyrical turns over swift, double-time garage beats that commanded listeners' attention and just flat-out made you laugh and bob your head.
But sometime between 2004's A Grand Don't Come for Free, which saw Skinner avoid the sophomore slump, and The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, which was released in April, Skinner decided he could sing.
He can't.
To bolster his own flaccid singing on the choruses last night, Skinner brought along Leo the Lion, a beefcake R&B singer/hypeman whose overly demonstrative gesturing distracted from his (at times) soulful voice. But the choruses for some of the new songs, and Leo's singing of them, are so over-the-top schmaltz--particularly the painfully cheesy fidelity hymn "All Goes Out the Window"--that it wouldn't have been a surprise to see Nathan Lane walk out on the Fillmore stage for a verse.
It wasn't all a train wreck, though. Living features some wordplay that is on par with its predecessors, and Skinner has the commanding stage presence you'd expect from someone so adept at the gift of gab. His banter with the crowd, specifically with one chap in the front row for whom he poured several shots of bourbon during the set, was hilarious at times. And as has become his wont in recent years, Skinner leapt off the balcony into the crowd to close the show.
Skinner did play a handful of songs off Pirate Material and Grand, and in the hands of his tight three-piece band, those tracks showed off his razor sharp, self-deprecating lyrics. But the banter, the charisma, and the nifty prose weren't enough to offset a rapper who has gone woefully awry.
Although Skinner was a disappointment, his talent is undeniable.
The same can't be said for opener Lady Sovereign, who inconceivably landed a record deal with Jay-Z's Def Jam despite lacking any redeeming quality other than a feistiness that is cute in a Punky Brewster sort of way. In a short set of tracks off her upcoming album, the pint-sized rapper displayed minimal stage presence, a grating voice, and an overall amateur-level performance.
Sovereign's sound fits into the mold that M.I.A. carved out with last year's Arular, but without M.I.A.'s London Sri Lankan patois, magnetism, and ability to rhyme.
The remaining dates of the Streets' tour with Lady Sovereign:
6-14 Boulder, CO - Fox Theatre
6-16 Austin, TX - La Zona Rosa
6-18 Manchester, TN - Bonnaroo
6-21 Boston, MA - Avalon Ballroom
6-22 Montreal, Quebec - Spectrum de Montreal
6-23 Toronto, Ontario - The Phoenix
6-24 Chicago, IL - Intonation Music Festival
6-27 New York, NY - Webster Hall
7-01 Roskilde, Denmark - Roskilde Festival
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