I would like to thank J. Blount and Tracer Hand

But why Brixton? He is from Brum, right? You say so yourself - is Brixton just the definitive home of the 'geezer'?

Skinner was originally from Birmingham but now lives in Brixton (actually this is the only raised-eyebrow point in the review: Skinner's isn't a "thick" Brummie accent, in fact he sounds like he's doing his best to cover it up - but that's a quibble). Also it is the definitive home of the genre cf the 1Xtra advert!

And yes the Duck is a pub!

Is it not "the dock"? I always thought that's what it was but I stand corrected I guess.

i think tom's probably right about the accent thing, although i grew up in birmingham and now live in london and my accent is much closer to mike skinner than ozzy osbourne (occasionally i think this is a shame. but not often).

if it's the duck in loughborough junction (which certainly looked like a venue for all manner of dodginess) it seemed to have changed into a style bar when i was round there a couple of weeks ago.

in years to come there'll be a blue plaque.

Also it is legitimate if you're reviewing a UK hip-hop album for a US market which probably won't have heard English-accent rapping before let alone the kind of slang-heavy lingo Skinner uses. Of course the first reaction is going to be wow-thats-weird and an honest reviewer shd reflect that.

maybe now record stores in Minneapolis will actually stock it (other than import vinyl, yikes). Been looking for it since it turned up here, no luck.

as someone with a *vaguely* similar background to mike skinner his rapping still sounds funny and different and odd and jarring to my ears. that's part of what's good about it. if you've never before been exposed to the strata of english life he plays around with (and if you live in minniapolis why the hell should you have been?) then it must sound absolutely mental.

also, one of the things i like about american hip hop is that i *do* laugh at the nutty things they talk about and the funny ways they say them.

I'm not sure how far MM was saying that though, Bob. And non-American rappers often *do* sound odd / jarring if they rap in (something close to) their own accents.

To me, Michelangelo's review points up some of what sticks out about the LP to me: the weird flow, the strangeness of the vocabulary in a rap context, the clarity of the character(s) on the record (and I'm anything but anti UK rap).

You should order it from Canada; It's been available for months, it's only $11 US.

That said, it's discouraging to hear that "No one [you] know in radio - commercial or college - is in the least bit familiar or curious about the Streets," and it makes me worry that some of the more reactionary critics (i.e. the Lucinda Williams set-aside voters) will follow suit, e.g. "oh it's just a novelty record big deal." People in the States aren't hearing it as a garage record, which they wouldn't care about anyway--they're hearing it as a rap record, which means it's in trouble since the rapping sounds all wrong to American and/or b-boy ears. Nevertheless, its cult is rabid enough here, plus this year has been so weak albumswise, that I'm pretty sure it'll do better than 20. Of course, I also thought Avalanches/Jaxx/Daft Punk would place top ten and they ran 11-13-25, so what do I know?

Mix CD-R, eh? You're on.