The Streets

Rapidly racking up both critical and commercial success, The Streets burst onto the scene late in 2001 with the Top 20 success of their debut single, Has It Come To This? The legendary “sex, drugs and the dole” anthem set the scene for its parent album, Original Pirate Material, to receive Mercury Prize and BRIT Award nominations, and to go platinum in the process.

NME rightly dubbed The Streets’ main man, Mike Skinner, as “a major talent” during this first flush of success, and the feverishly creative vocalist, rapper and multi-instrumentalist has enhanced his reputation ever since. Skinner’s magpie-like approach to his craft has led him to create a truly original sound by fusing strands of garage, hip-hop and left-field pop. Subsequent chart-devouring Streets albums, among them A Grand Don’t Come For Free, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living and Computers And Blues, have included the likes of Fit But You Know It, Prangin’ Out and Going Through Hell: brilliant, hard-hitting vignettes reflecting 21st-century British working-class life with absolutely no holds barred whatsoever.