english rapper mike skinner, aka, the streets released his fourth studio album october 7, 2008. the optimistic and philosophical everything is borrowed marks a departure from his previous work that dealt with issues relating to his fame.  unlike his american hip-hop counterparts, mike is not gangster, or  for that matter, even interested in the american hip-hop lifestyle.  if anything, he is part of the  "garage movement", a term referring to modern electronic dance music generally connected to  early/mid-1990's u.k. house music.

at the age of 15, mike began recording songs during his time off from working at local fast food restaurants.  during college in the late 1990's, the streets started as a multimember band but quickly became a one man show.  in 2002, his debut album, original pirate material released to critical acclaim and was named entertainment weekly's "album of the year".  the highly successful 2004 follow up, a grand don't come for free, reached number 1 on the u.k. album charts. 

the streets' music is under produced, resulting in an deliberately amateurish sound.  in fact, mike was quoted as saying that the "production side of it is just purely because i work on my own and i don't have a really expensive mix engineer to finish it all off," he goes on to say, "i don't try and be ugly, i just look at the small things that are going on, and they become part of the story."

mike recently stated on his myspace page that the next record, computers and blues, will be released in around 2011.  he said that it will be the streets final album because he is sick of the connotations connected to the name.

click here to listen to an interview produced by npr's day to day on july 14, 2004.  don't forget, the album cover image always links to sample songs and the band's image to their website.

the streets has a ton of european dates scheduled.  check here to see if he's coming to your favorite european town.

as always, please buy this album from your local independent music store by people who know and love music and not from retailers like wal-mart (soulless, globally-homogenizing, community-killers) or i-tunes (albums should be listened to as an entire composition with album cover and liner notes in hand).  incidentally, these two companies sell more music than any other retailer in the united states.  that my friend, bites.