Customer Reviews

A Grand Don't Come for Free

5 star:		(79)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

Mike Skinner has truely sold his soul to the devil. How else can one explain the greatness achieved on his second record, A Grand Don't Come For Free? His debut was fantastic, but I, like some of my music junkie friends, wanted to see if the tank was spent, if there was another great record to come after such a increedible start.

That question has been answered. Not only did he deliver a better record the second time out, it's almost a concept type album just based on the way it is presented to the listener. Concept album you say? Well, kinda. A Grand Don't Come For Free is basically a day in the life of Mike Skinner. He takes us on very personal, sometimes tough excursions into his mind as well as his surroundings. Rarely does an artist paint such vivid verbal imagery, but from the moment you put it on, you're right there with him. It's almost like a marathon confession and you are the priest behind the divider. Some of the things you here are kinda shocking, not in content but in the way they are everyday to him, the throw-away coupled with the essential, that tends to play havoc with him and you actually feel it.

The single, and lone radio hit, Dry Your Eyes, play out like it's a painful, yet public break-up, and you happened to sitting next to them. Another moment your tramping through a niteclub, high on God knows what, looking for friends who simply are not there (Blinded By The Lights). Desperate stuff indeed.

The album has it's upbeat tracks like Such A Tw*t, but for the most part, it's bigger focus is on the storytelling. Something it does far better than any hip-hop release in recent memory. The Streets second record wakes you up, stays with you all day and then puts you to bed. With any luck, you'll only be exhausted.

I guess if you're looking for cookie cutter, formulaic rap music . . . you know, the kind you can find on just about every popular music station in the country, this cd isn't for you. If you don't like to really take the time to listen to lyrics, catch the meaning of a phrase said in different wording, or god forbid, try to decipher another accent, then this cd isn't for you either.

If you do like music that sounds different from the outset, that has funny lyrics about something other than the amount of cars or bitches one has, this may be right up your alley. Mike Skinner tells a story all through the cd. It took me a couple of listens before I realized that the songs string together and relate to one another. Listening to it, I felt like I was listening to a friend tell me about his past couple of days. I thought it was refreshingly different and there isn't one song that I fast forward through. Most of all, the guy sounds sincere. I believe what he's saying, that he actually may have experienced these things. I also really enjoyed the english slang and down to earth sense of humor thrown in there.

Just judge it for yourself. It isn't like the "rap" music you often hear in the states. In fact, it wasn't even in the rap section of the store I bought it in originally. It was classified as electronica. Whatever the hell it is, I love it and I hope to hear more from the talented Mr. Skinner.

A lot of people seem to think the Streets is a novelty act, a talentless M.C. who gets attention in this country because he raps in a British accent and we, the Americans, will buy anything with a British accent. And I have to admit, when I first listened to this album, that is presciouly what I thought.
But the craziest thing happened when I started listening to it a few times. I realzied that not only is this not a novelty, but Mike Skinner, the main man behind the Streets, maybe one of the most inventive people in music now.
"A Grand Don't Come For Free", the Streets second L.P., is a concept record and should be treated as such. The record works its charms when you listen to the whole thing in its entirety, listening to the music and lyrics in one whole listen. To hear merely a track or two and then pressing stop is to do the record a great injustice.
The record gets started off with "It Was Supposed to Be So Easy", which seems, and in fact is, a song about how the little things can start a day off really bad. The charactor of the record, presumebly Skinner himself, returns the case to a DVD back to the video store but forgets to put the DVD in the place(I have done this myself more than once), can't withdraw money from his ATM because of "insufficent funds", forgot to charge his cell phone, and loses a thousand dollars in savings while his friends stand around. That sets the record in motion, and over the course of the next ten songs, Skinner takes one too many ecstasty pills, gets dumped by his girlfriend, tries in vein and fails to hook up with a girl at a bar, loses more money betting on a soccer game, discovers which one of his friends steals his money and can't get his broken T.V. fixed.
The lyrics are funny at times when they should be and sad and remorseful when they should be. Its too his credit as a songwritter that he can make the most mundane things, watching a sporting event, getting turned down at a bar, into interesting fodder for lyrics.
The music is stronger this time around then it was the first time around, relying less on Wu-Tang esque beats and piano loops, this time around letting the songs breathe and move slowly to a peak.
"A Grand Don't Come For Free" is an acquired taste, but its also a record that deserves a couple listens in its entirety to try to get ahold of. The first time I listened to it I thought it was a joke. After a few times I went out and bought his first record(2002's "Origanel Pirate Material") and have found this record retuning to my disc changer frequently. Give it a few spins and I'd be surprised if it doesn't do the same.

Before I owned this album, I had a few misconceptions about popular music.

1. Music artists are interested in creating a larger-than-life public image. It is very important that people believe the artist is MUCH cooler than they are.

2. Popular music is about hooking people with a catchy single. If you can get a song in someone's head, they'll check out the artist.

3. As genres are blended together, everything is starting to sound the same.

Well, Mike Skinner has made an album that proves that none of these things are true.

First, Skinner is not trying to be cool. In fact, he goes out of the way to be as honest and self-aware as possible. Every emotion and private thought is spelled out, even ones he likely wouldn't share with his closest confidant.

Second, this is a concept album. It tells a story, and progresses in a logical, theatrical way. The songs are infectious, but after you experience the album as a whole, it seems WRONG to separate one song. It would be like releasing only one scene from a movie on DVD.

Finally, this album mixes as many genres of music as any other, yet NOBODY is making music that sounds like this.

I listen to this constantly. Every time I hear it, I grin and shake my head in wonder at its brilliance.

It's as fun and emotionally satisfying as anything you're likely to hear for a long time. Buy it and be amazed.

Yea, I liked OPM like everybody else, so what about this jewel box of tracks? I say this album is a total knock-out, but as many of these reviews demonstrate it ain't for everybody. So as a witness for the defense...

No, you are not going to bang these tracks out of the back of your "Fast and Furious" Signature Edition Mitsubishi Eclipse. The beats are an exercise in disciplined Minimalism and it's a brilliant one at that. It's all Theme and Variation and the themes are generally stripped and spare and the variations are subtle and understated. His attempt to get down to the essential and no more leads those who don't feel it to accuse Skinner of aggravated, amateurish wankery. Not fair. The heartbeat of many of these tracks has a sort of off-kilter syncopation that appears to generate complaints about lack of "flow"; if the beats were all there was I might be in the thumbs down crowd, but the beats are just the skeleton for the lyrical body and the combination of the two works to excellent effect.

Every great album needs some type of appealing flow and here the flow is not in the beats, it's in the lyrics. Don't call it hip hop, don't call it rap. I think it's better descriped as a spoken word album and through the 11 tracks a story gets told. The story is not "Lord of the Rings" - instead it's close, clever, dryly witty observations of an everday lad's life. Now that's a dangerous game, because of the immense potential for losing the listener straight away. But that is Skinner's genius. It isn't boring and that's quite an achievement. No one displays his particular brand of verbal mashup and for an American the lad jargon is funny and different. And then there is the critical medodic element provided by the backing vocals which provide a contrast to the spare beats. All in all, the combination of these elements creates a whole that works. Don't expect this to rock the streets as you cruise down Yourtown, U.S.A. - instead think of it as urban street poetry best listened to with headphones at home.

In the day in age when a rapper can sell millions of albums talking almost exclusively about what he's gonna do to his hoes, how many bullets the most recent blood-feud has spent up in his banana clip, or his cash, Micheal Skinner bursts thru with his fresh, intellegent sophomore release (A Grand Don't Come for Free)that breaths a breath of fresh air into this often times trite and stagnante genre. Seething with wit and replacing the irreverent fun of the first album with a darker more serious tone, this album's year-in-the-life approach to Skinner's life paints a vivid picture of life, love, friends and loss. The songs are constructed w/simple beats and poetic lyrics offset with Skinners cockney delivery. I've had this album since it came out and have listened to it almost contuniously since then; while those of you who have a love for Snoop's weed talk or 50 Cent talkin' his street hate probably won't find what your looking for here, people who like deep lyrics and vivid stories definatly have something to look forward to. This is my favorite album of 2004.

This album by Mike Skinner, AKA 'The Streets,' is even better than his first album 'Original Pirate Material' but at first flinch it doesn't seem that way. That's because these songs seem toned down compared to the madness employed on Pirate Material songs like "too much brandy." But, listened to as a complete work, it's clear that 'A Grand' is not only better than 'Pirate' - it's also probably one of the best albums ever to come out of the electronica/trip-hop generation.

Skinner tosses the listener into, one might guess, a semi-autobiographical gritty street-realist story about a drugged up English youth and what happens when he loses 'a grand' of cash and his life begins to spin out of control. The rhymes seem plain - much less slangy than 'pirate' - but that adds to the realism. In fact, everything about this album has the marks of master storytelling. Scene setting, forshadowing, comedy, catharsis and resolution. So it's emotionally moving stuff, and, based on the 'pirate,' from the unlikeliest of sources.

And then there's the music. It's creative stuff - from the comically classical 'it was supposed to be so easy' to the menacing swooping rhythms (...)not addicted (...). And then there's the brit-pop spazout 'fit but don't you know it,' complete with jangly ska-like guitars and drunken mash-up lyrics.

Trust me - even if drugged out English youth-life is not your thing - you will learn and be entertained by this album. A+

You I really liked OPM a lot, but like with a lot of hip hop, I found it at times repetitive and sometimes could not listen to the whole thing. I found it pretty groundbreaking though. So, that is why this album comes as such a surprise.

Some of my favorite albums take a lot of listens to like them and the first time I heard this album, I didn't get it and I didn't really like it. After hearing this album a couple times, I really start to like it. After listening to this album a couple more times after that, I started to get it.

Yes, this is a concept album and a subtle one at that. This is an album where I've actually related to the artist about love, friends, loss and even phones. The song, "Blinded by the Light" reminds me of a time I was supposed to meet some friends at a club and just sat there feeling alone. "Could Well Be In" reminds me of what it's like to meet someone you really like and not trying to seem to eager to get to know her. The point I am making is that Mike seems to take topics that are not that big of a deal, but in the grand scheme of things, mean a hell of a whole lot. This is like listening to a spoken word album.

I agree with one reviewer who said that this is the best album of the year so far. That said, this is definitely not for everyone. If you're looking for great beats and something to show off your sound system, this album is not for you. But if you are looking for something different and will challenge you, than this album is definitely for you.

Whether it's a reaction against the MP3's pending usurpation of the album format or just simple coincidence, the concept record is enjoying a small comeback at the moment. But perhaps careful not to echo the supposed sins of bloat and misbegotten puffery that characterized the psychedelic and progressive rock eras, many of the artists responsible for the best recent concept records-- Sufjan Stevens' Greetings from Michigan, the Magnetic Fields' i, and The Fiery Furnaces' upcoming Blueberry Boat-- share a willful intimacy that borders on the quaint.
On A Grand Don't Come for Free-- the follow-up to his internationally acclaimed debut, Original Pirate Material-- Mike Skinner audaciously weaves an 11-track narrative over an often bare and inert musical backdrop, one that acts more like a film score than the foundation of a pop record. The plot is pretty bare-bones: boy loses money, boy meets girl, boy loses girl. But by focusing as much on the minutiae of life as on its grand gestures, the impact of Skinner's album-- essentially a musical update of "The Parable of the Lost Coin" peppered with Seinfeld's quotidian anxiety and, eventually, a philosophical examination of Skinner's lifestyle and personal relationships-- transcends its seemingly simple tale.
Cynics and/or detractors could sneer that Skinner's sonics are too slight and that his flow is too rigid-- particularly when compared to "other" hip-hop artists-- without being entirely off the mark: Skinner's awkward, sometimes offbeat delivery is even more charmingly/frustratingly clumsy here than it was on Original Pirate Material, and the record's beats and melodies are subservient to its story. But while those perceived weaknesses may make A Grand a non-starter for those who disliked Skinner's debut, trying to place his square peg into the round holes of either hip-hop or grime/eski seems a mistake. After all, this is a record that starts with its protagonist trying to return a DVD and ends with him chastising himself for improperly washing his jeans. In between, he spends time at an Ibiza burger stand, smokes spliffs on his girlfriend's couch, grumbles about a broken TV, sorts out his epilepsy pills, philosophizes about the nature of friendship, and grumbles about the failures of mobile technology. Clearly, Skinner is on a singular place on the pop landscape.
Echoing his ability to compensate for his own musical weaknesses, Skinner manages to turn his character's personal shortcomings into A Grand's strengths: Communication failures, both technological and human, allow Skinner to deftly examine body language and small gestures. His character's lack of prospects and disconnect with work and family highlight the importance of friendship (especially, perhaps, to young urban adults). His crippling self-doubt (at the record's start, any hiccup in his day is proof that he should just spend it in bed) and need for approval from others makes his solipsistic epiphany all the more heart-wrenching. The album's ultimate contradiction may be that while Skinner's life is seemingly driftless, his understandable attempt to tether it to another human being-- any other human being-- often causes him more harm than good.
Considering that Skinner showed such a gift for post-laddish humor on Original Pirate Material, the most surprising aspect of A Grand may be that, here, he's at his best when he's at his most sentimental. His love and/or relationship songs overflow with melancholy and the inability to express emotion at crucial moments. In short, they're pretty truthful and sometimes painfully familiar. Along with the drug haze of "Blinded by the Lights", A Grand's best moments are a pair of tracks that bookend the story's main boy/girl relationship: The first-date track "Could Well Be In" ("I looked at my watch and realized right then that for three hours we been in conversation/ Before she put her phone down, she switched to silent and we carried on chatting for more than that again") and the dissolution of that same relationship on "Dry Your Eyes", a tongue-tied, heart-in-throat ballet of non-verbal expression.
That Skinner is able to coax so much from a cliché-heavy, 50-minute examination of solipsism and self-pity is a tribute to his ability to reflect and illuminate life's detail. By stressing his paranoia and doubts ("It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them," he blubbers as he loses a domestic dispute), he deftly avoids the melodrama of today's network reality TV. Instead, his approach echoes the faux reality of The Office (which shares a non-ending ending with A Grand) and the me-first neediness of its "star" David Brent (whose final-episode self-actualization echoes Skinner's). Like The Office, Skinner's anthropological humanism typically focuses on either the mundane or disappointing-- and, let's face it, life is most often one or the other--- but he does so with such endearing intimacy and bare honesty that it's easy to give yourself over to the album's narrative on first listen and, perhaps just as importantly, to want to revisit it over and over again.
Scott Plagenhoef

If you own or have listened to Mike Skinner's previous album 'Original Pirate Material', you should know right now that this album is not of the same ken, although the rap style is more or less the same. The songs on this album are not dancy or aggressive and they don't stand very well on their own.

That's okay, though. They weren't meant to be like that. Mike has gone and avoided doing the thing that loses so many new bands their popularity --- he didn't try to make a second first album. Like I said, this album is a CD of a different color. It's a story; it was written as a coherent block of Skinner's life (whether real or imaginary, I don't know), and it feels as much like a book as a piece of music.

That's the coolest part about this album, I think. It's meant to be played from start to finish with no tracks skipped, and everyone I know who has heard it has agreed with me that the final moments of the last song make the listener feel the same way that reading the last page of a really cool book does.

I give it five stars for originality, for lyrical quality, and for...whatever that feeling I just described is.