Back Cover Idea (Track Listing)- Digi Pak

I Like the idea of The Streets album, Original Pirate Material's back cover, listing their tracks.

I Like the way it looks natural and shows the the genre of their music, the rough urban nature of the style is reflected in the naturalness of the artwork. The audience can relate to the simplicity of the design, which makes it more appealing, as well as reflecting the bands style of music. The impression given is that of a 'sloppy' manner which is reinforced by the lead vocaltist/MC, Mike Skinner's quirky lyrics and vocal style.


It represents a male lower class generation and the bands journey to fame. The band started out in 1994 as a project. The lead vocalist/MC, Mike Skinner moved from Birmingham to Brixton to pursue his recording career, whilst on his 'journey' he tried starting up a record label. Mike Skinner was influenced by America's MC's including, Wu-Tang Clan and the rapper Nas, especially Nas's album, 'Illmatic'. Skinner's angle on his music was to show the emerging UK Garage sound with the use of lyrical content that reflected that of the time.

 It wasn't until 2001 that the Locked On record label whom had had previous success with The Artful Dodger ft. Craig David track, later released 'Has it Come to This?' track under the name of 'The Streets'.

The track proved to be a hit and reached number 18 in the UK charts of October 2001, this proved to be a breakthrough for 'The Streets' and meant that Skinner's direction he wanted to take proved to be a huge success from their debut album, 'Original Pirate Material'. The direction in which Skinner wanted to take was that of making UK garage that reflected the lifestyle of club goers in the UK.

"Journalist Simon Reynolds identified the album's lyrical content as capturing UK Garage's "submerged reality" as a genre not based in nightclubs. Outside of London in the late 1990s, UK Garage was rarely played in clubs but was instead found on pirate radio stations, reflected by the albums title.^{" - http://www.wikipedia.org/}