(Island)A lot has happened since Mike Skinner bowed out in 2011 – and this ‘album of rap duets’ is full of riches
For years, Mike Skinner has been living his best post-superstar life – DJ-ing regularly, raising small Streets. But nearly a decade on from his two 2011 albums, he returns with a banging outing he’s dryly downplayed as “an album of rap duets”.
Here are garage tunes freighted with everyman wisdom, drum’n’bass throwbacks where Skinner’s deadpan Barnet-via-Birmingham delivery meets a crush of on-point contributors, from Ms Banks to Idles. Exes and phone etiquette figure – by now, listeners will know how this wordsmith goes deepest when he seems most shallow. The titles alone are a marker of how well Skinner still dances on the philosopher-party animal cusp.