KEY POINTS:
British rapper Mike Skinner is still remembered for penning the lyrics to the gut-wrenchingly painful break-up song Dry Your Eyes, followed by a brutally honest third album that laid bare his inner thoughts on the ups but mainly downs of fame.
So it
comes as a surprise to learn that Skinner, aka The Streets, is back with a much happier and upbeat new album.
It's early morning for Skinner when he chats to View down the phone from the North London home he shares with his mother. But neither the early morning wake-up call nor the dodgy phone connection put a damper on his spirits.
The next day he'll be jetting off to Paris for a warm-up concert ahead of his European tour and he's every bit as optimistic as his new album Everything is Borrowed so uplifting it's been dubbed the record to pull Britain out of its economic woes.
"I wanted to make something that was unquestionably positive," he says in a slightly less Cockney accent than the one with which he delivers his songs. "It's taken a long time but it's great. I'm really, really confident in it."
It's a very different Skinner to the one that brought us The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living two years ago which, although it shot to number one in the UK, was slammed by the critics for being self-pitying and too cynical.
It was the response he got, says Skinner, which drove him to make music with a much more peaceful and positive vibe and to return to the buoyancy evident on his 2002 Mercury Prize-nominated debut Original Pirate Material.
"I don't think my dryness came across in the last album, so I just wanted to produce something more positive this time" says the 29-year-old, who began writing hip-hop and garage music as a teenager growing up in Birmingham.
The change in direction has seen Skinner sacrifice some of the autobiographical detail he poured into The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living.
"The new album is completely honest like my last one. You have to paint a nice picture and that's what I do, I paint a nice picture," he says.
But, in the same breath he recognises it's also not exactly void of truth either: "I don't think it's possible to not be autobiographical in an indirect way because you're always expressing what you want to say even if the characters aren't real. "And, the details are a lot more honest than a lot of other rappers and songwriters," he says.
It's not only the honesty of Skinner's lyrics that make him stand out in Britain's bustling hip-hop scene it's also the emotion with which they're delivered.
He concedes expressing sorrow, pain and joy sets him apart from his mostly male adversaries, whose music is largely fuelled by anger. He also reluctantly admits he's probably helped a fair few fans through break ups with his songs. But he's quick to brush off suggestions his music has broken barriers for those reasons.
"I don't feel like I'm putting myself out on a limb. To me they're stories and a story that's well told and honest is no different to watching an episode of Home & Away," he says.
Whether or not he'll admit to the impact his music has had on others, it's clear Skinner puts a huge amounts of effort into making sure he gets things just right. And, he says making the new album was two-and-a-half years of hard grind.
"It's a very disciplined piece of work not necessarily more disciplined than the previous albums but I'm in a place that feels new. In that sense it was a little bit more difficult to find the good stuff for it."
But he lacked no inspiration when it came to finding the happiness he needed to draw upon to write the songs. "I can find that anywhere really. I think you just have to want to do it and that's all it came down to."
He did, however, make a rule that he wasn't going to reference modern life but rather strip it back to basics people and nature. "That was very hard to pull off," he says.
But nevertheless he achieves it from the outset with the album's heart-warming title track, which muses on making the most of all that life throws at you. It sees Skinner at his lyrical best and is, as he promises totally free of all the gadgets and tools we use to get through each day.
It's a theme he continues right through to the closer The Escapist an inner monologue about the walls and barriers we build in our own minds.
Although he may have pulled his challenge off musically, Skinner remains acutely aware that as an artist you can never escape modern constructs. And while he's laid off making reference to fame, he knows it goes hand-in-hand with making music.
Unlike some of his fellow British musicians, such as Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty, Skinner has largely managed to steer clear of media attention.
It's likely to have something to do with his down-to-earth nature but Skinner says it's more to do with priorities.
"I think it's a bit of a waste of time really because when people start writing things about you it pisses you off and plays on your mind; I don't think that creates good art. I want to be a bit more balanced than that," he says.
It's a telling statement from a normal guy with extraordinary talent, who just wants to be known for one thing: "I want to be famous for my music so I'm not completely without sin. But if I could just be famous for that, then that would be great."
Everything Is Borrowed is in stores tomorrow.
