You’ve come straight out of the school playground and you’re like: ‘That’s shit, that’s good, this is what I believe in, go.’” “People say: ‘Oh, they’re only 19 or 20 and they’ve made this amazing music,’” he says. Looking back on that first album is a strange experience for Skinner because it came so naturally. If you’re not allowing them to do that you’re really just wasting your time putting all that effort into the art.” But it takes fans a long time to get to know and like a song, for it to become a part of their life. “My A&R man had to say: ‘Stop taking the piss, people have paid to hear something, an emotion.’ The thing is, artists want to move on quickly to the next thing. At times he could be petulant – he remembers one show where he got drunk and started mocking the lyrics to It’s Too Late. He struggled for subject matter – “You gradually make your life easier and easier until you’ve got nothing left to say” – and success didn’t agree with him. Skinner wound up the Streets in 2011, admitting he was exhausted with the whole thing. In the past he has cut a complex, self-critical and frequently frustrated figure. Skinner’s intelligence has sometimes seemed as much of a burden to him as a gift. but actually, they kind of like basslines.” Because you think: ‘Well, girls like something they can sing along to’ and ‘Girls like romance’. “When you’re a young artist and a boy, you think: ‘Now I’m gonna write one for the girls.’ And, of course, the girls will never like it. Yet rather than seeing it as a defining song that ripped up the rulebook and made it OK for young men to openly talk about their feelings, Skinner maintains it was just a clumsy attempt to impress women. His biggest hit, Dry Your Eyes, was a heartfelt exploration of how it feels to be dumped. Crucially, he found a way to rap about male fragility in a way that appealed directly to men: revealing their cluelessness around the opposite sex (Don’t Mug Yourself), fascination with, and fear of, violence (Geezers Need Excitement) and ultimate self-centredness (It’s Too Late). Born in London, but raised in Birmingham, Skinner’s talent was to take UK garage and make it more relatable to people like him: rather than champagne and velvet VIP ropes, he was conjuring verses about Vauxhall Novas and scrambled eggs.
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