Karma chameleon

Garage pioneer, geezer extraordinaire, chav icon, Mercury prize winner, street poet, Buddhist - Mike Skinner has had many labels in past the decade. Now, with just one more Streets album to go before he rips up the blueprint and starts all over again, Skinner's becoming wiser, more philosophical and a lot less pugnacious, he tells Tony Clayton-Lea

MIKE SKINNER used to be a pop star, the kind who made guest appearances at branches of Foot Locker and so was able to avail of free trainers on a daily basis. The kind who was once trumpeted as being "the voice of the suburbs" but now embraces a form of a la carte Buddhism.

We'll come to the Buddhism in a while. For now, let it be known that Skinner - once the perceived advocate of the archetypal chav lifestyle pints, pills and 3am kebabs, all the while dressed in white Nike gear - is a changed man. He dresses in black these days, and when The Ticket meets him he is sporting an Italian look: black top and trousers set off by the casual footwear combo of leather shoes and no socks. He sips alternately from a glass of sparkling water and a cup of cappuccino.

"Some people think I'm a pop star, a chav, a poet," he says in a mangled London/Brummie accent. He is in Dublin to talk about his new album, Everything Is Borrowed . "Is there a Hermes shop here?" Don't think so, but then I'm an Eager Beaver/Oxfam guy myself. "Is there a Niketown, then?"

Skinner came to prominence at the close of 2001 when, at the age of 22, the hit singles Has It Come to This? and Let's Push Things Forward announced a genuine talent in UK garage/hip-hop. The album that followed shortly after in 2002 ( Original Pirate Material , made for less than £4,000) catapulted him and his nominal band, The Streets, into the UK pop's big league.

The follow-up album (2004's A Grand Don't Come for Free ) not only furthered his credibility among fans and critics - it's a concept album about misplaced friendships, loyalties and money - but also brought him crossover success via the song Dry Your Eyes , a hip-hop ballad that will, says Skinner, "forever pay my moderate gas bills".

So far, so good. Come 2006, however, Skinner came a cropper; on his third album, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living , he committed the mortal sin of writing songs about his celebrity lifestyle and - boo-hoo, sob, gulp - of how terrible it was being famous. Cue massed yawns of indifference with an attached memo: one more album like this, mate, and you're out on your ear.

Two years further down the line, and we have Everything Is Borrowed , an album that just about drags Skinner out of the doldrums while still casting a shadow over his long-term creativity. It's a curate's egg of a record, enveloped by themes of karma and philosophy, spoiled in parts by banal lyrics and platitudes, and energised by occasional spurts of brilliant pop music.

As Skinner sits in a dark corner of a hotel lounge, he is adamant that his next, fifth album will be the final one as The Streets. "If I completely reframe the whole thing, it will start to feel more fresh," he reckons. "The next album will be a lot more futuristic - The Streets, but a bit more sci-fi. Anyway, after the fifth album, I'll be out of a record deal, will be free to roam, and will either become irrelevant or something else altogether. It will be, no doubt, one of the biggest challenges of my life to be 32, out of a record deal, and searching for a new beginning.

"Are things destined to go my way? Not really - and that's being realistic."

Here's the general philosophy, according to Skinner: "Youth is beauty and you have to be really, really compelling to cut it. I found it very easy when I was younger; you have a lot more in common with the record-buying public. You have a lot of motivation and you look cool. All of those things mix altogether to create a 'New Thing', which I undoubtedly was."

It sounds like he's, if not experiencing an early midlife crisis, then certainly worrying about the advance of time (he is 30 at the end of November). "Age doesn't get me down, no, but it is going to be a challenge. There has to be change and I have to step up in some way. I cannot repeat myself, to be honest. You have a unique voice, initially, and after a while, that voice becomes less stimulating, people become too familiar with it, get bored with it."

There's a sense that Skinner is also bored with, at very least, what is expected of him. This is why, he says, at the start of the songwriting process for the new album, he vowed that he wouldn't reference in any detail that which he became famous for: namely, modern life, rave culture, pubs, drugs, takeaways, relationships. He would, instead, focus on what he describes as "moving into space, and to really engage with it".

Are certain sections of his fanbase disappointed with the overall Zen-like outlook of Everything Is Borrowed , the chorus of which goes, 'I came to this world with nothing and I leave with nothing but love; everything else is just borrowed'? It's hardly the geezer garage he built his reputation on, is it?

"I don't really think about it. I'm always just worrying about the next song. And it's a beautiful profession to be in because it teaches you just how little black and white there is in life, or in anything I do. Good songs are good songs, I guess.

"But if you take everything down to its basic elements, there are no rights and wrong. In media terms, there's only the story, no real black and white. I guess that's why you become a little bit Buddhist. That's why people's lives are lived within a framework, why there is a price on their time, why there are rules to how they need to live. I don't really have that. I don't have a price on my time, because I spent 20 years making the first album, two years making the second.

"People also give themselves value for doing a week's work, whereas I could write a hit record in an hour or I could spend two years making the worst song I've ever written. A lot of musicians seek that value, and it can be upsetting for them. You see it in young bands, where they write a great song by accident, sometimes. It's a spark of their soul that people love. If they make amazing music at the start of their career, they begin to think that it's easy and that they can do no wrong. All bands do it."

By implication, Skinner is surely talking about himself here as much as anyone else. And if he is going through a period of reflection, then what of it? At least he's thinking his options through, wondering about his self-worth and aiming not to repeat himself. Would that every musician had such basic principles.

"I still want to make great music," he insists. "The good thing about my situation is that I won't be under any pressure. When I leave my label, I can go out on the road and sing Dry Your Eyes for the rest of my life if I want to."

Would he really want to do that? A crooked smile visits his face.

"I might have to. What I'm saying is that I won't have to work at Burger King, and that I will be free to make music."

• Everything Is Borrowed is out now and is reviewed in this issue. The Streets play the Olympia, Dublin, on January 25th. See also www.the-streets.co.uk

Under the influence ... of Mike Skinner

Jamie T: We're due an album soon from this gobby one-man-Clash. Mercury- nominated, too, which goes to prove where there's muck there's brass.

Kate Nash: One woman, one piano and one debut album later, Nash remains the teenage girl's singer-songwriter of choice.

Jack Penate: Relative of Gormenghast writer Mervyn Peake, Penate has yet to show his real stripes, but if there's ever a prize for spaz-dancing, he's the certified winner.

Arctic Monkeys: It helped that Alex Turner's parents were academics, but without the influence of Skinner and John Cooper Clarke, who knows?

Lily Allen: Once a noted chavette, now labouring on her second album, the follow-up to 2006's Alright, Still . Can she last the distance?

© 2008 The Irish Times