Pot, PlayStation fuel Brit rapper's debut

Mike Skinner is the sole member of the critically lauded hip-hop act, the Streets. The lanky Birmingham, England native melds U.K. garage, reggae and beatific faux orchestral strings with his own conversationally sing-song rhyming to a winning effect on his debut, Original Pirate Material. Skinner, only 23-years-old, is a hip-hop scientist and his garage a laboratory. The album personifies youthful exuberance; days getting blasted at the pubs, smoking phat sacks, gorging oneself with junk food and withering away before a Playstation. Though Skinner's rhymes are littered with cockney slang, his themes are universal -- boredom spurs youthful indiscretion. Skinner hits his stride with "The Irony of It All," an argumentative track that manages to one-up Eminem's "Guilty Conscious." Skinner plays both a violent soccer hooligan and a bud-loving engineering student in a biting social satire. Original Pirate Material stands toe-to-toe with the best hip-hop albums of the past year, i.e. the Roots' Phrenology, N.E.R.D.'s In Search Of… and The Eminem Show, and presents Skinner as the most formidable Brit-hop presence since Slick Rick.