The Streets
By All Music Guide
By All Music Guide
At the end of 2000, he earned his first release when Locked On -- already famous for a succession of burning club tracks from Tuff Jam, the Artful Dodger featuring Craig David, Dem 2, and Doolally -- signed him for the homemade Has It Come to This? By the following year, the single hit Britains Top 20 and the inevitable full-length followed in early 2002. That album, Original Pirate Material, unlike most garage compilations and even the bare few production LPs, found a home with widely varying audiences, and correspondingly earned Skinner a bit of enmity from the wider garage community. By the end of the year, it had been released in the States as well, through Vice. After a quiet 2003, Skinner returned with A Grand Dont Come for Free, a concept record that pushed his production and performance eccentricities to a new level, but also resulted in a fresh wave of critical praise. A succession of live dates followed, after which Skinner began recording his third full-length, 2006s The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, which shone a bright light on the vagaries of fame as Skinner had experienced it.
