13. The StreetsOriginal Pirate Material
I liked the intro really, it was so inspiring. "I’m forty-fifth generation Roman," where did he come up with that?!
Hip hop is massive in Nottingham. There’s a massive black community, it’s a multicultural city and people just mingle, you know, and share ideas. People were not sure about this idea of a white guy rapping. Even white guys were not sure about it. He’s not rapping really – well he is, but he isn’t. But you couldn’t deny it really, it’s all great.
The second track, ‘Has It Come To This’, that kind of dubstep, garage thing. I never even listened to the second album. White people rapping, it needs to be done well. No offense to the guy, but I wouldn’t view Professor Green as the same thing, it’s more Americanised. Jake Bugg tried to do it on his last album and it just sounded terrible, what was he doing? I can understand him being inspired by stuff, but he needs to check himself.
I liked the dry high street observations on this album, the stuff about eating a fry up in a greasy spoon. The stuff that would warm you to him straight away – fried tomatoes, scrambled eggs. That conversation he has with his dad: "Hold it down son…" We all do it, "No, I’m going to be alright, it will work out."
I listened to this when it came out. I was still doing folky and acoustic stuff at this time, it wasn’t very good. It took years for me to think about doing something like this. For a long time I thought it was out of my reach, I thought I couldn’t do it.
