By Eliot Wilder / Not another white-boy rapper, you say. Well, yes and no. He is a white boy. But he's not just another anything. Because the stories he spins and the beats that he spins them with eschew the usual megalomania in favor of tales of urban life and the working class sods who live it. He's Mike Skinner, also known as the Streets, and he comes from industrial Birmingham, U.K. (not your usual hotspot for MCs), with his own singular style of "hip-hop for English people," as he puts it. Which means that instead of braggadocio we get an honest evocation of the Brummie kid who flips meat at Burger King and the day-to-day chronicles of geezers who need a little excitement - all set to a two-step garage beat and employing vivid "Clockwork Orange"-style slang.

Not since the Beastie Boys released "Paul's Boutique" in 1989 has there emerged such an original voice, one whose brilliant rhymes brim with the sort of gritty particulars that resonate in a "how could he know that?" way. His songs are candid, at times brutally so, but they are also quite funny. As the Streets himself lays it down on "Turn the Page," the opener on his groundbreaking debut "Original Pirate Material," "I produce this using only my bare wit." It shows. And as I discover, he is also dead earnest.

From a young age, Mike enjoyed "just fiddling" with keyboards, and by the time he was in his late teens, he'd become a proficient DJ. But he never felt that what he did fit in with any genre, and most of his collaborators didn't fit in with him. "I finally got to the point where I wanted to do something just for me," the 15-year-old-looking 23-year-old tells me, "and for the people who live in the place that I'm from." But now that heÕs crossing the pond, will what heÕs saying on "Original Pirate Material" be fathomed in, say, Kansas? "I believe that some people will understand it and some people won't. I think what I'm saying is quite universal, though." Universal because his vignettes are "about the real streets. Most of rap music is about competition and I think the kids get really excited by the hard-core thing. But it's not reality most of the time."

What's reality, then, is not so much fast cars and faster women, but, as it's told in "It's Too Late," a lot more about something like failing at love simply because, as the hapless geezer says, he "couldn't see past the end of my beer." "Now nothing holds significance / And nothing holds relevance / 'Cause the only thing I can see is her elegance," the Streets sputters in a forlorn voice over a rumbling tympani and stark strings. What's reality, then, is not about reveling in chasing brown (Skinner-speak for doing heroin) but discovering that your body can only take so much abuse before it starts to show the strain, as told in "Too Much Brandy," a cautionary tale of temperance. Expressing despair and fallibility - not your usual gangsta rap posturing.

"Men can feel those things, you know," Skinner says. "I just think that hip-hop doesn't really want anything to do with that a lot of the time." But the Streets appears unafraid to express himself, and even boldly takes rap and ratchets it up a notch, as on "Let's Push Things Forward": "You say that everything sounds the same / Then you go buy them! / There's no excuses my friend."

Does Mike see himself as possibly the anointed one who could drag the whole locked-on generation kicking and screaming to a new level? "I haven't got any massive ambition," he says humbly. "'Let's Push Things Forward' - that's just what I was thinking at the time. I'm not trying to cause a revolution or anything. I just wanted to make the album that I wanted to make."

Despite his uniqueness, the Streets has found himself compared more often than not with that master of misanthropy, Eminem. Other than deploying the English language over rock 'em, sock 'em beats, the two couldn't be further apart. Whereas Marshall Mathers is all about vociferously loathing both himself and the world around him, Skinner is more focused on the trials and trivialities of his unemployed, binge-drinking, dope-smoking, console-dependent mates, and he observes them from the engaged, hard-boiled and nonjudgmental point of view of a documentarian. Whereas Marshall Mathers is po-faced, Skinner just lifts a pint and tells a good joke with a nod and wink. But, yes, they both do have pasty skin and, yes, they both do rap. "I think he's the closest comparison the press can make to me," Mike allows. "I'm sure Eminem was compared to people when he came out. But I try not to think about him too much. I just do what I do."

And what he does is tell stories that are best appreciated on the dance floor of your mind. "It's just supposed to be music that you listen to at home. The album is about what I know, the people I know." Which means, sorry, it's not about bling bling and all dat. Which means it's about that fat-ass geezer who's right now plopped down on the Barcalounger, hogging the remote.

Give it up, yo!

-From Amplifier magazine