Crowds snaked up and down the pavement outside Shoreditch Town Hall on Tuesday afternoon as SXSW guests clamoured for a chance to see Mike Skinner (the mind and mouthpiece of The Streets) in conversation with Ogilvy vice chairman and unexpected TikTok star Rory Sutherland, ostensibly talking about “marketing”.
The pair danced around a dizzying array of topics – AI’s impact on music, whether rap can really be considered modern-day Shakespeare, the difficulty of returning a DVD (the focus of Skinner’s track It Was Supposed to Be So Easy) – without clear focus or agenda. That isn’t to say the conversation wasn’t without its nuggets of wisdom: it’s well known that Skinner could make something meaningful out of a trip to the off-license.
