Despite the orchestral crescendos and synth horn fanfares announcing his entrance, The Streets’ Mike Skinner ambled onstage at “the palace of the people” for the final show of his UK tour as if it was an open mike night at his N10 local. “I walked here,” the adopted North Londoner boasted, warning of a “terrifying” nearby shortcut, “the darkest place you’ll find in London”. For ninety minutes he nattered casually with the crowd through his most celebrated hits, drained pints and ordered doughnuts during euphoric soul choruses and became increasingly irate at people trying to steal his trainers during every crowd-surf. Two decades of fronting a pivotal multi-platinum UK garage act clearly hadn’t dented his Everygeezer attitude.
While his early-noughties grime and garage peers were dissecting gangland degradation - or, in Craig David’s case, maintaining such an intense lovemaking schedule it’s a miracle he got any work done - Skinner built an empire on relatable, refreshingly beta garage raps about foiled romance, fragile masculinity and the struggle to afford both rent and reefer. The archetypal one-of-us superstar, then, he knows what his audience want. New album The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light, his first in twelve years, is the soundtrack to a self-directed murder noir film set in London’s clubland, but besides Troubled Waters’ frantic rave and menacing cocaine lament Too Much Yayo he didn’t bother us with much of that. Instead, alongside a full band and soulful wing-man, Skinner tore through arena-expanded hits and favourites at breakneck pace.
A box-fresh Turn the Page flowed like wildfire. Don’t Mug Yourself became a garage rhumba carnival. The stirring gospel Never Went to Church billowed into Skinner’s own Let it Be. It smarted slightly that the man who championed musical evolution on 2002’s future ska Let’s Push Things Forward had turned Weak Become Heroes into a classic soul revue number twenty years on, but even this played into a charmingly chaotic final stretch.
Announcing a battle-of-the-sexes championship of gendered circle pits, Skinner set the ladies loose on the Blur-like rock jig of Fit but You Know It, while the lads were given the moment-by-moment heartbreak of Dry Your Eyes to prepare for their “hella toxic” turn on Take Me As I Am. No winner was declared, only one loser. Surrendering to his fans’ footwear fetish, Skinner lobbed his trainers into the throng intending to crowd-surf out to retrieve them, but returned barefoot. “I came to Ally Pally and I lost my shoes,” he grinned, no doubt dreading the walk home. Legend.
