Mike Skinner aka The Streets is arguably the most acclaimed new talent to emerge in the UK in the past five years. A Birmingham native who later ventured into the murky depths of the capital’s garage scene, Skinner was an unlikely nominee for Britain’s answer to Eminem.

Brought up on tough estates on a diet of cheap beer, hip-hop, house and jungle while working fast food jobs just to get by, Skinner bore witness to a teenage trawl through the lower stratum of society.
His debut long-player, Original Pirate Material was an incendiary missive from the trenches of British working-classes. However, it was his follow-up, the concept album A Grand Don’t Come For Free that propelled Skinner into music’s royalty. Ramsay’s incisive biography – the very first on the market – chronicles this most extraordinary of rises to fame, talking to key observers, music experts, bands and social commentators to build up a picture of Skinner’s impact. Further emphasis will be accorded to the claims that Skinner is the ‘new Alan Bennett’.