The Streets

British rap will always be a hard sell in America, but Mike Skinner, the MC and producer behind the Streets, took it further than most. He arrived with a mission statement, 'Let's Push Things Forward,' and even if he never again matched the brashness of that 2002 single, he crammed a lot into the next nine years. There was his concept album ('A Grand Don't Come for Free'); his "fame sucks" album ('The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living'); his philosophical, New Age-y, what-does-it-all-mean album ('Everything Is Borrowed') and finally, the most hip-hop move of his career, the retirement album ('Computers and Blues'). More a chatter than a rapper, he repped for stoned London slackers, giving hip-hop a voice it had never heard.