The Streets

"Why am I in London, anyway?" you wonder, staring at a pint of warm beer. Oh yeah, that's why: Because of wise-cracking, post-Python Brits like Mike Skinner, the guy who just started spitting social commentary as vinegary as a plate of chips. With a smile and a swig of your beer, he passes along two CDs and says, "Enjoy, mate." Later, you pop one in and are blown away by tongue-twisting pub-speak and beats that are as shifty as a Timbaland track. Hungry for more, you pull the Basics disc out and drop in one marked Next Steps . . .

OK, so maybe it's a little embarrassing to be caught whistling and snapping your neck when your flat mate stumbles in from a night of drinking. Whatever. You can't help it — not when there's a track as infectious and borderline insane as "The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living" on the hi-fi. It's not the only jam turning the living room into a rowdy club, either. Noted grime guests Roll Deep turn "Let's Push Things Forward" into a drunken, dashing duet; a tense string section propels "Turn the Page"; and "Not Addicted" is bass-heavy enough to blow out a speaker cabinet.

As the flagship artist on hipper-than-thou record label Vice Records, Mike Skinner brought the defiantly British sound of garage (the dance/DJ form; not the White Stripes' version) and grime to the States. And everyone from critics to cool kids were sucked in from the start — the bumping social commentary of Original Pirate Material, which gave way to a dizzying concept album (A Grand Don't Come for Free) and a brutally honest examination of what happens when you move from writing lyrics down on pub napkins to slurring your words under the heat lamps of stadium stages. A British Eminem? Oh, get off it, geezer.