The Streets: "Pranging Out"

M-Skins lays it on thick with this cut, chest-beating over monstrous thunderclap drums and maudlin strings. He’s paranoid and self-destructive, but instead of stumbling through the party confused and dilated (like his last album’s protagonist), he’s the dipshit meathead poking you in the chest and telling you to take a fucking shot, pussy. (“Instead of nursing my brews,” he says, “I’m drinking right from the bottle.”) The stern, cold-blooded synths have the woe-is-me melodrama of late-game Eminem — a comparison Skinner probably welcomed when Original Pirate Material came out, but one that seems less flattering these days. Still, unlike Mr. Shady, he hasn’t abandoned his charisma and mission statement entirely, nodding back to his last album with a wry tagline that fairly sums up his new outlook: “This time I’m drying my eyes / And a fucking nosebleed.”

It kicks off The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living on a promising note. Here’s a beat with more punch and variety than he normally offers, and with that conversational leer that he’s willed to popularity comes a new lyrical slant—not hungry and desperate, not exacting and narrative, but bitter, disaffected, a bit vile. His delivery remains relaxed, swinging loosely from the beat, but he lays into the consonants with a venom previously unheard. Whether this newfound vigor translates to the album at large is a matter of some debate — methinks not, but whatever. “Pranging Out” ranks among the Streets’ finest recorded moments, and even if the album is a step back, it alone proves the kid’s still got spark.