British MC The Streets (née Mike Skinner) is gearing up to release a new album and tour Europe this fall. Everything is Borrowed, Skinner's fourth record, will be released September 15 in the UK. Following 2006's The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, Everything is a continuation of the goofy, grime-damaged Brit-hop sound and middle-England slice-of-life storytelling that has defined his career to date.
Lead single "The Escapist," however, represents a major break for Skinner due to its experimental video, available for free at The Streets' official site. The video weds the track's gently skittering beats and downtrodden vocals to shots of Skinner wandering aimlessly along highways and through pastoral landscapes in France. Skinner says the video, shot by Ted Mayhem of Streets video/blog side project Beat Stevie, "was totally different from any other video that I've made in that it was something real that we just filmed rather than trying to create something real looking using lots of people and lots of angles." "The Escapist" will be followed as a single by Everything is Borrowed's title track a couple of weeks after the album's release.
The Streets will also hit the road shortly after the album's release, embarking on extensive tours of the UK and Germany and hitting other European destinations here and there.
