Mike Skinner Is "Still Doing the Same Shit" - He Just Doesn't "Have to Sing the Old Songs"

This article was originally published on Noisey UK.

With The Streets, Mike Skinner successfully soundtracked the dreary taxi rides home from nights out, the days spent sat at home getting stoned, and generally made the mundaneness of modern life sound REALLY good. Though he may have RIP'd The Streets back in 2011, Skinner has since been prodding his finger into more pies than Paul Hollywood in a Great British Bake Off Christmas montage.

There's been The Dot record, an Inbetweeners soundtrack, a buttload of DJ sets across club and festival seasons as well as his own night with Murkage, Tonga. More recently he's done a remix of Slaves' "Cheer Up London" alongside grime man Jammer. And that's all before we get to one of the biggest projects on his creative peripherals this last 12 months, the one that had him wandering the Israel-Palestine border in a bulletproof vest: Noisey's latest documentary series, Hip-Hop in the Holy Land.

Hosted and co-directed by Skinner, the six-part series takes the temperature of the rap scene in Israel and Palestine through interviews with individuals like Tamer Nafar, also known as the godfather of Palestinian hip-hop; Ohad Cohen who after being a regular in the Tel Aviv rap scene as a teenager then moved towards ultra orthodox Judaism but still has ambitions to be a famous rapper; and Ben Blackwell, who is part of the fascinating Hebrew Israelite community of the desert town of Dimona, plus many other MCs from all different backgrounds.

With the sixth and final part of the series dropping on Thursday, we caught up with our host to find out what he learned about politics, film-making, and rap.

Continues below.

Noisey: You shot quite a lot of the film in a relatively short period. Are you someone who thrives in those kinds of situations, meeting lots of new people and just trying to make it happen?

Mike Skinner:

Yeah, I’m used to doing everything myself, and worrying about everything myself. But having a lot of the stuff worried about by other people meant that it was quite a tight itinerary, which I actually found really relaxing. I think a career in music definitely trains you to deal with situations like that. And on stage as well, things always go wrong. But I think what performers get paid for really, more than anything, is to look like they know what they’re doing. If you’re standing on stage, you’re getting paid to look like you know what you’re doing, and maybe being able to sing as well.

And a degree of crisis management?

You have to develop this way of thinking "what am I going to do now" at the same time as looking really relaxed.

How did that come into play as filming went on?

Well we definitely started with the most intense one, with Tamer from the DAM. I would have much preferred that to be the last one, because we literally came from the airport, so that one was more winging it. But by the end of the trip I think I understood the process better. It got easier and easier.

Having spent a lot of your career being interviewed, were there certain styles of questioning you wanted to avoid?
Yeah, I think it makes you a better interviewer. I think one of the most important things is to try not to ask people what they’ve been asked before. Because ultimately you want people to relax and tell you things they don’t tell other people. And there’s something that happens, where if you’re asked a question you’ve been asked before, you just go into this thing where you just answer it how you always answer it, it’s a different part of your brain. It’s acting, because you have to sound like you’ve never been asked it before. The best interviews are really when someone just asks you something random. The best thing about social media is that people aren’t working off a press release anymore, they’re working off of what was said on Twitter that day, so you tend to get asked questions that are more interesting because they read your Twitter. So you get asked stuff like “oh, you like bananas”. So I think knowing that, not asking people the same stuff, also maybe doing a bit of homework. Was there anyone out of the people you spoke with that you felt a particular connection with?
Yeah, Tamir. He’s dealt with the media a lot. He knew what he wanted to say before we got there, so it was a case of just letting him say it. I think because I had literally just got off the plane, I was really just not saying much because I wanted to work it all out. But towards the end of the trip, we interviewed Saz who I just really got on with. He was really funny. He was from a similar background to Tamir but he had a different way of approaching the situation. Certainly more relaxing. I think very much with Tamir, we were on the shop floor, in the sense that we were getting his clear presentation of his story. Subliminal as well. I found that very interesting, because out of all them he best confronts what would be a European left-y sort of pro-Palestinian viewpoint, which is what most people in London think. Subliminal is kind of like the bad guy and he doesn’t shy away from that. Obviously he doesn’t think he’s the bad guy, but I learnt a lot from him. Everyone feels like they’re in the right, and that they’re protecting the people they need to protect. It’s the same for him. You can’t help but sort of respect his viewpoint. I came away from this trip knowing that it’s a lot more nuanced, but also knowing that I didn’t know anything. Whereas when I’d been there before I’d been a bit smug about what I knew from the BBC. Is it one of those topics that every time you learn more you realize you know less?
The first time I went there I very much did the tourist thing, with the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, or J-ru as we now call it at VICE. You see all the sort of bohemian stuff. You can practically see Cyprus from Tel Aviv. So it seems a bit strange, all this sort of politics. But with the ISIS thing now, it’s literally on their borders. What if ISIS were in Wales—what would we be doing? I imagine we wouldn’t be that calm.
Ha! We wouldn’t be calm. Where did this calm thing come from? Everyone says calm now don’t they? What do you mean? Opposed to what?
Well, just everyone says calm now. I think it’s the new “chill.” What about the music aspect of it? I guess in that environment, any music you make, whether it’s explicitly political or not, can’t help but be about the conflict.
We come from a culture that’s like “man, just allow the politics”—over there it’s like “allow all the non-politics”. Rebel Son was fascinating; he made me realize that if you didn’t talk about politics in Israel/Palestine, it’s such a big elephant in the room. I don’t think you’d get any respect. It’s very difficult to liken it to anything else, but I think people would just find it very suspicious [if an artist didn't make music that referenced the conflict].

Is that just something that has to be done, to reflect what’s going on in people’s lives?

The stakes are just a lot higher. We don’t understand a culture where the stakes are that high.

Does any of the music you've heard have the potential to cross over out of Israel or is too context specific?

I was a domestic rapper. With no expectation that I would ever not be. I think that all of the cold countries in the world, where The Streets succeeded: the Germanys and the Scandanavians and the North Americas —there just happened to be places where it sort of made sense. So actually, looking back on it, you think "Why wouldn’t it be successful?" But you don’t think that at the time. I’ve always noticed other country’s rappers, sort of like how you notice a yellow car. I don’t necessarily listen to it, and I don’t think I should listen to it always. Because I don’t know what French rappers are saying. I don’t know the turns of phrase and the little cultural references, but I do notice what’s happening with domestic rap wherever I am. And this—what we're hearing in Israel—is domestic rap. But with another element that’s unique.

What about your camera? You’re often seen shooting in the film.

I’m just trying it out really. I’m just really into shooting stuff.

Were you shooting stills or video?

Video. But yeah, Henry slates me for having that. I’m in a space now where I really like image stabilization, and focus. I like to do things super quickly without people really knowing what I’m doing. I’ve got a red, but it’s very difficult to do anything with that. Without, it takes time to shoot things. It literally takes 30 seconds for [a red] to turn on. So I started with that, but now I’m getting more into camcorders.

And what is it about the actual physicality about shooting things?

What I used to do was tell stories, make beats and perform, jump around. Crowd surf. So Tonga, my club night with Murkage, is a performance where I jump into the crowd. The film stuff is storytelling and the production stuff is making beats. So I’m just doing the same as I’ve always been doing. I couldn’t give up any of those elements. I would miss them. I don’t miss The Streets because I’m still doing the same shit, but I don’t have to sing the old songs.

The sixth and final episode of Hip-Hop in the Holy Land drops on Thursday, watch the previous episodes here.