Instead of shedding tears over just how much Mike Skinner has forfeited his concrete jungle panache in a series of increasingly trend adhering, substance lacking albums since (and including it has to be said) A Grand Don’t Come for Free, let’s remember for one beautiful instance the Brummie smartmouth had perfection precariously wobbling in his palms. Debut album Original Pirate Material packs a few punches, spits out some 6am blood, and warrants a few clips across its jack the lad ears. There is The Irony Of It All, whether one holds Mikey baby’s views on the lesser of the evils or not, still goes to join a huge line behind the cocky chipper queue anxieties, Let’s Push Things Forward is not rap, nor is it garage, not anything really other than Skinner’s sermon from the mount among his tribe pleading, if only the moral gesticulations he ponces around with inside the tube trains of 2008 were as delicious.

Wherever an album’s most memorable track goes is a happy medium between the idiosyncratic and the dogmatic, Stay Positive sneaks out from the public lavvy right at the very end, over 6 minutes of smack horrors on the metronomic beat of council estate footsteps under a fizzling neon street light. Weary legs push themselves on a piss marinaded staircase after the lift seizes up again, Mike leaves the mouthy bumfluff bastard downstairs, this is the big boys out playing now and any minute the thud of a handgun could go off. One suspects Skinner has dabbled with this world before, maybe for kicks, maybe for research, but the song itself isn’t going to give the game away, it’s far too strung up on a tempo that ropes everything along with it, like a clock with a blackened soul. Neither dropping nor increasing, the beat continues to rattle along, a heavy heart blindfolded between a needle in the toes or a light that may never shine again. Our cheeky chappie may take a cheap flight to the Costa Del Wank-stain in the morning, but before he leaves, his words make it clear, optimism is a as selectively singular as the beat, solitude is always spelt with a scabby s.