The Streets

Since rising to international fame with the rowdy, inventive Original Pirate Material, British MC the Streets (aka Mike Skinner) has issued increasingly sincere albums. Beginning with 2004's narrative-heavy masterpiece A Grand Don't Come for Free, he's turned his attention to simple, heartfelt odes and largely abandoned the drunken working-class persona and garage beats he'd preferred previously. Songs like "Never Went to Church," off The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, in which Skinner speaks to his deceased father, were enough to make the toughest cookie crumble, and his latest continues in this vein, relentlessly pummeling listeners with earnestness until they're blubbering piles of goo. Featuring live instruments throughout, Borrowed is nobody's idea of a hip-hop album, but it's a clearly transcendent work.