Original Pirate Material is the debut studio album by English hip hop project the Streets, released on 25 March 2002. Recorded mostly in a room in a south London house rented at the time by principal member Mike Skinner, the album is musically influenced by UK garage and American hip hop, while its lyrics tell stories of British working-class life. It was supported by four singles: "Has It Come to This?", "Let's Push Things Forward", "Weak Become Heroes", and "Don't Mug Yourself". The album originally rose to number 12 on the UK Albums Chart in 2002, and then peaked at number 10 in 2004 following the release of the chart-topping second Streets album A Grand Don't Come for Free. It re-entered several charts in April 2022, following its reissue on orange vinyl for 2022's Record Store Day. Original Pirate Material received widespread critical acclaim, with many reviewers praising the originality and humour of Skinner's lyrics, and subsequent critics' polls have placed it among the best albums of the 2000s. Background Skinner has stated that his main early influences were from the United States, in particular Wu-Tang Clan rappers such as Raekwon and RZA, as well as East Coast rapper Nas's album Illmatic. However, Skinner attributes the album as emerging from the UK garage scene of the late 1990s. His stance when making the album was to combine the UK garage sound with a lyrical content about "all the little adventures you go on" rather than the style of UK hip hop, which he accused of being "someone from Reading pretending to be Biggie or Q-Tip". Journalist Simon Reynolds identified the album's lyrical content as capturing UK garage's "submerged reality" as a genre not based in nightclubs. Outside London in the late 1990s, UK garage was rarely played in clubs but was instead found on pirate radio stations, reflected by the album's title. Recording Recording for Original Pirate Material lasted over a year, with Skinner recording the bulk of the album in the room he was renting in a house in Brixton in south London. The instrumental tracks were created on an IBM ThinkPad, while Skinner used an emptied out wardrobe as a vocal booth using duvets and mattresses to reduce echo. Direct influences on the album included the 2000 film Gladiator, which inspired the lyrics of "Turn the Page", the opening track of the album. He eschewed analogue recording equipment