“Man, remember Mike Skinner? Skinny dude, wry sense of humor, always up for a good time and good pills? Yeah, that’s the one. What happened to that guy?”

In evaluating any record by The Streets there are three elements worth considering: the beats, the rhymes, and the character known as Mike Skinner. Original Pirate Material and A Grand Don’t Come for Free were according to these criteria: quite good albums, arguably great in the case of the latter. Sure, The Streets can’t rap for shit; it’s just sort of taken for granted that the rhymes are gonna be a bit awkward. But on both of those records he made up for it on the other two categories: the beats were strange and exciting and Mike Skinner — and by Mike Skinner I mean the character imagined in the songs — was such a compelling creation that it was nearly impossible not to feel some affection for the lout.

The failing on The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living can be summed up pretty easy: Mike Skinner has become a stale, one-dimensional character that it’s hard to care about at all. He tries, clearly, but it falls short. “All Goes Out the Window” and “Never Went to Church” are both almost painfully stereotypical slow jams (and seriously, who’s gonna take “All Goes Out the Window” over “Dry Your Eyes”?). There’s some of the humor still there, especially on the over-serious “Two Nations,” but it’s so muted and buried that I find it hard to really work up the energy to bother.

The songs that fail tend to fail miserably. “War of the Sexes” and “How to Con an Honest Jon” are both delivered as mean-spirited, staccato orders and neither can capture the interest after more than one time through the album. Likewise, the songs about the pains of the record industry and fame (“When You Wasn’t Famous,” “Memento Mori,” the title track) are so single-minded and humorless that they're near impossible to get through. I keep doing so, but really only in the hope that eventually I’ll capture some scrap of sarcasm. My advice: don’t bother — it doesn’t seem to be there.

This, of course, only accounts for two thirds of the criteria, and it’s on the third that the Streets does much to redeem the album. THWTMAEL represents the point where Mike Skinner — and here I mean the actual dude behind the boards and the mic — makes the leap past simply a solid beatsmith. On album highlight “Pranging Out,” Skinner goes into the proud history of British drum programming to pull out a skittish monster of a beat. That he manages to match the beat on the mic puts the song over the top, but there are plenty of great beats here that are thrown out on some seriously sub-par lyrics. The stutter step beat for “All Goes Out the Window,” the car crash of a chorus and a drum machine for “How to Con an Honest Jon,” the dance hall stomp of “When You Wasn’t Famous,” the goofy funk of “Hotel Expressionism,” and even the smarmy neo-soul of “Never Went to Church” make the songs slightly enjoyable.

Maybe The Streets needed to work this fame shit out; hell, it must be pretty strange to have to deal with being a famous white British rapper. Still, it’s a shame to see the character of Mike Skinner become so stale and hackneyed, especially when the beats are stronger than they’ve ever been before. Hopefully the real Skinner will take some time off, make some beats for Kanye, and come back stronger and more real than ever. For now, I’m sticking with A Grand Don’t Come for Free.