We almost didn’t recognise him (Picture: TikTok/Mike Skinner)
Noughties garage icon Mike Skinner looked unrecognisable sporting shaggy hair and a beard while on tour in Australia.
The Birmingham musician, 45, is best known for his music project The Streets which he founded in 1994, releasing hits such as Has It Come To This?, Dry Your Eyes, Fit But You Know It, and Don’t Mug Yourself.
Cited as a major influence on British hip-hop, grime, and garage, Skinner is currently bringing The Streets to Australia on tour – but he was miles away from his classic cropped hair look in a recent TikTok video.
The musician could be seen with a bushy, brown beard to match his grown-out hair in a surreal sketch that saw the artist teaching his band a new song he had written.
Much like the comment section, one of his fellow musicians asked ‘What’s with the beard?’ in the clip, before driving Skinner to the studio to share his new music with his travelling bandmates.
Fans were quick to share their love for his new look, while others were excited the ‘goat’ (greatest of all time) is back on the road.
The acclaimed garage artist has ditched the cropped hair and beard for a grown-out look (Picture: Tik Tok/Mike Skinner)
The surreal TikTok video saw Skinner transported to a music studio to perform new music (Picture: Tik Tok/Mike Skinner)
Skinner is best known for his garage project The Streets which he launched in 1994 (Picture: Chiaki Nozu/FilmMagic)
He released a string of hit songs before quitting music in 2011 (Picture: Louise Wilson/Getty Images)
The video is part of a series of surreal sketches the musician has posted to the social media platform, including one of him supposedly cancelling his ongoing tour and another where he proclaims that the most dangerous job in the world is ‘being a pop star.’
After founding The Streets in the early nineties, Skinner released the debut album Original Pirate Material in 2002 which received instant critical acclaim, climbing to number 12 on the UK Album Charts.
He released a further four albums, with 2004’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free featuring his only number one single, Dry Your Eyes.
The concept album was described as a rap opera and follows an unnamed protagonist’s relationship with a woman named Simone and the mysterious disappearance of £1,000 from his home.
In 2005, Skinner and Ted Mayhem launched the independent record label The Beats Recordings, signing The Mitchell Brothers, Example, and Professor Green.
Skinner disbanded the project in 2011 following the release of his fifth album Computers and Blues, taking a step back from the spotlight.
The Dry Your Eyes hitmaker took a step back from fame (Picture: Victor Boyko/Getty Images)
It also came a year after the artist was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.
Speaking to GQ Magazine in 2022, Skinner opened up about his battles with mental health issues that saw him seek professional help during the height of his career with The Streets.
‘Every day in The Streets was scary because you feel totally out of control. Anxiety, paranoia and general fear. That’s what my 20s were like. Whereas my 30s were closer to depression,’ he said.
‘You try and push yourself through this feeling of existential depression. I’m not trying to say one is worse than the other. It just feels different.’
He made a return in 2023 with his first album in 12 years, The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light, as well as a film under the same title.
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