Review
Genre and Mood
Take Me as I Am by Chris Lorenzo & The Streets is a fast, gritty piece of British club music: drum and bass at its core, with the bass-heavy swagger of the Midlands scenes Lorenzo came from. The mood is defiant rather than soft, a refusal to be anyone other than yourself.
Song Summary
Chris Lorenzo builds the track from tight drums and bass synths that, in Dancing Astronaut’s phrase, tear through the speakers. Over it Mike Skinner of The Streets delivers his dry, haphazard vocal, conversational and unpolished, so that the beat supplies the urgency and the voice supplies the character. The memorable detail is that contrast: a frantic rhythm under a man who sounds as if he is talking to you across a table.
Lyrics Breakdown
Verse 1: Embracing Authenticity
Skinner opens in his familiar register, half spoken, more observation than performance, with the beat already at full speed beneath him.
Chorus: An Invitation to Be Real
The title is the hook: a short phrase repeated as a demand to be accepted whole, the one moment the vocal becomes something to sing back.
Verse 2: Navigating Life’s Challenges
The second verse keeps the same plain-spoken tone. It arrived weeks after Skinner told Q Magazine how being in The Streets at their peak had affected his mental wellbeing, which gives the title’s plea an autobiographical weight.
Bridge: Finding Strength in Community
The track was greeted on release by a community of British club and grime figures, from Skepta to Kurupt FM’s DJ Grindah, and it plays like a record made for that crowd.
Final Chorus: A Call to Action
The last return of the title lands over the same relentless beat; nothing resolves, the demand simply repeats.
Concepts in Focus
Drum and bass is built on the breakbeat: syncopated, funk-derived drum patterns chopped and played very fast, so the snare lands where you do not quite expect it. Here the drums are tight and machine-precise, which is what gives Skinner’s loose delivery its contrast. Compare the more chaotic, band-driven take on the same rhythm in Asian Dub Foundation – Flyover.
The other half of the genre’s name is the bassline. In this track it is played on distorted, growling synths rather than a bass guitar, and it carries much of the melody and nearly all of the aggression. Listen to how little the vocal has to do because the bass is doing so much.
Artistic Context
Chris Lorenzo is the Birmingham producer and DJ Christopher Lawrence, known for house and bass house on labels such as Night Bass and his own Late Checkout. Mike Skinner had revived The Streets in 2019 with a run of collaborations, and “Take Me As I Am” followed his July single with Flohio, “How Long’s It Been?”. The track was shared on 3 October 2019 after an Instagram teaser, appeared on Lorenzo’s 2019 album Late Checkout, and closes The Streets’ 2020 mixtape None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive on Island Records, which reached number 2 in the UK. It is credited to Skinner and Lawrence.
Impact and Reception
The Line of Best Fit called it a gritty return and noted the praise it drew from Skepta, Grim Sickers and Faze Miyake; Dancing Astronaut heard it as a paragon of British sounds from a producer whose earlier records came out in America. Put it on loud and let the bass do the talking.
