Mike.

Hey, Mike Skinner. Wake up.

Dude, you look terrible. And, hey, you've got some blood under your nose. Wait a sec, I'll get you a towel.

Look, Mike, I don't mean to pry, but I hear you've been getting into the drugs maybe a little bit too much these days. You've got to watch yourself, man. I know you can afford it now, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. It's really starting to affect your work.

I know you haven't ever really been straight; I mean, you've always talked about drinking too much, and you did have that "Blinded By the Light" song on your last record where you took too much ecstasy and passed out in that bar. And I don't like to judge. But you talk about doing lines a lot on the new Streets album, The Hardest Way to Make An Easy Living, probably more than you talk about anything else. And me and a lot of other people who care about you are really worried.

Whatever it was you were or weren't taking the last time you made a record, it was working for you. No matter what you do, people are going to remember A Grand Don't Come For Free as one of the best albums of the decade, and maybe that's enough for you. But back then, you had your head together well enough to write a story and put it to music, and it was beautiful. You had ideas. You had ambition.

Now, all you seem to talk about is how fame is weird, and how you do a lot of coke and how you're still kind of a funny-looking bloke so famous girls still don't really care to get with you. We're all for personal expression in music, bro, but it's both boring and arrogant to make a record that boo-hoos the fact that you don't even know how much money you have. Especially since we all sort of thought you were the voice of the people.

I was sorry to hear about your dad passing. I know it hurt. But it's been a couple years now, and you've got to push on. Besides, you think he'd really be proud that you're eulogizing him on one track, then following it up with a song where you talk about being so messed up you poured brandy on a hotel-room iron just to see how it smelled?

I know you're British, and I'm American, and your sense of irony is a bit more finely tuned than mine; in fact, you wrote that terrible song about it on the new one, "Two Nations." So maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe you're really not snorting everything under the sun, although every time I see you lately, you look more and more like that basehead from the Libertines. And whatever your deal is, the music you're making is really suffering from it. Your beats were never your strongest suit, but there are a couple of tracks on The Hardest Way that sound just like ones you've done before. You've lost nearly all of the vocal tics that, at least for a Yankee like myself, made you an interesting dude to listen to. Songs you clearly think are funny just aren't. And for a guy who wrote a tender track like "Dry Your Eyes," you just seem mean and stupid now. Like, say, you've been doing a lot of cocaine.

I'm worried, man. You were just about the coolest thing in music a couple of years ago. Now, I'm afraid you're just another addict with nothing much to say.

Grade: D