Album review: The Streets – "Everything Is Borrowed"

Intellectualism isn't completely dead in America, but it's plugged to a ventilator. If The Streets are any indication, the academic inquisition hasn't yet crossed the pond. "Everything Is Borrowed," everything except the ideas, sounds like a particularly intelligent Black Eyed Peas spin-off, genre-hopping from English R&B to pop-laden beat poetry. Be this as it may, "Heaven for the Weather" jumps and jives on a piano-tambourine combo dolled up for mass consumption. No elitist claims here: this is freaking catchy, mate. "The Way of the Dodo," though, is problematic Al Gore hip-hop - smart, smug, warning human extinction. And it's kind of hard to dance to music about the end of the world.