Congrats Plan B

So Mr Plan B, aka Ben Drew,'s Defamation of Strickland Banks is currently the best selling album in the country. Well done. I've long been a fame of this super talented, intense young man - in fact I interviewed him for Metro nearly four years ago when the amazing Who Needs Actions When You Got Words LP was out.

Here's one of his songs from then, and compare and contrast with the above and his soul renaissance.




And here's my interview with him, which ran in Metro last Monday. This is the full unedited piece, and a little different from what ran in the newspaper.

PLAN B

It’s almost four years since Metro first met Plan B (Ben Drew) in a West London music studio to talk about debut LP Who Needs Actions When You Got Words. The scrawny 21-year-old’s passion, intensity and expletive-ridden straight-talking more than made their mark, much like Who Needs… an astounding rap record reflecting ‘broken Britain’ through the eyes of another tabloid obsession ‘feral youth’.

As Ben Drew settles into the red booth of an American diner in Soho and orders Eggs Benedict and coffee, it’s apparent he’s filled out – his face is fuller and he’s broader of frame. He scrubs up well in a crisp, pinstriped shirt, dark blue suit jacket with a paisley handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, and jeans, and looks like a young man rather than the hoodie-wearing boy of 2006.

Over the last four months the East Londoner from Forest Gate’s mostly been wearing three piece suits and spats, in keeping with the image and story of sophomore LP, The Defamation Of Strickland Banks (679 Recordings). It’s a startling, glorious Motown-inspired soul record, following the highs and lows of singer Strickland Banks who meets a woman and ends up in jail.

The Defamation…’s spawned two Top 10 singles already, Stay Too Long (No.9) and She Said (No.3), and opened doors (performances at Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 Christmas special, Friday Night With Jonathan Ross), that the ‘angry white rapper’ spent a couple of years futilely thumping on.

Did he find the transition from writing rap to crafting songs difficult? ‘No man writing songs is piss easy, for me anyway. I wrote three songs last night that are possible hits, if not hits then really good album tracks, songs just flow,’ he says explaining his bleary eyes. ‘With rapping, every word and every rhyme has to be on point. The words that go into one rap verse are the same as one song. I can freestyle sing but I can’t freestyle rap.’

‘For all the people who dismissed me as an angry white rapper, I’m showing them – I’ve made an uncompromising soul record, the same as I made an uncompromising rap record’, continues Ben as he tucks into poached eggs. ‘To me making a pop rap record would be a compromise and selling out, and I needed to reach more people, so I’ve done a completely different style of music and made an uncompromising record of that genre.’

Over the last four years Ben’s experienced highs and lows: he’s carved a promising film career, appearing in urban youth drama Adulthood and award winning revenge thriller Harry Brown with Sir Michael Caine, and is directing a feature film this summer. ‘I’m a storyteller, that’s what I want to be known as – whether that’s directing films, writing books, or music - that’s the most important thing to me,’ he states.

Ben’s also faced his demons: ‘After my first record I got into fights with fans after gigs. They would say you’re not like I thought you would be - on record you’re an arsehole and now you’re being nice to me. I’d get furious and was getting arrested and frustrated with shit festival slots’, he says with the same combination of brutal honesty and vehemence that makes his music so compelling.

‘I had counseling for a year, and realized I didn’t do this for fame or any other bullshit I somehow got wrapped up in. I was turning into one of those cynical bitter c**ts - what a cliché,’ he cackles.

‘The penny dropped – I made my first album for disenchanted kids that society has forgotten about, who’s parents were drug addicts or alcoholics and didn’t give a f**k about them and told them everyday they were a piece of shit, so they started acting like it,’ he says, fixing a stare with those intense, icy blue eyes.

‘No one stood up for them but they listened to hip-hop: rappers came from the ghetto where they come from, and rapped about making money. And all the disenchanted, angry kids and people who know people like that got the album. I achieved all I set out to achieve, because those kids became my fans,’ he continues.

‘As soon as the penny dropped I asked myself what I was going to do? I’m going to make a soul record then a hip-hop record. The soul record is Strickland Banks’ story and the hip-hop record is the Strickland Banks’ story narrated by Plan B, The Ballad Of Belmarsh.’

Ben’s clearly an irrepressible, creative tour de force, but before The Ballad of Belmarsh is The Defamation… an ‘album album’ that demands listening from beginning to end as Strickland leads you through falling in love, court, incarceration and loneliness. All of which is regaled through Ben’s sweet falsetto and band with heart-tugging string section reprising finger-clicking pop soul, rock’n’roll rap, dusty psychedelic soul, and soaring gospel (in typical Plan B style, the gospel track, Welcome To Hell grimly details Strickland’s prison experience).

‘I’d buy albums and the singles would be the only good songs, then you listen to albums like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Slim Shady and Music For The Jilted Generation, where it’s song after song after song. I want every album I do to be like that,’ he says tapping his fingers on the table to ram home the point. ‘The album is more important than the single. Whatever I do and whatever style – expect that I’m gonna put fucking 100 per cent in and it’s gonna be fucking good. Other than that don’t expect nuthin’ or I’ll disappoint you.’

******

In short big up your bad-self Mr Drew and enjoy touring the festivals, it's been a tough slog but you've made that all important breakthrough.