_____Right now, you’re all going, yuck, Plan B, he’s a filthy, foul-mouthed scumbag who’s entire fan base consists of similar filthy, foul-mouthed scumbags who reside in the north of England, and yes, that was my first impression of this surprisingly London-born singer/rapper too. I mean, when you open your debut album with such obscenity as Kidz, then you’re only slightly narrowing your demographic, and by slightly I mean ridiculously. Seriously, that song contains some of the most vile lyrics I’ve ever heard; “virgin pussy getting fucked ‘till it’s raw”. Like, even listening to that on my iPod I feel uncomfortable… So yeah, despite my love for No More Eatin’, can’t say I had too much good to say about Who Needs Actions When You Got Words, partly down to the fact that it’s tricky to say anything at all when your in such a state of taken-aback-at-such-vulgarity-ness, but mainly due to it’s being quite terrible.
___Yet somehow, after the most shocking of first impressions, Ben Drew has actually miraculously managed to turn me full circle. And I’m fully confident that by the end of this review, he’ll have at least eradicated any prejudices you all most likely had against him at the start of it. So, what did it for me? Well, there were a number of consecutive factors which gradually won me over to the B-side. The first was actually courtesy of Hadouken!, who did a pretty nice job or remixing No More Eatin’, which lead me to the original, which is pure gold.
___Then the second, and possibly most noteworthy, was two kick-ass collaborations with my sole indulgence in dubstep, Chase & Status. Written for that Harry Brown movie, End Credits showed us a Plan B that we hadn’t really seen before, eerily emotional, powerful, and moving, and most striking, one that can sing. But it was his first collaboration with them that really grabbed my attention. In Pieces beautifully combined his surprisingly soothing singing with the harsh, high-octane rapping, as such, that we heard so much of on his first album. It also had arguably one of the best videos I’ve ever seen.
Chase And Status feat. Plan B - Pieces
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_____Finally, circa three weeks ago, having already eaten, digested, and passed my “this scouser is shit” hat, came Stay Too Long, the first single from his forthcoming album, titled The Defamation of Strickland Banks. Upon hearing this addictive absolute gem of a track, I completely forgot about the vulgarity, the British slim-shady-ey, the suckishness of his debut album. This, an even more so the rest of the album, clearly ain’t like anything from him which we heard previously. He has completely evolved on this album, but he’s done so without losing his unique musical identity. He’s not trying to impress the local shmad lads with rude words on this record, he’s gotten over his Mama issues, and he’s just making slick music. Most impressively, he’s matured. Listen to tracks like Hard Times, or my track-of-the-album Welcome To Hell, and not only will you be unable to believe they’re coming from the same guy as did Sick 2 Def, but you won’t even hear a single swear word in the process.
___However, I do still have a few criticisms of this album. Well, only one, but it’s a big one. It’s obvious that Plan B has distanced himself from the dark, intimidating,-songs-about-anal-sex corner of the musical room, but on some of the tracks he’s been so caught up in getting away from that corner, that he’s strayed into the slightly-sort-of-camp corner. Listening to Love Goes Down, and all I can say to myself is that he sounds really like Daniel Merriweather. And that’s a really bad, a horribly bad thing. It’s a similar story for Writing’s On The Wall, only that’s actually a decent song, so although it sounds like he’s singing it post-castration, it’s half decent. The chilling yet catchy She Said may seem to fall into the same category, but its non-gayness levels are salvaged by some really smooth rap verses. Any ambiguity about his sexual orientation, however, is banished every time I hear this charming particular track. Fun fact: that’s actually Effy from Skins in the video. Yeh, the one who’s getting it on with Drew in the lift. And yeh, the one who’s 17.
_____Now, it might interest to know that all of the above was written over a month and a half ago. See, for some reason, seven tracks were leaked ages ago, back when Tiger Woods was a golfer and Ashley Cole was a player, but the remaining six were nowhere to be found. At first I thought this was most peculiar, but now, upon listening to I Know A Song, I’m beginning to think it might have been one of the greatest business moves since Mr. Quinn’s billion euro gamble on Anglo-Irish in that parallel universe where it wasn’t retarded.
___Through giving the general public a taste of some genuinely superb music such as Stay Too Long and She Said, a certain percentage of those would pre-order the album, securing for Drew approx. 100% more sales than he would have achieved had fans fully known exactly what they were buying. Of course, my estimation that not one of these albums would have been shifted assumes that consumers have full knowledge of what they are buying, ie that Trading In My Cigarettes should have been titled Trading In My Talent For A Piano In Order To Write A Really Bad Song. And also that they act rationally, and in reality actively avoid such pains in life such as disease, torture, and Free.
___But as we all know, we’re not rational in the slightest, and not knowing what to expect on an album is half the fun. And that’s why, on the whole, this album ain’t half bad. The dreadful tracks prescribed above are more than made up for by the opposite of dreadful tracks prescribed above-er, and some of the poorer songs are salvaged by some catchy rapping, What You Gonna Do a perfect example. Also, the brilliant string-work in The Recluse and Darkest Place turns two average songs into so much more.
_____My final should really take nothing into account but how I feel after listening to the album right through, which isn’t exactly ecstatic. Yes, there is some amazing stuff on the album, but there’s also a few shockers, and he really does sound like Daniel Merriweather worryingly frequently… But I can’t help but compare this to his literally disturbing debut, and when I do, I’m figuratively blown away.
B3
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