16 THE SCENE

THE SCENE interviews plan b

Ben Drew, aka Plan B, is one of British music’s rising stars. After gaining critical acclaim for his powerful, angry and hard hitting debut Who Needs Actions When You Got Words he was being lauded as ‘the British Eminem’. Now he’s back with a completely different sound. The Defamation Of Strickland Banks is Plan B’s follow up album and it marks a bold step in a soulfully different direction. Gary Baker caught up with Ben to find out about the choices he’s made…

What can people expect from the new album then?Something a bit different. The sort of music your mum and dad listened to but presented by me. The subject matter is pretty dark and there’s a bit of rapping in it, but musically I’ve tried to make it feel nostalgic whilst

sounding pretty modern. It’s a soul album basically. I just think that the Motown style of music is something that no one can criticise. I’m really proud of it. It’s a story, a journey from start to finish.

It’s a very different album to your first one. Why did you go down that route?I realised that the way I was making hip hop just couldn’t really be marketed to the

masses. The day I started making this album was the day I stopped giving a sh*t about

being successful. When I recorded my first album I just wanted to say something, which I did. Then I saw other people’s stuff getting played on the radio and I got pretty p*ssed off at how easy they were getting it handed to them whilst I was working so hard to get my stuff heard. I basically just decided I wasn’t going to compromise what I wanted to do by making a pop/rap record. If my brand of hip hop was a bit too hardcore I’d do something else, something I was proud of.

So is that it for Plan B and hip hop?No way man, I haven’t ditched hip hop at all. I actually recorded a secret second album that fills in the blanks of the story of Strickland Banks - The Ballad Of Belmarsh. It should be out next year, it’s really for the fans who won’t appreciate the direction I took on Strickland Banks.

Telling stories is very important in your music, is that the way you see song writing?Yeah, I see them as films for the blind. I see it

as a way of making films within music. The lyrics and the concept are important, the music is almost secondary. I said I wanted to do that from the start, the only reason the first album wasn’t one big story was because I’d never done it before. That was a collection of short stories.

Was there ever an intention to really combine hip hop on to the album?To start with, yeah. I wrote a few ‘normal’ songs and I tried to put a few rap verses in but they kind of broke the flow of the tune so I took ‘em out. I thought that was good as it meant the radio had something to play.Originally the ‘inbetween’ tracks on the album were going to be really dark hip hop but when I heard the two styles together they just didn’t gel. I suppose I got a bit addicted to writing all the soul songs, enough for a whole album; so I decided to split them into Strickland Banks and The Ballad Of Belmarsh.

When it comes to your live shows how’s it going to work, balancing the soul and hip hop tracks?We’ll try and get most of the story on the album out there when we do it live. We might not play some of the ballads on the album but we’ll keep all the higher tempo tracks in. I suppose when it comes to my old stuff we might try and do some Motown remixes of tracks like Charmaine. Give them a bit of a revival.

Your love of story telling has meant that you’ve had a few acting roles and directed a few short films, is that a direction you want to pursue?Yeah, directing is, definitely. Doing the acting was really just a way that I could get experience on a film set, to learn more to help me when it comes to directing my own films. The fact that Michael Caine was in one of the films (Harry Brown) was just a bonus. I enjoy the acting though, it’s fun. For me though, it’s just another stepping stone to get where I wanna go – I want to merge the lines between music and film, that’s the ambition. It’s something I’ve wanted to do from the start, but it’s taking a bit of time to get the clout you need to get these things done.

What about the summer, you going to be blazing the festival trail?Yeah, hopefully. I can’t say too much for definite now but we should be about at quite a few of the big ones. It’ll be good to get these tracks out to people who won’t have necessarily heard of Plan B before.

The Ballad Of Strickland Banks is out on April 5. For more info on Plan B head to www.time4planb.co.uk

THE SCENE interviews plan b

THE SCENE 17

There’s AlwAys Plan B