1. 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