Accept No Substitute - Plan B

Sitting in his record label’s offices in North London, Plan B – real name Ben Drew – doesn’t look like your average rapper. There’s no flurry of girls swarming at his feet (not at the moment anyway) and there’s no Hummer parked out the front of the building with rims that are more metallic than Ugly Betty’s braces. Actually, there’s nothing to suggest that Drew isn’t just your average 23-year old from Forest Gate, East London – until he starts talking that is, when suddenly you can’t help but be captivated by what he’s saying.

In fact, it’s quickly apparent that talking is something that comes very easily to Drew. Four minutes in to our interview and Gigwise has to politely interrupt his answer to the first question. The initially coy and rather withdrawn rapper has become so transfixed in constructing an autobiography of his childhood and route into hip-hop that he’s now re-living the whole period on the edge of his seat. After all they are the years that created Plan B.

It wasn’t until after an elongated epoch of trial and error - where he went from writing lyrics for a primary-school band to writing teenage love songs about emotions he confesses that he’d “never experienced” - that he found hip-hop. Finding the genre’s raw, heart-on-its-sleeve honesty, however, was one of those life changing moments. “I started rapping, started doing hip-hop and started talking about issues that were fucking…a bit more real.”

What distinguished Drew, however, when he finally released his debut album, ‘Who Needs Actions When You Got Words,’ in 2006, was that his lyrics were pushed along by a minimal, acoustic backdrop. Hip-hop hadn’t seen this before and although the sound is now synonymous with Plan B – it’s something he was reluctant to use initially. “I’d pick up a guitar and play a little thing and I’d rap and people would say, ‘Wow that’s a great song but not only that, that’s a great way of doing it,’” he continues. “I’d go don’t watch this shit. I’ve got a beat in mind for this shit, the bass is gonna go like this and I was just using this purely to show you, and they were like, ‘No you should stick with that.’” 

Although he admits he “never saw the attraction,” the attention he got was suddenly opening up new eardrums. Does he not think that the guitars earthly vulnerability was the perfect compliment for his lyrics? “Oh yeah,” he agrees. “But at the time I could just not see why people were into it.” In fact, he admits that when he eventually succumbed to the guitar’s unique appeal it was just to impress record executives in the crowd so that he could finance his long term goal of getting a studio so he could “make all the hip-hop things I’ve been fucking banging on about.”

All Drew could afford were cheap studio gadgets however, so after two and a half years of getting nowhere, his debut was eventually co-produced with Paul Epworth (Maximo Park). It proved to be an inspired collaboration because they effortlessly combined his acoustic anguish with contemporary samples including The Prodigy’s, ‘No Good.’ The record’s musical accomplishments, however, paled into insignificance when the Londoner’s relentless lyrics commenced. The lyrics didn’t just dissect society; they actively put everyone – from the lower classes to the people who thought that they didn’t have to care - right in the middle of it. Direct references to the murders of Damilola Taylor and Jill Dando and the troubles of underage sex, meant the album didn’t just take Drew into the music charts, its lyrics made him headlines. Not that he was bothered. Finally Britain was being unearthed as the malicious 21st century playground that it really is.

Unlike his contemporaries, Drew’s not content with just making obvious cultural comments. Instead he tries to produce mini biopics of the society which we all live in. As a lover of cinematography, that’s an accomplishment he’s proud to accept.  “I talk about things that affect me. So, Damilola Taylor’s death coupled with the fact that when I see clips of people getting happy slapped on their phone disgusts me.” Drew shifts in his seat itching with fervour, and confesses. “So for me rather than just mention Damilola Taylor I decided to write a song through the eyes of someone who thought it was cool to murder a kid. I thought that would be more powerful and that it would drive through the message a lot harder, a lot stronger than me using a fucking metaphor, you know?”