Friday 09/02/07 Plan B, Prof. Green, Example @ Shepherd's Bush Empire, London

With his boss (Mike ‘The Beats’ Skinner) watching on from the upstairs bar, this fuzzy haired Fulham lyricist Example labours a painfully elaborated ‘ghetto’ accent, which certainly sounds ridiculous but has the chavalicious adolescents in the crowd dancing along nonetheless. Example’s repertoire seems to be based around a self-deprecating ‘so what, I’m white, posh and can’t rap’ recognition of his short comings. Unfortunately, this does little to detract from the fact that he is white, posh and can’t rap – “Come on sing along” he pleads “it’s easy, it’s gotta be, I wrote it”. Far too true a statement – cumbersome, forgettable shithop heavily laced with Mike Skinner’s obvious record label input and influence (what ever happened to pushing things forward eh Mike?).

Straight out of the hip hop battle scene, Prof. Green has been a favourite on the London circuit for a few years now. But with the release of single ‘Before I Die’ Prof Green’s intelligent word play and idiosyncratic style has matured beyond the realms of the playground diss, and emerged one of 2007s most promising homegrown talents. The thumping refix of Pharrell’s ‘Can I Have It Like That’ and mix of Dead Prez’d ‘Hip Hop’ get the now rammed venue jumping, as does the aforementioned ‘Before I Die’. These tracks aside, Prof retains the edgy humour that got him recognised throughout the battle scene – there’s time for a quick freestyle all about Lady Sov’s lesbian adventures that has the crowd in stitches, as well as the occasional controversial punch line that’ll get jaws dropping, and parents angry nationwide - “This year I’m here blowing up like backpacks on packed trains” – undeniably cheap and nasty, but tongue in cheek enough to get away with it.

When we got our hands on Ben Drew’s four track sampler back in summer 2005, things looked so goddamn promising. Clearly a chap with something worthwhile to say, Plan B seemed to exist to cause controversy and make people think – nothing new there, we hear you cry.  But rarely had someone captured the daily perils, trials and everyday nastiness of inner-city/council estate adolescence so angrily, and at the same time (with the help of his unconventional, totally unhiphop acoustic guitar) so articulately, and so delicately.