It’s possible you first heard Ben Drew spitting flames over the top of Radiohead-sampling ‘Missin’ Links’, telling brutal tales of broken addicts and wasted lives. Maybe you saw him star opposite Michael Caine in streets-horror thriller Harry Brown, sneering as he choked the life out of one poor copper. More than likely, Plan B first entered your consciousness as he soared to the top of the UK Album Charts, wielding a cluster of classic soul tracks and a mean falsetto.
Whatever the answer, as he makes great pains to tell us, you don’t know the half of Plan B yet. Over the course of the interview, he tells us about his new “masterpiece”, why the violence of acting appeals to him and how he wishes he just had time to do everything. In conversation, Drew’s calibre as a storyteller really comes across; in explaining the path that lead him to his new album, his flow is impeccable and the pauses come in all the right places. It’s so perfect that we almost forget that we should be asking questions.
Your first album was pretty successful but afterwards you disappeared from the scene for a long while. At what point were you prompted you to reconsider how you were doing things?
I guess it wasn’t hard, because it’s not like the soul singing was something I’ve never done before. D’you know what I mean, it wasn’t difficult. It was more like, I’ve got all these sides to me as a person, as an artist, it was more like reconsidering what side of my talent I show people. I found that just being a rapper, or people only knowing I was a rapper meant that some people got me but most people didn’t, they wrote me off as some kind of angry fucking wigga from a council estate, some ignorant little grime artist, or whatever. Me showing people more that I was a singer and a songwriter in this album, I knew that if I did this I could shut quite a few people up, it’s gonna actually show people that I’m more than just that. ‘Cos I am an angry little white rapper, but I’m more than that as well. For me it was important that people understood about what I have to offer as a whole. People already know about the acting, and soon they’re going to know about the directing. For me, it was showing that I’m a songwriter and a singer. Saying all this, it seems like when I started The Defamation of Strictland Banks it was all premeditated, that I started in the office with a bunch of suits at a record label, rubbing our hands together and saying, “Right, how are we going to make lots of money?” That’s not the case. When 679 was picked up by Atlantic – it used to be Warners’, Warners own Atlantic, it’s all a bit incestual and weird, 679 used to deal directly with Warners – when Atlantic took them over, I was one of those artists where they could have just dropped me. But someone at Atlantic liked me, and wanted to see if they could work with me for this record. No one told me this. All I knew was that I was still signed to 679, so I sat in the basement studio underneath a council estate in Battersea with my band and made lots of music. All different styles; I done folk rock, I done reggae, I done experimental hip hop shit. And we put all these instrumentals down with my band, basically, lots of shit I’d written at home and put on my phone, I’d bring it into the studio and play it and we’d work out the chords again and the drummer would put the drums down, et cetera. Then I would take the instrumentals home and start writing to them. I’d start trying to think of hooks and stuff like that. More music was coming out, because I didn’t hinder myself or stop myself from writing any type of music – if it sounded good, we just made it. And the stuff that kept on coming through more and more was the soul. On the back of the last tour I’d previously written ‘Love Goes Down’ on acoustic guitar, and in rehearsals the band would play it with me. We really enjoyed it, but we knew that it would never work as part of the Plan B album, which was a shame. So we were thinking about what R’n’B artists were out there we could sell it to, but after a while I thought, “Of course I can use this, of course I can do this as Plan B, I’ve just got to think of a clever way of doing it”. And I love telling stories, I always wanted my second album to be one full story, so I thought, “Why don’t I create a character who is a famous soul singer who gets sent to prison?” And so I created Strictland Banks. The reason he’s called Strictland Banks: when I was thinking of names for myself, people used to call me ‘B’, short for Ben. I wanted my name to have a B in it, and before I thought of Plan B – which I thought was ideal because I can flip my style, Plan B seemed relevant – one of the names I was playing with was ‘Strictly B’, which would be short for strictly business. But that was if I was going to be a soul singer – before I was a rapper I was going to do soul – but I decided, “No, I’m going to do hip hop, my name’s Plan B then.” So I thought, if Strictly B, Strictly Business was to be up in front of a court of law, what would his name be? So, Strictland Banks, Strictland Banks is Strictly B’s real name. When this concept was born, it was going to be a double album, two CDs. And one CD was Strictland Banks’ storey, told by him through his language, which is motown style, and the other CD was a hip hop version of events, narrated by Plan B, which delved into all the darker details and people he meets.
Ah yes – I was going to ask you about this.
This is the thing – the only compromise in terms of… People are saying I changed my style, I didn’t. I wrote both of these albums, one of these was supposed to be music experimenting and showing something different, and the other one was supposed to be what they’re used to anyway. And what happened is the label said, “Look, we can’t market the hip hop stuff. The radio cannot play it; it’s a waste of our money.” The way I make hip hop is better suited to an independent label, a label that doesn’t put a lot of money into the making of the record and the promoting of it. Therefore, when they only sell fifty thousand copies, they’re not making a loss. A label like Atlantic, if they put a lot of money into a record like that they’re not going to make a profit. So it terms of business, they’re saying, “We can’t go with that”. And I said, “Well, look. You just sell them together, so you’ve still got your marketable album and it just comes with this extra feature”. They said, “It’s too much work for us. We don’t understand it, we think people will get confused, we just want to go with this record.” And I said, “Alright, fine. Then give me my hip hop record, I own the hip hop record.” That’s the deal. I have the rights to the hip hop album which I will release, hopefully in six months’ after this record comes out. If I can finish it on time. Basically, I’ll release it on Cemetary, my own label, and it will cater for those fifty, sixty thousand fans who give a shit about that. Because you’ve got to remember, that’s the amount of people worldwide who give a shit about Plan B, the old Plan B. Fifty thousand, that’s how many records I sold. It’s taken four years for that record to become a silver record. So… y’know, shit, I know what people are going to say, I’ve read the fucking comments on Youtube. But most of the comments on Youtube are positive, and you get the occasional little dickhead, who chats some shit – purist, is what I call them. When you like something, you don’t want it to change, you don’t want it to grow. If you don’t want to listen to The Defamation of Strictland Banks, then there’s no point buying The Ballad of Bellmarsh [The working title of the hip hop record]. If you don’t buy The Defamation of Strictland Banks, you won’t understand what’s going on. For me everything is tied together. When I’m acting, I’m going to play different roles – are you going to criticize me because in one film I’m a gangster and the other film I’m not? No, because everybody understands that in films you play different roles, nobody wants to see the same film twice and all the rest of it. So why can’t people have the same attitude about music? This is the barrier I’m trying to break down. I want people to understand that when you buy a Plan B record, it’s like you’re buying a film. It’s not like the rest of the music you buy, it’s not straightforward, it is going to challenge you as a listener. And the one thing I felt that I was doing that was right, is that it’s a classic sound. Who the fuck can diss motown? Who can diss Al Green? Who can diss Marvin Gaye? Who the fuck can stand up and say that that music’s shit? No one. And I feel that I’ve done it well.
You feel that you’re coming at it from a different angle rather than reinventing yourself or selling out, simply showing one side of yourself?
For real. It’s funny, it wasn’t premeditated, but halfway through making this record I was the potential in it. We all did. It was like, “Fucking hell”. You know that this can be crossed over, this can be a mainstream record. But we looked at it and said, “Yeah, but that’s not why we’re making it, we’re just making it”. I could have scrapped both these records and just made a pop rap record – I would never do that, that would be me compromising, that would be me selling out. I make hip hop the way I make hip hop, and I will always make hip hop that way. But doing this music was like, “Alright, if I can’t make hip hop the way I can make it, I’ll make a different style of music, and I’ll make it fucking good, to the best of my abilities”. The Ballad of Bellmarsh is still there. Watch when it comes out, man; all them motherfuckers who have been doubting me, that have been slagging me off, when they hear that album, they’re going to come back with their tails between their legs, you know what I mean? And you know what’s great, the people who are supporting me now, when The Ballad of Bellmarsh comes out, they will be able to stay that they always stood by me. And all those motherfuckers that did doubt me are going to look like fucking idiots. I’m still that grimey, dirty Plan B, but I’m also this. Just like I’m also an actor, also a director and also lots of other things.
You seem to still be living out your previous persona through your acting. I saw Harry Brown and you really seemed to be enjoying taking up that role.
Yeah, I know, I loved that shit. It’s a way for me to be aggressive and violent without the repercussions and the guilt. The repercussions of me hitting someone is getting arrested, you know, and also feeling the guilt of having hurt another human being. I don’t like that shit. But in film, it’s great, because I get to get that out of my system, and as soon as they shout cut I can be laughing and joking with that person. So it’s fun, a lot more enjoyable than being a good guy.
You’ve worked with Chase & Status twice now so you obviously get on – what’s the rapport like between you, and what draws you back together?
Just the music really, straight up the music. We seem to be making just bangers, you know what I mean. Every time we work together it seems to be something special, that will work in the clubs or will do well in the charts or whatever. I think that’s what keeps us together, we’re from very different worlds. It’s a marriage of music; as with any marriage there’s lots of bickering and fighting behind the scenes but the music speaks for itself.
The videos for ‘Stay Too Long’ and ‘She Said’ are pretty closely linked, and I’ve heard that you’re planning to release a short film alongside the album. Can you tell us anything about it?
Well it’s the same director who’s done it, and the videos are supposed to look episodic. There’s also an intro video that comes before both of those, which is ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, that’ll be coming out soon. Basically I want all the videos to join together and at some point I want to be able to shoot a short featurette around one of those – possibly ‘Praying’, in the prison – and it’ll be like a Michael Jackson moonwalk-esque film.
Do you ever see a point where you will have to pick between singing, MCing and acting?
Hmm. [Pause] I don’t think you do have to pick, I think you can do one at a time. I’m directed my own feature film this year, right, and I know that this year all I can do is promote The Defamation of Strictland Banks and to do my film and all the preparation to make that film the best it can be. If any acting jobs come up it’s going to be very hard for me to take them because I’ve got so much on my plate, but next year it will be a different story. The film will be finished, the album will be out and I can work on other projects. I can do everything. The only thing is that time is not a friend of mind, that’s all it is. If I could stop time I could go and do everything, and that would be it.
One of the main sources of your inspiration used to be real life stories of fucked-up humanity, like ‘Switched in Harvey Nix’. Are you still inspired by the same things?
I am, man, yeah, but this concept consumed every part of my talent. In order to make this concept work I had to put myself in this world I’d created. The first album was a collection of short stories, stuff I read in papers, stuff that used to influence me so much. But when I done this story, those places I used to get my inspiration from I couldn’t get to anymore. This story is completely fictional so I had to get it from somewhere else. I’m not saying I’m not going to go and do that again – once everything is done I’ll look at doing that.
Your sudden transitions between smooth crooning and dirty rapping are brilliant, but do you find it difficult to switch between so suddenly? Do you feel like both sides of you come from a different place?
Obviously it’s difficult when you’re playing all the songs back to back, you can run out of fucking breath. You’ve got to pace yourself. If it was difficult for me to do, I wouldn’t have written it like that. On my first record, there were certain rhymes I’d done where I’d forgotten to leave myself time to breathe. Like on ‘…Harvey Nix’ especially, I had to let the backing track do a couple of lines ‘cos I literally could not fucking breathe. But with this album I made sure every song was in a key I could comfortably sing, it’s been very well written. It wasn’t just me who wrote it, the band have put there bits in there, and a couple of producers, it’s very well thought through. I’ve got to say, it’s the best music I’ve ever made. I’m really proud of it, it’s a masterpiece. I think my first album, lyrically, was a masterpiece, but this album, everything about it – the songwriting, the vocal takes, the production – for me is up there with the best. The first record I didn’t think was.