By Sam. Posted in Random chat | No Comments »
Plan B The Roundhouse – ITunes Gig, London Review.
When Finger-Jam was a young lad and listening to Indie music and French House he would never imagine going to a Rap-Hip-hop-Jazzy-Big-bang-beat-box-SKA-reggae-rock night hosted by a sweaty south Londoner, singing Seal covers and coming away absolutely loving it. In fact the young Finger-Jam would have given himself a sarf London slap for enjoying Plan B…
Plan B is an anomaly, a paradox, a freak of nature but mostly unique
Plan B’s soul infused music is mature yet raw. He mixes hip-hop with Big-band. He has an old-fashioned look with Sax player and 60s style backing-singers yet plays to teaming crowds of teenagers. He is a tough talking south Londoner yet his vocals are sometimes extremely feminine. He isn’t that good looking or very cool yet women seem to love him and blokes are literally coming up to him and asking him to shag their girlfriends:
- “Someone asked me to shag his girlfriend. Plan B told Zoo magazine, ‘Will you fuck my girlfriend?’ He said and she was standing right there. I laughed, but she was actually quite fit. “I did think it’d be pretty cool. She came over and kissed me on the lips and was grabbing my arse and trying to take me into a corner. I was about to do it, but I realised her man was on drugs, so I thought that once he’d come down, he wouldn’t be very happy about it.”
Maybe this great paradox of persona is due to his changing As Alex Petridis (The best music reviewer on the planet) says in the Guardian – “Not long ago, Plan B (real name Ben Drew) was a spectacularly foul-mouthed rapper. His debut album Who Needs Actions When You Got Words? was the kind of record where you’re never far from a joke about contracting a sexually transmitted disease from having anal sex with a corpse. Four years on, he is Plan B, a sharp-suited, Smokey Robinson-influenced singer, up on stage, dealing in post-Amy Winehouse retro soul of a romantic hue.”
The Plan B gig had everything. From the truly formidable beat-box who introduced the gig – FAITH SFX (unbelievable) at the beginning, to his excellent singles, then on to covers were all superb.
Plan B appeals to the masses. He appeals to the young because of that edgy raw talent. He appeals to the late 20 and 30 somethings because there is a maturity and we can feel that we are being a bit “cool” again by listening to digestible hip-hop and rap.
Yet during these rock outings and flirtations with soul, the Roundhouse mosh-pit was not moshing. The baying crowd stopped baying. If anything Plan B has cooled his act too much and is perhaps too diverse to have a hard-core appeal to every new sound on his electic set. Part of me pined for some more Rap, some more sweary behaviour. But it didn’t come.
I have yet to hear anyone say they hate him (there is always someone out there), or that they don’t like his music. But do people love ALL his music?
Anyway good luck to you fella – you’ll go far.
(The gorgeous Kaya Scodelario the girl in the Plan B video She Said – who is the actress that plays Effy in Skins)
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