Plan-B/ The Defamation Of Strickland Banks

Plan B
The Defamation Of Strickland Banks
(679/Atlantic)
The alter-ego has a long-standing history in popular music, from Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust to Slim Shady and Sasha Fierce. As far as reinventions go however, there can be few as extreme as East Londoner Ben Drew’s metamorphosis from the shockingly brutal, acoustic guitar-slinging rapper Plan B into the “suited and booted” blue-eyed soul singer Strickland Banks.
While the Forest Gate native’s penchant for rhymes such as “I’ll stab you in the eye yo, with a fucking biro” landed him acting roles in Adulthood and Harry Brown, his new project will leave some disciples of his 2006 debut dumbfounded. The concept album is described as “an urban fairytale, the story of a man who finds success hard to handle and then hits rock bottom”, which may inspire little more than trepidation and a faint nausea, yet when Drew opens his mouth to sing the results are stunning.
‘Stay Too Long’ sounds like funk-rock revivalists The Heavy getting down and dirty at the club, while Drew alternates between crooning and spitting agitated verses, as his night on the tiles turns raucous.
His strong falsetto is bred from classic Motown hits and the overall feel here is polished retro soul in a Mayer Hawthorne or Jamie Lidell style, with the requisite Daptone horns all over tracks like ‘She Said’.
The most striking aspect of this record is the quality of songwriting exhibited throughout, from the swinging, swoonsome ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ to the gospel-tinged prison ode ‘Welcome To Hell’. Confounding expectations at every turn, Plan B has got around the second album obstacle in inventive and immaculate style.