Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 26/06/06
Label: 679 Recordings

If Ben Drew hadn't invented Plan B, someone else surely would have. A fast-talking, foul-mouthed ball of contradictions and complications, the 20-something east Londoner raps at grime emcee pace over tracks often founded on his own acoustic guitar playing, and his lyrics, with their nods and winks to the gallery that allow him to distance himself from the gangsta rap's excesses while ensuring they are all present and (in)correct in his records, all help ensure he has both fan base credibility and chattering class cachet.

Plan B's shtick is a Godsend: a British Eminem figure with enough intelligence to disarm the queue of detractors itching to form at his door, with skills enough to lure the rap crowd and enough of an acknowledgement of alternative music to snare the XFM / NME demographic too. We have been here - or very close - before: Skinnyman's brilliant "Council Estate Of Mind" talked about similar characters from the same side of the tracks in just as sophisticated a manner, but he didn't sample Radiohead or accompany himself on a six-string, so his message was heard only by those already predisposed to listen.

What is truly exciting about Drew, though, is that he's clearly not some record company invention, but his own man; and that if this record builds on a few good reviews and a promising advance buzz to give him a real presence in the pop music world, he may become something both musically and culturally important.

An almost puritan moral code gives even the most uncompromising tracks - "Mama (Loves A Crackhead)", which talks about how the drug destroys the families of the user; "I Don't Hate You", a howl at an absent father; "Kidz", the Larry Clark movie updated and set in Forest Gate - a backbone anyone seeking to rubbish his material will be hard pressed to overlook. As much time and care as Drew has lavished on his writing, it is almost as if he has then expended a similar effort in making his music critic-proof: certainly, it is impossible to see how the usual middle England perspectives ("it glorifies crime"; "it promotes violence") can be applied here without leaving those who make the claims looking ignorant.

Like most records informed to any degree by the London grime scene, over an entire album it becomes pretty hard going, and Drew's unrelenting focus on society's fraying edges make this an often wearying listen. But this is a valuable record from a troubling and potentially vital new voice: what this record achieves, and what he is then able to do afterwards with whatever success it brings, are pressing, urgent questions.

    by Angus Batey