| TOTP: Plan B kind of sounds like a superhero name...
Plan B: It's a good name. I went through lots of names. You want a name where people can keep calling you what they're used to calling you, which is 'B'. They used to call me 'B' all the time so with Plan B, they can still call me 'B'.
TOTP: What other names did you consider?
Plan B: When I was growing up I used to MC a little bit. I had names like Scholar and Hot Property which was shorted to Hot Prop, then shortened to H.O.T. Just stupid names like that that didn't represent me at all.
TOTP: If you were a superhero, what kind of hero would you be?
Plan B: Someone who uses their mind, so maybe that guy in X-Men [Professor X], but without the wheelchair.
TOTP: What kind of clothes would you wear?
Plan B: Nothing too tight. I need to f****** pump myself up with some f****** steroids before I could put on one of them f****** suits on, man. A metal casing or some s*** so it looks like I've got muscles.
TOTP: Who would be your nemesis?
Plan B: I wouldn't have a nemesis, I'd be too powerful.
TOTP: Who would your sidekick be?
Plan B: I work alone. I don't take no prisoners, man. No one holding me back.
TOTP: Do you feel that you're alone in what you're doing now?
Plan B: Yeah big time, man. I'm alone and I've always felt like that in society. I've never wanted to be one of them people who says, "if you can't beat em join em". I don't believe in that. I think people can always be beat and you don't need to join em. I lead, not follow.
TOTP: Superheroes are always on the outside of society, aren't they?
Plan B: Yeah, they're all tortured characters, man.
TOTP: Are you a tortured character?
Plan B: In the way that I feel other people's pain and I always have done since I was a kid. Whenever I seen injustice as a kid, it always used to upset me. One of my childminders told me that she used to pick me up from school and I'd be in floods of tears. Uncontrollably upset, and it would always be because one of my friends got in trouble for someting he didn't do. I'd get upset when I'd try and tell someone the truth and they wouldn't listen and just ignored me. It's one of the most upsetting things in the world.
TOTP: Awww!
Plan B: It looks like from day one I've always kind of been like that. When I see injustice and stuff it affects me and I'm kind of tortured in that way so I write about a lot of things to get them out of my system. In order to feel like I've done something about it. I can't do anything physically about it, but mentally at least I can kind of get rid of my demons, you know what I mean?
TOTP: What would happen if you didn't have an outlet for this frustration?
Plan B: I would just be like the rest of the ignorant m************ in this world that ignore the bad s*** that happens to people because it's not happening to them, and just go out and get p***** every night and walk past people and ignore them.
TOTP: So, if Plan B is Ben Drew in his hip-hop guise. What's Plan A?
Plan B: Plan A was when I done R'n'B. I done it for four years. I'm good at writing R'n'B songs, but it didn't feel real. I grew up listening to alternative kind of stuff. Prodigy and jungle and a lot more hardcore stuff so I don't know where the R'n'B stuff came from. I didn't feel comfortable being that sweet boy Justin Timberlake kind of guy. I didn't feel comfortable because I knew I'd have to do choreography and all that.
TOTP: Do you have the moves if the moves are required?
Plan B: I've got rhythm, but I'm not good at learning dance moves. But if I go to a club, I don't embarrass myself.
TOTP: You've said that you don't mind being called the British Eminem. Who would you not want to be the British version of?
Plan B: Cliff Richard.
TOTP: You're probably not in danger of winning that comparison. Take your language.
Plan B: This is a record label who don't want to sign people they can manipulate into making the music that they want them to. If they was like that they might as well start up a pop band themselves. Call themselves 679 the pop band and make their own f****** records. People in this country are not stupid enough to buy that s***. Kids might be that stupid, but this is a label that makes music for adults and people who are really into music. That's what appealed to me about signing to 679 and not some other major.
TOTP: We reckoned that if all of the swear words on the album were bleeped out, it would sound like the test card.
Plan B: Yeah, it wouldn't work would it?
TOTP: Did you try to do that?
Plan B: We've done an ultra-clean version of 'Mama' where I've changed 'crack' to 'that,' we've changed 'slut' to 'girl', we changed 'p***' to 'mick'. You know, but that's just one song. So in order for a clean version of the album to be made I'd have to go into the studio for a week or two weeks changing words trying to make it cleaner.
TOTP: Do you think that swear words have lost their power?
Plan B: They have lost their power a bit, just like sex has lost its power in the sense that back in the day if you flashed a bit of skin, it wouldn't be allowed on the BBC. Now, you have women sometimes with their t*** out or whatever. So yeah, everyone's becoming desensitised to a lot of things.
TOTP: What's the next step for hip hop? A lot has been said about the fact that you rap over an acoustic guitar...
Plan B: I see music as music. You can make music just by banging the table, hitting that glass with a key and just start rapping and that's music. For me, doing the guitar thing, I thought, "why not?" The more I done it, the more I realised that people were shocked by it. That's a good thing. It's what got me all this press.
TOTP: So what instrument are you going to shock with next? The glockenspiel?
Plan B: I've got this mate, he always says "I'm going to get a job one day, because I want a normal life with a family." But I say: "that's b*******, bruv. No, you don't." I say I wanna learn piano. I probably never will. Those people who sit there watching you playing guitar, that's b*******. If you did wish you could play it, you'd buy a guitar and ******* play it. So, I want to learn piano. If I ever will, who f****** knows? But if I had some time on my hands and a piano was there I would f****** do it, man.
TOTP: What if you did learn the piano and you started rapping over it and it ended up sounding like a cheesy, easy listening tune?
Plan B: Cool man. I've got to mature, you know? And I'm sure that as I get older, the tempos of my songs are going to slow down. All the cigarettes I'm going to smoke, it's probably going to be a lot harder to rap at a certain speed. So, who knows, when I'm 40 I might be some sort of old f****** cliche. Who knows, man?
TOTP: You could go and do a Barry White...
Plan B: Maybe, man. Once I've milked the f*** out of this s***, maybe that will be the fresh thing to do. I don't know, man. I don't see a lot of 45 year olds rapping.
TOTP: Why's that do you reckon?
Plan B: Hip hop is pretty irresponsible music. It's an irresponsible scene just like punk is. You couldn't go and watch a 45 year old punk rocker spitting at people on stage and think he's cool. So like, I'm sure that when I get to that age, hip hop probably won't be the best music to make. But who knows, man. Maybe I'll be the first grandad rapper that everyone respects.
Loads more Plan B stuff (including a special session) on BBC Collective...
| 
