UK grime rapper turned soul sensation Plan B, AKA Ben Drew, whom Tone Deaf predicted in our tips for 2010’s hottest artists some seven months ago, has had his latest album rejected by his record label. While a label rejecting an album is nothing new (just ask the Klaxons), you’d think that Plan B, who has topped the charts several times this year and sold around 500,000 albums since March would be able to do as he pleases. Alas no. The reason is because his new release, The Ballad of Belmarsh which is a follow up to the chart topping The Defamation Of Strickland Banks, is a return to his hip hop origins and it’s got his record company shitting their dacks. He’d wanted to release the album as a double CD, but reckons his label “talked him out of it”.
“I was offended but I said, ‘Alright cool’. This is the compromise – I take that hip hop record, I put it out on my own label and you own none of it. I’ll promote it off the back of my soul record and that’s what I’m doing. The label was over the moon, they got what they wanted and I got what I wanted.”
