You’re an artist experiencing a modicum of commercial and critical success as a gritty, hard hitting grime/hip-hop solo artist, possessing one unique trait – you rap over an acoustic guitar. You sing songs about urban decay, declining values and modern society, full of aggressive satire, commentary, well observed characters and some near genius moments of lyrical mastery. What’s your obvious next step?
Well, in plan b’s case it was to channel a dozen dead soul singers, form a 6-piece band, dress them all in snazzy waistcoats and release a concept album about the defamation of a (possibly) fictional character. Definitely the most obvious path. Well, surprisingly, this complete change of direction worked extremely well – he went from being a respected but cult status grime singer to being a respected and commercially successful pop singer.
Attempting a set comprising two starkly different musical styles would always be a challenge and sadly, for any fans of the first album, it’s pretty much just songs from the latest album, with one jazzy reworking of an older number, ‘xxx’, thrown in for good measure, which doesn’t really work particularly well in its alternative form.
Why do agents insist on booking artists into slots (and at reflected ticket prices) that they and the artist know they can’t really fill? If you’re only playing songs from one album and playing pretty much every song, that doesn’t fill an hour and a half, so the band struggles time wise, adding a fair amount of gap filling, including a very competent and experimental human beatbox and a bizarre soul classics/dub step remix encore.
All this aside, plan b and his band are extremely competent performers and in regards to the ‘concept’, play in character and stick to it exceptionally well. Plan b stalks the stage like a hip hop singer in a suit, but it still works, his band have all he right moves, from the synchronized dancing of the backing singers to the guitarists’ guitars. At times things feel a little too contrived, with inter song spiel sounding rather overused and dry, but the beauty of working a concept is that you can get away with it, brushing it off as “part of the act”. The crowd love the show, singing, dancing, screaming and generally having a good time, an intriguing mix of mainstream pop fans, indie beard strokers and British backpackers.
So plan b, you’ve certainly got away with whatever it is you were trying to get away with, the question is… What’s next?
Chris Chinchilla
