Plan B vs Eminem
A few years ago, one of my daughters told me, ‘Dad, you’re an English teacher, so you must like Eminem because he’s amazing the way he uses words.’ Well, yes. And not only me. All writers must appreciate Eminem’s art (even if they don’t like it). The Nobel-prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney garnered international media attention when, unexpectedly, he referred to Eminem in a speech, praising the rapper’s ‘verbal vivacity’.
But now there’s a new kid on the block, a 22-year-old Londoner named Ben Drew who calls himself Plan B. Already one critic has described his debut album as ‘the most powerful and literate’ that he has heard for quite a while, while another describes Drew as ‘unique and scarily talented’. Heaney and others (including myself) thought of Eminem as an ersatz troubadour, a kind of Bob Dylan for a new generation, because it seemed that Eminem’s work invited that kind of comparison. The similarities are even stronger with Plan B, for the only musical accompaniment to the few tracks I’ve heard is a simple finger rhythm or a few chords played on an acoustic guitar by the rapper himself. That’s very Dylan, I suppose, though the style reminds me more of Craig David’s first album, it’s got that kind of feel. Plan B doesn’t want to be the new Dylan though or the new Craig David or even a new Eminem—he says his biggest influence is the film director Quentin Tarantino.
To research this article I’ve spent much of the week listening to four tracks back-to-back: Plan B’s Kidz and Sick 2 Def, and Eminem’s My Name Is and Guilty Conscience. (It seemed right to use Eminem’s early work for comparison since this is Plan B’s debut.)
It’s obvious that both rappers are influenced by visual contemporary mass media, but there are big differences in approach. Eminem’s work makes me think of a distorted, decayed version of the Simpsons, a cartoony satirical view of the world, while Plan B is definitely filmic. Eminem creates situations, characters, sitcoms; Plan B is direct, blunt, and visually visceral. For example, with Eminem you’ll get a squeaky cartoon voice and dialogue, but Sick 2 Def finds Plan B still-framing a murder scene before rewinding it, moment by moment, until you find the murderer sitting listening to the rapper on his headphones. Then Plan B asks if the police will blame him and his music for inciting the murder.
Plan B’s tracks are social comment at its most powerful. It’s not hopeful, it’s not uplifting, it’s socially divisive and corrosive with its stress on the individual against the community, but that’s the way Plan B sees it, and it’s still social comment.
It can be social comment because Plan B’s viewpoint is one of implied detachment. Most rappers can’t think themselves out of the ghetto and so either brag about their ‘achievements’ or else launch attacks against their ‘rivals’. Plan B is way above that—he tries to explain why street kids want to brag in the first place and like an old testament prophet accuses society of hypocrisy: ‘You best ban T.V if you want me to stop / coz I’m so heavily influenced by the things that I watch / it ain’t just Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs / it’s Irreversible, Bes Moi and City of God / it’s the news on every channel when I turn on the box / it’s seeing paedophiles singing on Top of the Pops / Gary Glitter, Michael Jackson, what?’
Plan B’s language is indecent, gross, vulgar, and offensively violent: quite the most foul-mouthed invective I’ve heard for some time, and I’m not sure whether mainstream radio will be able to stomach it. But Drew means it to be this way: ‘I talk so foul, I talk so coarse / I show no regret I show no remorse…my metaphors are twisted’. This is the language that the rapper has chosen to present his view of the world. There is no doubt that his work is very, very disturbing, but millions of listeners around the world, including here in southern Africa, will recognise their own voice and experience in Plan B’s songs. This man’s debut is an album that many will hate but few will be able to ignore.
