Why bother with Plan B? (review illManors)

In May, when Ben Drew (Plan B)’s single illManors came out I compared him to Shakespeare. Now I’m back with a critical piece on his whole album of the same name; which has had a massive impact on my life.

 

As illuminated by the singles that he has released so far; illManors, Lost my Way and now Deepest Shame this album is very vocal. Drew is attempting to tell stories from his childhood and from the culture of Forest Gate in the late 90’s, ‘I’m a social commentator, socially commentating, what I say is verbatim’ (I am the Narrator); the stories which cover drugs, prostitution, assault, murder, newspapers and society, are based on real experiences of people from East London.

Due to the form and content of this album there is an interesting discussion to be had about a) what Drew is trying to do and b) whether it is any good.

a) Drew’s latest single release has involved Radio 1 playing Deepest Shame most days. The song tells the story of Michelle, sexually abused as a child who turns to drugs to numb the pain and then prostitution to fund the habit. By being played on the radio Drew is bringing the reality of generational poverty to all sorts of kitchens and living rooms!

The lines here between music as entertainment and music as protest are getting a little blurred. Drew said he wrote illManors as a response to the riots of last summer, as an attempt to be a voice for those unheard. He samples vocals from protest-punk poet John Cooper on his album (he performed at Music for Miners in 1984 and has a strong link to socially conscious music).

Drew makes several bold statements both to those he views as outsiders, ‘sorry mate, these ends are in a sorry state, you can’t relate’ (Falling Down) and to his own, ‘We aint no different from them, honestly. Luck is the only reason they weren’t born into poverty’ (Live Once). Yes, there is a degree of advocacy of the poor to the rich going on; see Kano’s rap in ‘Live Once’ but there is also an attempt at balance, illManors criticised both dependency on benefits and the Government’s economic policy, and a desire to educate – he gives a brief history of cockney and its uses in ‘Live Once’ and to challenge kids from the estates not to become self-fulfilling prophecies. I would argue that this authentic voice of Forest Gate is producing a voice from the street, for the street. There is far too much swearing to make government pay all that much attention; it is too easy to dismiss these words as those of an angry man who is out of control.

b) Is it any good? Yes, at conveying the violence and the struggles of the underclasses. But I would also like to suggest that Drew’s music is well crafted. Drew is unafraid of fusing high culture with rap; during ‘I am the Narrator’ he samples St Saën’s Carnival of the Animals, behind his rap he reclaims the high culture for everyday use. His narrative tale, Mr Drug Dealer, borrows extensively from the epic genre, taking each verse as an episode in Chris’ life – we follow Chris and the twists and turns almost as they play out in front of us. I saw significant parallels in form between Drew’s album and Perfect Strangers; both use the device of starting with a complete scenario and working backwards to explain how this circumstance came to be, like Drew’s lyrics, its clever. Clever literary devises of the lyricist, good use of sound from the poet and harmony from the musician; all from one man.

Several of my friends disagree with me that Drew’s work is art worth appreciating. I think there are a number of things that affect people’s appreciation of the work – language is a big one, style is another and definition of vulgarity also makes an impact. Essentially the question is, ‘Can a piece with violent content and explicit expression be artful, can it be beautiful?’ This question is actually one Drew addresses himself  ‘sorry mate…you can’t relate …you can’t appreciate how this artist paints’(Falling Down). I think there is objective quality in the art Drew creates; after all I did compare him to Shakespeare.

My encouragement to you would be listen to the record, with open ears and consider what you can learn about life, East London, and even yourself through it.

High Profile East End

I don’t know if its because the Olympics are just around the corner but the East End is everywhere at the moment!

It all started a few weeks ago with a BBC programme on the changing character of Billingsgate Market (an East End fish market). It profiled how the changing demographic and economic climate in East London had affected the market and its patrons through the eyes of real people whose lives were affected by the change. It was interesting to see how national and international phenomena (fish stocks) affected the individual.

In the newspaper I read that the Cockney sparrow is now near extinct from competition in East London, and the number of real Cockneys (born within the sound of Bow Bells) has also declined severely because noise pollution in the city means the sound can barely be heard beyond Shoreditch Market (read it here). If the East End were a UNESCO site they might be about to lose their funding for failing to meet its cultural definitions! I guess this means we have to look for new definitions of an ‘East Ender’ based on our modern spatial markers, like within sight of the Gherkin, something increasingly difficult to do when we are less spatially distinct. Although I did hear someone say on the Tube the other day that ‘London is still a number of separate towns’; the districts of the City are still indeed distinct but summing them up into one statement of their cultural identity would prove difficult. The districts of London continue to fascinate me.

I have also read a book about the East End recently called, ‘The Sugar Girls’. It was about a group of girls who all worked at the Tate and Lyle factory in Plaistow, not so far from Billingsgate. The book was based on a memory project carried out by the authors, Barrett and Calvi, in Old People’s homes and Community centres, noting down ladies’ stories. It was interesting to see the patterns that pervaded throughout the book for the women of the factories relating to independence, careers, love and friendship . Whilst recognising that things had changed with technological advances and immigration to the area the women retained a great fondness for their area and the friends they had made. The book made me keenly aware of the CSR function that factories used to have towards their own workers; taking them on holidays to the seaside and ensuring women under intense pressure took paid leave to recuperate. The authors also did humour really well in their storytelling.

Somewhat tenuously I wanted to add my trip to see Sweeney Todd into this blogpost. The story of The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is expertly told at the Adelphi Theatre; Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton were good but my major support goes to Gillian Kirkpatrick who played a mad woman excellently. Although theoretically Fleet Street is w1 it still just about meets East London and the portrayal of London culture in the musical was really interesting, Mr Pirelli perhaps being the Victorian East London archetype, and provoked much internet searching as to what a ‘Beadle’ was. Even the bustle of the streets as portrayed in the musical is reminiscent of much of London life, all that shouting and a fair deal of coarseness, street food provided because there is no time to sit down, running because there is no time to walk and lots of smoke; this came into its own in the smog last week, I finally understand why it is called the ‘Big Smoke’.

Top Boy: Good exposure for East London?

Recently I have secured a full-time job working with young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) in Tower Hamlets, London (this is a deprived part of England’s capital city). Working in this environment has made me view media on the subject of London's East End with quite different eyes.

Over the last two weeks Channel 4 have aired a four-part drama called ‘Top Boy'. It follows a few months in the life of a thirteen year-old boy called Ra’Nell. Ra’Nell’s life is far from easy; his Mum is hospitalised with a mental illness and his best friends get caught-up in selling drugs. Not every drug-dealer is stereotyped; there’s Heather, the pregnant mum seeking a better life for herself and her baby and will grow cannabis to get there, or the twelve year old pushers who join the gang for a little bit of pocket money and kudos. Neither is it wall-to-wall violence; the plot-line is nuanced, and addresses issues such as missing father figures and the desire to belong as well as the ‘reality of London life’.

The writer of the series, Ronan Bennett says he got the inspiration for the programme one afternoon walking through his neighbourhood in Hackney when he saw a twelve year old selling drugs outside the supermarket. Two-years of research followed, meeting all-sorts from dealers to journalists, social workers and school-children. The programme is deliberately not preachey. In the Guardian, Bennett writes, ‘We don’t want to discuss the issues thrown up by what I’ve seen and heard. That’s not drama. Drama is story, character, the creation of a world. We want to take viewers viscerally and emotionally to a place they have heard a lot about but don’t really know’. So in many senses it is a work of fiction, but it is going to provoke a reaction.

The photo at the top of the page was taken outside my work place in Tower Hamlets. Here it is almost as if the poster were a mere window onto the world. From my own new knowledge of this world I’ve ‘heard a lot about but don’t really know’ I’d say the characterisations were fairly accurate; the characters sound like East Londoners and their stories of broken families and peer-pressure are familiar. This is, however, only half the story. As Phil Hogan’s generous Guardian Review puts it, ‘the neighbourhood remained strangely benign: community thrived, kindly voices filled the market, mothers went to church and kept a tidy house. The sun shone on this picture of hardship’. And this is exactly my point, amid all the disaster there is great hope, rising from the streets of East London. When speaking to one local resident about the programme, interestingly he felt it was really unhelpful; when I asked about it he just said, ‘its not like that for everyone; its a bit too dramatic’. If this is a world we ‘don’t really know’ are we being informed by this programme or are we just being given new prejudices?

Today has been an interesting day for me in terms of East London and its reputation. Two young men from East London have been confirmed as dead, after being hit by a train on the line I use to get to work in the mornings.
This is a tragedy.
Two lives cut short by walking well-used railway lines. It has had a big impact on the local community who knew these lads and grieve for them. On the other hand; three Tower Hamlets heroes have today been received national recognition for their extraordinary progress into employment at the London European Social Fund Awards. All three winners are over-comers who battled against the odds of personal circumstance to achieve great things. We can choose which of these events we choose to publicise, record and turn into docu-drama and I know which one I’d rather talk about.

So, whilst Bennett did plenty of research to get his authentic East End it is important to remember that this, indeed, a dramatic representation of the truth; squished into just four hours of television and designed for impact. But is it sending the right message? And is any publicity good publicity?

You can watch Top Boy here.