Plan B's underground third album

Plan B's third album, 'The Ballad of Belmarsh', will make parents tell their children to "turn that off”.

6 July 2011
Plan B's third album will make parents tell their children to "turn that s**t off”.

The musician – whose second album, 'The Defamation of Strickland Banks', was a huge hit and saw him pick up a BRIT award for Best Male – is returning to his rap roots and will go "underground" for his third record.

He said: "I can’t help it, everything I create has to have a dark side. My first record was the kind of record that, when your parents went past, they’d go ‘Turn that off, give it to me, it’s going in the bin!’ But with the second, the same parents were like, ‘What a talented guy’.

"[With the third album] those parents are going to go straight back to, ‘Turn that s*** off’.”

The album will be called 'The Ballad of Belmarsh' and will continue the story of the fictional soul singer Strickland Banks, who fans have so far heard being falsely accused of rape, sent to prison and committing a murder.

Plan B – real name Ben Drew – added to the Daily Mirror newspaper: "It's an underground hip-hop album about Strickland Banks being banged up in Belmarsh.

"I won't be him singing any more, I'll be rapping about him commenting on the story."

Ben also hit out at claims he has exaggerated his tough upbringing on his first album 'Who Needs Actions When You Got Words'.

He said: "I've had people saying, 'The environment you talk about, it's fabricated, you're exaggerating.' But how would you know? You ain't lived here. All the things on my first album might not happen on the same day, in the same place, but they do happen."

© 2013 Bang Showbiz, NZCity