PLAN B - "ILL MANORS"

 
"Let's all go on a urban safari.." 

OK let's start this. By now you've probably heard the buzz around what the Guardian's calling "the best British protest song of the last decade". Which is spot on if by 'best' you mean 'only', and 'protest song' you mean 'angry song'. But I'll get to the Guardian in a bit, and let's also stick a pin in the bizarro-world comparison to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" mentioned in the same article.

The buzz is in reference to Plan B's new track "Ill Manors", and one of the few examples of social commentary from the other side of last summers riots in England (shouts also to Speech Debelle).

The track itself sees the onetime 'Strickland Banks' leap forward in style, content and ability. The production is bananas - a slick fusion of UK styles driven by an overwhelmingly claustrophobic feel, from the stuttering drums under a Justice-'Stress'-styled violin break, to Plan B's flow, which has beefed up considerably (I can hear a little Hova in there).

By the time it gets to the anthemic, incendiary Shy FX-style chorus I was ready to smash the shit out of that french bakery I was in. Of course I didn't - the lyrics do a good job of switching the focus away from soundbite knee-jerk journalism, which managed to swifty place all blame for the riots at the feet of mythical phoneless, barefooted feral children, haunting the dreams of Tories across the land.

Here, the marginalised underclass exercise the only form of protest afforded them - rejection of social values. Of course the Guardian champions the song, as that gesture instantly distances them from the very issues the song is raising - at least in their own minds anyway.

But is it a protest song? Um, no. Protest songs are historically associated with a cause. "Ill Manors" is more a statement, a manifesto, a declaration. Like Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" - at least in sentiment. And while were here, any comparison to Marvin Gaye may actually cause me to riot. "What's Going On" is a huge, sweeping expansive opera of social spirituality, which tapped into Gaye's own depression and the mood of a nation still reeling from Vietnam.

Still, this is not to disparage "Ill Manors" which is probably the best UK hip-hop I've heard in donkeys. The problems for me arise with the video. Here, the message of the song changes, and the underclass shackled in stereotypes, rise up to become... a stereotype.

It's all aggressive posturing, masks, shooting imaginary guns, barking dogs... We started off in London, but we arrived in the middle of a fucking DMX video.  You might say those scenes are there to fit the narrative of the video, which is shot against scenes of the actual riots - maybe - but there's a scene where someone gets rushed while a girl films it with her mobile phone. Um, really? Perhaps it's there as middle-class-bait, a conservative snuff film, or maybe everyone's getting caught up in the vibe - but wasn't that the problem in the first place?

"Every single one of us runs the earth"

I think here the video does the track an injustice. While the track highlights a fearful society running for the hills, the video revels in it. I think this is one unnerving part of the riots very few people have addressed, however in the context of this video it only detracts from the lyrics. It turns it into something confrontational, reductive and more importantly, an easy target. But perhaps this is all B's plan, with this and the upcoming film of the same name. Perhaps the predictable media 'outrage' will open the discussion once more, this time perhaps to a more balanced, and objective debate. One that might give cause for a protest song or two.

"Ill Manors" is available now.





- FBZY