C/D: Plan B, "Sick to Def"

I'm just going to stick this here:

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/03/plan-b-is-not-your-saviour/

I mean, the first paragraph was obv what caught my attention in terms of "why oh why yet AGANE is The Left lionising yet another career rape apologist?"

BUT as much as I hate "takedown" interweb culture, the author goes on to say some pretty incisive things about Plan B's responses to the riots, both now and at the time, and how they play into some Liberal myths which could be pretty dangerous? I don't know. It seemed a pretty good counterpoint to me, because the writer isn't attacking Plan B or the working classes, he's attacking the myths that Liberals are buying into, by lionising this guy? Interesting to me, anyway.

Seems like a counterpoint to some of his commentary about the riots at the time, rather than the song itself. Which is fair enough, but it's not what people like DL were talking about, i think.

The message of the song, for me, is that if you treat people like criminals, they'll act like criminals. If those in power take away social amenities and employment then they can expect their lives to be impacted in a different, but connected, way to the lives of the people they are affecting. The safety of the comfortably off is dependent on not treating everyone else like scum. That seems to acknowledge that the riots were political, in at least one sense, and that the issues are structural - not simply a question of people not having the right role models or attitude to 'wealth creation', etc. idk.

"It is the destruction of capital that will end poverty."

I for one am shocked that Plan B's single does nothing to bring about a Marxist revolution.

Weirdly Brendan O'Neill's Spiked piece yesterday accused Plan B of doing exactly the opposite - ie excusing the riots - but at least both writers can agree that Guardian-reading liberals are to blame.

Yeah, I completely get why people would dig the song, and consider it a salient and to-the-point response to the riots.

But when it goes beyond that, and people start giving the guy Guardian columns and TED keynote speeches, I think it's appropriate to ask "what is this guy about?" and look at the, erm, questionable parts of his message rather than that whole "Lo! Behold the Voice Of The Riots!" DL is a Guardian writer so I can see why he's butthurt.

I just have a zero tolerance no-rapists, no-rape-apologists policies which means that me and the bulk of "The Left" parted company a long time ago, but hey. I'm glad to just see someone actually mention it. Because it gets too easily swept under the rug too often if people like the other parts of a guy's message, because, like, the whole "treating women as human beings" is not ~really~ part of the whole left wing "treating human beings as human beings" thing, right.

But whatever, Posts Very Much In Character.

i actually had no idea that's what plan b's last album centred around (iirc i half-heard the lead single and didn't like it musically so avoided hearing any more). why didn't i see more commentary on it at the time? (that's directed, i guess, at people who did hear it and did write about it.) even trying to avoid it i managed to pick up that it was a "theatrical" "in-character" work so that's his get-out clause but we all know it's not really a cast-iron one that shouldn't be interrogated.

would quite like to hear that album to see for myself i guess, but i have a massive backlog of stuff i do want/need to hear. what's plan b said about it in interviews? and indeed what's his attitude towards women been "irl"?

it doesn't change my view of "ill manors", and that post is way weaker when it attempts to criticise plan b for not toeing the anti-capitalist dogmatic line. it puts a lot of words into his mouth, which is a pretty typical political blog strategy. and the entire thing seems to be unaware of adapting your message depending on who you're talking to: cf the video of pauline pearce yelling at the rioters for being selfish dickhead thugs (rightly), but when she was taken to the tory conference emphasising that the problem is systemic and political. both of these things can be true!

In a lecture for TED and The Observer last week he encouraged people to ignore the government and instead each find one person that they can help.

oh how AWFUL of him. i already know that the concept of actually reaching out to disadvantaged kids on a one-to-one irl basis is anathema to most in the "young hipster left" bubble, thanks.

Thanks for putting it so well lex re: the anti-capitalist dogma. The rape-allegation plot device on the last album bothered me too but I don't know deep it goes. It struck me more as a crass device to get the character wrongly convicted rather than an issue he was particularly exercised about. I don't recall reading any interviews where he was pressed on it so I don't know. It's certainly not the main theme of the record - just the song She Said:

http://www.lyricsreg.com/lyrics/plan+b/She+Said/

It's certainly worth flagging up and interrogating but I'm not persuaded it means people on the left should disregard everything else he does.

hmmmmmm can't say that's helpful in a climate so skewed against victims of sexual assault and if i was writing about it i'd point that out, but at the same time false accusations are things that happen so i'm not sure it's fair to label plan b a rape apologist for that. it's limited & blinkered in its unthinking reflection of the male fear of getting falsely accused of rape, and it's unempathetically up its own privilege, but it's not a song worthy of outrage really.

also i'm not sure the response of "the left" to plan b is to make him their new hero so much as to point out "here's the first mainstream song that really captures and conveys something important about the riots, it's worth paying attention to"

Exactly. It seems weird to me in 2012 that people can't grasp that you can acclaim a musician for one powerful political record without giving them a free pass. In hip hop that's kind of a given, and She Said is a long way short of, say, Black Korea.

It struck me more as a crass device to get the character wrongly convicted rather than an issue he was particularly exercised about. I don't recall reading any interviews where he was pressed on it so I don't know. It's certainly not the main theme of the record - just the song She Said:

mmm, the biggest hit off the album? Which sounds, at first, like a classic soul number heading for the Valentine Day comps...

It gets the character 'wrongly convicted', and shows him to be a bit of a git as well, true. There were other ways to do this, mind.

Totally. There were other ways. The issue isn't whether it was a terrific idea but how much bearing it should have on what he does subsequently.

Well, allowing for the fact that PlanB did not do this 'irl', and this discussion probably should be on the "Strickland Banks" thread, yeah.

http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2012/03/26/two-views-plan-bs-ill-manors

man i was flipping channels eating breakfast this AM and palladia was showing the 2011 isle of wight festival and there was this fat mook lookin' motherfucker trying to act all slick in a business suit (but you could still tell he probably like limp bizkit and shit)...i was like what the fuck is this shit? jesus, it was like the nickelback of style council or something, barfffffff on england

hardman lyricist puts out leaden, unintelligible soundtrack to graphically violent movie, pleads for mutual understanding, asks what you are looking at, you fucking rich boy

i feel bad because it seems like his heart is often in the right place but he gets tangled up in this weird macho thing

also his music, at least live, just gets lost in its own frug

i feel bad because it seems like his heart is often in the right place but he gets tangled up in this weird macho thing

Most emo/aggro music anywhere to thread?

Britain's new #1 sounds like the guy found a copy of Defamation lying around and thought, well, if he's not using it anymore then I will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfihYWRWRTQ

wait a minute -- is this thread about the same plan b who did this ridiculous song? i had completely forgotten about it until just now and realized i could look it up. what a shitty song!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eAcCPJwCB8