MTV / Strickland Banks

VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

'Pictures came and broke your heart, put the blame on VTR'
MTV (formerly an initialism for Music Television) is an American cable television network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs. Today, MTV still plays a limited selection of music videos, but the channel primarily broadcasts a variety of popular culture and reality TV shows targeted at adolescents and young adults.

MTV IN OUR GENRE

By the early 1990s, MTV was playing a combination of pop-friendly hard rock acts, chart-topping metal and hard rock acts . MTV progressively increased its airing of hip hop acts, such as LL Cool J, Naughty By Nature, Onyx and Sir-Mix-A-Lot, and by 1993, the channel added West Coast rappers previously associated with gangsta rap, with a less pop-friendly sound, such as Tupac Shakur, Ice Cube, Warren G, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.

You can see that British hip hop was never involved in the beginnings of hip hop, a very American orientated genre. Therefore i think it is important that our product would be globally recognisable and appealing, Plan B has obviously seen how hard being a controversial British hip hop artist is to break out, his first album was gritty harsh, intimate rap music but now he has created a soul persona.

Plan B recently stated in an interview with Gigwise that he has not turned his back on hip-hop music."I'm aware that there are fans out there that might feel alienated by this but I feel like I cater for them," he said - link to source

Plan B has become Strickland Banks, an out and out soul singer complete with full band and sixties stylings. - link to source

"the first few tracks rushed quickly out the gate. It was immediately clear that this was no half-baked attempt to recreate a soulful sound. This was the full-fat version with hurtling drums and dextrous basslines charging forward whilst Ben got quickly into his groove- his smooth, falsetto belying his rather stocky, brutish appearance"