Plan B (Ben Drew) – HuffPost 10.10.12

Mike Ragogna: Right. What advice do you have advice for new artists?

Plan B (Ben Drew): Like musicians rather than actors? If you’re listening to the music on the radio now and you’re kind of constructing the way you make music to fit in with what’s on the radio now, I think you’re just setting yourself up to lose. If you want to be a musician and you want to be an artist, it’s got to be a personal thing. It’s got to be because you love it. You love expressing yourself and you use that music as a therapy in your life in order to get over certain struggles that you have, certain things that kind of eat at yourself. I’ve always used it for that. I’ll write a song that I’m very invested in and other artists, when I listen to their songs, I feel some kind of emotion, or I know something. If you’re only getting into music because you want that red carpet opportunity when you can soak in all the praise and the adulation and f**k around in the VIP area and drink Cristal with a bunch of bitches around you, I just think you’re in it for the wrong reasons. It’s got to be a personal thing. We’ve got to find a way of expressing ourselves, which is unique to you. It’s great to have influences but make sure those influences stand for what you stand for, in terms of you. Every day, I meet talented young kids, but when I ask them how they see their direction, they always drop names, the artists that are kind of cold and doing things right now and I just think, “What the point?” It just seems like you very rarely come across young artists that know about real music. All they seem to know about is the conveyor belt bullsh**t. I can’t see how they’re going to have longevity if that’s the life they’re being influenced by.