Ill Manors (song)
| "Ill Manors" | ||||
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| Single by Plan B | ||||
| from the album Ill Manors | ||||
| Released | 25 March 2012 | |||
| Format | CD, 12", digital download | |||
| Recorded | 2011 | |||
| Genre | Hip hop, big beat, electronica, breakbeat | |||
| Length | 3:46 | |||
| Label | 679, Atlantic | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Ben Drew, Al Shuckburgh, Vincent von Schlippenbach, David Conen, Pierre Baigorry, Dmitri Shostakovich | |||
| Producer(s) | Al Shux, Plan B | |||
| Plan B singles chronology | ||||
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"Ill Manors" (stylised as "ill Manors") is a hip hop protest song by English singer-songwriter Plan B. The track was released in the United Kingdom on 25 March 2012 as the lead single from the soundtrack to Ill Manors, a film written and directed by Plan B. The song was written in reaction to the 2011 riots across England, and specifically Plan B's perception of "society's failure to nurture its disadvantaged youth".
Ill Manors received mostly positive reviews from music critics and peaked at number six on the UK Singles Chart. In October 2012, the song won the Q Award for Best Track.
Plan B returns to the hip hop style of his debut album Who Needs Actions When You Got Words with the release of "Ill Manors", after his more soulful second album The Defamation of Strickland Banks. The lyrics mingle perceived causes of the riots such as the closing of community centres with threats and jokes. The aggressive baseline in the song is designed to mirror the turmoil and unrest felt by those involved in the riots, engaging a "visceral energy" to raise awareness. It heavily samples "Alles neu" by Peter Fox, which itself uses elements from the fourth movement of Dmitri Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony.
The song, described by The Guardian's Dorian Lynskey as "the first great mainstream protest song in years," was written in response to the riots across England in August 2011. The song deals with both the causes and the consequences of the riots, concentrating on society's attitude towards the disadvantaged youth population of the United Kingdom. Drawing upon Plan B's own experiences of being expelled from school and attending a pupil referral unit, the song sarcastically attacks the media view of working class children: "Keep on believing what you read in the papers / Council estate kids—scum of the earth." The song, accompanied by a film of the same name are intended as the start of a project spearheaded by Plan B to address what he perceives as a class divide. In an interview with MistaJam on BBC Radio 1Xtra, Plan B explained that the use of the word chav was equivalently offensive to "terms used to be derogatory towards race and sex".
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