ill Manors Album & Soundtrack

The ill Manors Official Soundtrack album is of the hip-hop, grime, soul genre and was released by Atlantic Records as well as published under the Warner Bros. label by British musician Plan B (Ben Drew) in 2012 to accompany his directorial debut film under the same name. The unsettling album was promoted by other artists such as Labrinth and Kano who had partaken in the production.

The ill Manors track was initially released as a single which soon was accompanied by a dynamic and socio-politically controversial music video featuring cuts from Drew's film and footage from the 2011 London riots. The track was successful in regards to peaking at #6 on the UK singles chart in April 2012. Overall reception of the ill Manors album was positive with mostly 4+/5 review scores and the album was shortlisted for the 2012 Mercury Prize, becoming the first soundtrack album to be nominated. ill Manors was also nominated for Brit Award - MasterCard British album of the Year Award. Reception of the track included attention from MP Jamie Reed who described it as 'excellent', Tim Walker from The Independent stated it "an all-time great protest song", while David Smyth of the London Evening Standard praised Plan B's decision "to say something so bold." A contrasting opinion was advocated by Samuel Breen, also writer of The Independent, who described the song as "a cliché riddled attack on politics that feels calculated, impersonal, and disingenuous."

Music reviewers have described the album along the lines of being 'mesmerizing', 'astounding' and more particularly: 'a claustrophobic journey through Britain's sink-estates'. The lead single ill Manors also received mostly positive reviews from music critics and in October 2012 won the Q Award for best track. Newspapers such as The Telegraph have relentlessly praised the production as revolutionary to UK hip-hop and describe it as 'the urgent poetry of the mean streets', a statement which is correct to a considerable degree because of the gritty context of the lyrics structured into each track of the album constructed together to narrate the stories of the 8 main characters pulled into the vicious cycle of London crime.