Early Life
Drew was born and brought up in London. His mother worked for a local authority and his father, Paul Ballance, played in a punk band, the Warm Jets, in the 1970s. Drew was five months old when his father walked out and six years old when he "disappeared completely". Growing up, he felt outcast from much of society:
We weren't working class but we weren't middle class, we were in the void in-between. I've always felt like a social outcast. —Plan B, The Telegraph (15 June 2006)From 11, Drew attended Anglo European School in Ingatestone, Essex, was later transferred to Tom Hood Schoolwhich is now Buxton all through learning community, a specialist Science College in Leytonstone, before being expelled and sent to Tunmarsh Pupil Referral Unit in Newham, for children unable to attend mainstream school. He finally left school with three GCSEs. He taught himself how to play guitar at 14, first playing Blur and Oasis with friends, then going on to write his own R&B love songs. At 18, feeling uncomfortable with R&B, he turned towards rap and hip hop music and wrote "Kidz", inspired by the murder of Damilola Taylor
The whole reason for calling myself Plan B was that I was doing this sweet-boy Justin Timberlake shit, but I never felt comfortable… When I started rapping, it was easier for me to feel comfortable. —Plan B, USA Today (15 March 2007)Read more about this topic: Plan B (musician)
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless—for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)