Plan B retires his soul alter ego Strickland Banks

Plan B is due to release his third album The Ballad of Belmarsh in 2011

Plan B says he's not killing off his alter ego Strickland Banks but has confirmed that his story is over.

His second album, which featured the character, was the fifth biggest selling record of 2010 and saw the 27-year-old Londoner break through into the mainstream.

The Defamation of Strickland Banks also spawned hit single She Said.

He said: "Why try and make another soul record when I made the best soul record I could? It was the best I could do."

Plan B released debut hip hop album Who Needs Actions When You Got Words in 2006 but followed it up with soul record The Defamation of Strickland Banks last year.

He added: "If it could have been any better then I wouldn't have let the label release it when they did.

"As an artist, someone with many different tastes, I want to go and venture into a different style, maybe reggae, maybe punk, dubstep.

"Who knows. There's stuff that I'm experimenting with at the moment that I really want to get stuck into."

'Complicated'

Plan B, real name Ben Drew, is also preparing to release his third album The Ballad of Belmarsh.

It's the hip hop "version of events" in the story of Strickland Banks but the rapper's releasing it independently after his record label said they didn't like it.

Plan B is also putting the finishing touches to his latest film, Ill Manors, which he told Newsbeat in October was a "complicated" story and like a "musical version of Crash".

He said: "There's some stuff I'm missing that I need to shoot. There's some stuff I need to re-shoot.

"And I need to do the soundtrack to it.

"It's a music-based film. Music actually tells part of the story.

"I've got a lot of work to do and I've got until 10 January. That's when I fly off to America and Australia after that.

"I've got a lot of work on my hands.

"We've got the Ballad of Belmarsh that I need to finish and we've got ambitions to shoot a Strickland Banks film, which will be joining all the videos together, interlinking scenes and that's a whole other story."