A Number One hit in England, the second album from this U.K. rapper-turned-crooner is a concept record that tells the story of a fictional soul singer who is falsely imprisoned. There is courtroom drama, there are harrowing scenes in prison showers and late-night bouts of conscience in jail cells. All of it is silly in the extreme. You're advised to ignore the ridiculous plot particulars and concentrate on the album's modest pleasures: chiefly, Plan B's lovely, Smokey Robinson-style tenor and deft melodic touch, which raise songs like the melancholic "Love Goes Down" and the string-swathed ballad "I Know a Song" a grade or two above the norm for British Motown pastiches.

Listen to Plan B's "Love Goes Down":
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“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.