Lamp Lit Prose is the ninth Dirty Projectors album since 2003, an incredibly prolific output for any artist. All the more impressive when you consider it’s the project of producer/songwriter David Longstreth, who also finds time to collaborate with artists such as Rihanna, Kanye, Paul McCartney and Solange. Such a notable CV befits an act as innovative as Dirty Projectors, and their latest release further demonstrates the talent on show.

It was only a year ago that Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Why Can’t I Be Me was released. Kevin Macdonald’s new documentary about the rise and hideous demise of one of pop’s greatest stars was made with the blessing of her family, but doesn’t shed significantly more light than the Broomfield version. In fact a couple of Broomfield’s interviewees who don’t appear here were more illuminating than some who do.

“There’s a rhythm in the air around Memphis, there always has been,” Carl Perkins once said.

It can be hard to put distance between an artist and their behaviour. Woody Allen films present a problem for some, while I, for one, will never see Tommy Robinson’s impressionist landscapes in the same light again. 

Watching this band in action is a treat. They gel absolutely and play off one another in a manner that’s easy and mellow, yet also sparks by occasionally teetering on the edge of their virtuosic abilities. The songs played throughout the evening at Brighton Festival are protest classics and other socially aware fare, but the group’s leader-arrangers, singer Carleen Anderson and keyboard player Nikki Yeoh, have turned them, via jazz, into almost completely new pieces of music.

Hosted by Jazz FM presenters Chris Philips and Jez Nelson on UNESCO’s International Jazz Day, rising stars and international icons were honoured at the fifth Jazz FM Awards on Monday night.

The opening couplet on Plan B’s new album runs thus: “What the hell have I got to be grateful for?/Can’t be the money as I wasn’t trying to make no more.” One appealing aspect of singer-actor-MC Ben Drew is that he’s spiky, emanating a certain rage. It’s good to see that, after six years away, it’s still there. However, Heaven Before All Hell Breaks Loose, is no Ill Manors, Drew’s 2012 film/album polemic about underclass Britain; instead, steeped in old soul and imaginative production, this is a rip-roaring 21^st century pop album, and a very good one.

Where Plan B’s last album in this vein, The Defamation of Strickland Banks, was a concept piece, with a discernible narrative, Heaven… is simply a tight collection of songs. Delivered with aplomb, Drew’s vocals are rich and impressive, somewhere between Otis Redding and Seal, often laid over Memphis-style rhythm & blues boosted on hip hop beats and surrounded by electronic trimmings. The album, written with various contemporary songwriters such as Foy Vance and Kid Harpoon, initially sticks to this formula, which, after all, made him a star, but then he becomes playful, giving us a couple of housey numbers, the steel-band-flavoured “Wait So Long” and Disclosure-ish “Pushin’”. From there he spreads his wings.

Thematically, the lyrics mostly deal with affairs of the heart and his personal belief (eg “Heartbeat” - “I did it just to prove ‘em wrong/Because they said I’d never make anything of myself”) but he still has time for bursts of anti-authoritarian vim, as on the energized, dubsteppy “Guess Again”. Wherever he heads, musically, he appears unstoppable. The astounding “Flesh & Bone” could come from Beyoncé’s superb Lemonade; the title track has a crackling funk; the rave-gospel of “Mercy” bursts with life and ideas. And there’s much more to revel in besides.

Plan B has returned with all flags flying. Whether the general public, whose memory is notoriously short, are ready to welcome him as he deserves, remains to be seen, but his fourth album is a gem, easy to listen to yet full of vibrancy and variety.

• More new music reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: Watch the video for "Stranger" by Plan B

It is, perhaps, a tale that suffers from overfamiliarity. Tina Turner’s rags-to-riches story – from humble beginnings as little Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee, to her discovery, reinvention and sickening abuse by husband and manager Ike Turner, and finally her rebirth as a solo rock'n'roll star – is the stuff of showbiz legend.