"Playing with Fire" is a hip hop song composed and performed by British rapper Plan B, featuring vocals from the track's producer and mixer,

Labrinth Timothy Lee McKenzie (born 4 January 1989), better known by his stage name Labrinth, is an English singer, songwriter, rapper, and record producer. Labrinth signed as a recording artist with Simon Cowell's record label Syco Music in 2010, ini ...

. The song was released on 3 December 2012 as the fourth and final single from the ''

ill Manors ''Ill Manors'' (stylised as ''ill Manors'') is a 2012 British crime drama film written, co-scored and directed by Ben Drew AKA musician Plan B. The film revolves around the lives of eight main characters, played by Riz Ahmed, Ed Skrein, Ke ...

'' soundtrack, a film which Plan B also directed.

Background

The track was originally due to be released as the album's third single, with an official lyric video being posted to YouTube shortly before the album's release on 23 July 2012. However, due to the continuing promotion of collaborator

's debut album, ''

Electronic Earth ''Electronic Earth'' is the debut studio album by English recording artist Labrinth released 2 April 2012, via Syco Music. The album peaked at number 2 on the UK Albums Chart. Background The album was released on 2 April 2012, by Simon Cowell' ...

'', a music video was unable to filmed, and thus, the release was cancelled in favour of " Deepest Shame". In August 2012, Labrinth confirmed that the track would be released as a single later in the year. On 31 October, Drew confirmed the release of the track as a single on 3 December, and also premiered the

High Contrast Lincoln Barrett (born 18 September 1979), better known by the stage name High Contrast, is a Welsh electronic music producer, DJ and record producer. He produces drum and bass music, and his 2009 album '' Confidential'' reached BPI gold cert ...

remix that would make up part of the digital release. A day later, the official music video for the track premiered. On 30 October 2012, the High Contrast remix was released as a free download on Plan B's official SoundCloud page. As of May 2013, it has over 4,500 downloads. On 30 November 2012, the High Contrast remix was released on

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

as a single.

Music video

The music video for "Playing with Fire" was directed by Colin Tilley, and premiered on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

on 1 November 2012. The video features footage of the character Jake from ''

'', intertwined with new images of Drew and Labrinth performing the song beneath a derelict tower block. A number of backing dancers begin to combust and set themselves on fire, with both Drew and Labrinth also ending up on fire by the end of the video. Backing vocalist Etta Bond and Labrinth's brother MckNasty also feature in the video.

Track listing

* Digital download single # "Playing with Fire" (High Contrast remix) – 5:22 * Promotional CD single # "Playing with Fire" (radio edit) – 3:37

Charts

Personnel

* Plan B – vocals, producer * Labrinth – vocals, producer, additional mixing * Etta Bond – backing vocals * Jimmy Robertson – additional engineer * Al Shux – mixing * John Davis – mastering

References

{{Labrinth 2012 singles 679 Artists singles Atlantic Records UK singles Plan B (musician) songs Songs written by Plan B (musician) Song recordings produced by Labrinth 2012 songs Songs written by Labrinth