We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Benjamin Banger . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Benjamin below.
Benjamin , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I want to say my 1st album, The Gxod Poet” but that was wayyyy back in 2017 (Still worth a listen though). So I’d have to go with “Telepathy Club”; My latest collaborative album with score|swayze.
This album is stuffed to the max with little personal/meaningful things for both me & score. Basically everyone from the FinagoPark camp was involved. I even surprised the listeners with 3 verses on there as well as one solo song.
But most importantly, It’s loosely based on Mob Psycho 100, which is both Score & I’s favorite anime. The telepathy club is an after school program at Mob’s middle school & they are in danger of getting shut down by the school. They really resonated with me because at the time, I lived with all the people I make music with & we were counting down our days until we were getting kicked out of our crib. After living with them for so long, I really began to feel the club’s plight. Moving on without those you’ve formed the strongest bonds with is very intimidating. But it all worked out though. Like Reigen said, Bonds, Memories and Friendship wont perish because the club gets disbanded.
Benjamin , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I always had an infatuation with music production even before I knew what it was or how to do it. Specifically hip hop/rap production. My parents were pretty big on music but they were also pretty big on Jesus too so I had became acquainted with all types of music except rap. So whenever I managed to sneak some rap into my ear drums, I focused more intensely because rap music sounded so much different from anything I had ever heard.
Fast forward to high school, a friend of mine told me he made a beat on his computer and a light bulb went off in my hear.. “You can make beats at HOME!?!?!?!”, was what I thought. I had been under the impression that you had to have crazy gear and own a huge studio or whatever to make beats. I was already good with computers so as soon as I got home that day, I started looking for DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstations). I been BenJamin Banger ever since.
What sets me apart is I actually know how to make beats. Half these niggas now’a’days either using loops somebody else made or using some vst that does al the music for them. That’s not a problem or anything because you can definitely go platinum off loops but at the end of the day, a drag & drop producer will NEVER be better then one that truly knows their DAW and how to make beats. Which leads me to what I’m most proud of.
Up to this point, 95% of the money I’ve made over the 14/15 years I’ve been producing has been off the strength of me making good music that people just want to hear. I’m getting my 1st major placement with an artist this year but up till now, people are just genuinely tapped into my brand and sound. It’s like I’M the artist. That makes me very happy because its so easy for the producer to get forgotten about once a song is done. That will NEVER be me.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
It sounds terrible but I never read any book for the sake of just reading until Prince died. I felt like he wouldn’t like any of my work at the time & that got me started on a crazy fast track towards growing/developing myself as an artist. So the 1st book I picked up was “Steal Like An Artist” by Austin Kleon. It had a lot of really good tips but what moved me the most was an excerpt by T S Eliot. He said;
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn.”
And that is what inspired me to make my 1st album, “The Gxod Poet”.
I’ve actually been meaning to make a vinyl of the album and mail it to him as a thank you for inspiring me so much.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
Books Books Books. I feel like an idiot at times because I would tell my younger self “You’d probably be further in life if you read more” & then turn around & not read like i had something else important to do. Fast forward a few years and I’m a whole new/better me because of the things I’ve chosen to read.
Don’t wanna sound like a nerd but knowledge is definitely power. Crack open a book, an article.. it don’t matter. Just “put some fat on your head” like Pimp C said.
Contact Info:
- Website: BenJaminBanger.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benjaminbanger/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRioWOWhB-ncYX0JBjsp_Lg
- Other: https://www.twitch.tv/benjaminbanger https://benjaminbanger.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
#1 jj.oxtail #2 kevoproductionsbby #3 justicegray__ #4 BethBanger #5 theellemonae #6 ryan_dibley