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The primary sound you hear on Benjamin Lyman’s debut album as 1010Benja, Ten Complete, is both a throat clearing or a deadpan giggle, an announcement or a provocation. A symphony of programmed horns and strings is available in and Benja begins barking and cooing, sheeshing and coughing, shouting ad-libs—“Hey, man! Hey!”—and unleashing a string of easy vocal runs. A gunshot pops; an engine revs. Then sirens and bit-crushed battlefield FX swallow the tune, leaving nothing however shrapnel. Playful, unusual, and surprisingly shifting, it’s the proper introduction to Benja’s oddball brilliance: a world-weary optimist and DIY maximalist with a sinewy, astonishing voice meant for the mainstream but made for the arthouse.
Ten Complete delivers on years of anticipation and promise for a transcendent expertise who’s remained largely nameless for the reason that begin of his profession. When Pitchfork known as the Kansas Metropolis singer and producer “one in all 2018’s most promising artists,” he’d solely put out three songs. His first EP, Two Homes, launched on the heels of this acclaim, prompt a burgeoning star on the cusp of his greatest work. However as shortly as Benja appeared, he vanished. He’s dropped just a few singles in recent times, however the preliminary hype, faintly redolent of Home of Balloons-era the Weeknd and Nostalgia, Extremely-era Frank Ocean, has all however dissipated. It’s simple to conclude that the 34-year-old Benja missed his second.
If Ten Complete proves something, it’s that Benja’s simply wonderful occupying his personal self-defined stratosphere. Although his sound has loads of precedents—his voice a supercharged hybrid of Jeremih and Justin Timberlake, his rangy manufacturing pulling from ’90s Björk and early 2010s Kanye—it’s unmistakably his, distinctive in its agglomeration. One second he’s rapping with kinetic ease over a slippery Acid Rap-type beat (“Peacekeeper”), the subsequent he’s belting a glamorous hook over horns and strings and clattering cymbals (“H2HAVEYOU”). Ten Complete glides between neo-soul, alt-R&B, drill, gospel, entice, and radio-ready pop whereas Benja obliquely circles a set of core themes: love and redemption, gratitude and religion, loss and deliverance.
His voice, pliable and exact, permits him to flit effortlessly between moods and kinds. “Peacekeeper” and “Penta,” for example, are skeletal freestyles whose nonchalance offers them a curious gravitas. Within the former, he balances humor with knowledge, dashing off strains about “trusting hoes,” watching Star Trek, and studying Alan Moore earlier than triumphantly spitting, “I needed to go get it, I couldn’t fold/I needed to rise up, I couldn’t be advised.” On “Penta” he repeats a bar about feeling silly earlier than groaning, scatting, and making a noise that may solely be described as a chortle. It’s invigorating, and humorous, to listen to Benja stretch his voice to its weirdest depths, à la Playboi Carti or Tom Waits. When the album’s extra strong songs materialize, like the nice and cozy electro-R&B strutter “Twin” or the searing ballad “Waterworks,” the breadth of his expertise reveals itself. Benja might make a cleaner, extra easy pop or R&B album—he definitely has the voice for it. As an alternative he dabbles with totally different types and flows, taking part in with brilliant hues and gummy textures to create his personal twisted sense of cohesion.
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