Benzino |
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Wed. January 22.2003 4:38 PM EST |
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Benzino: Stakes Are HighHip-hop entrepreneur tries to level the playing field with his politically charged disc, Redemption. by C. Bottomley |
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Benzino (VH1.com) |
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“I’ve been through a lot of adversity within the hip-hop game,” says Boston-based rapper Benzino. “I wanted to leave the past alone and work towards a positive future in both my life and my music. I want to improve my whole state of mind. I want to
That’s a tall order, but on his latest album Redemption, Benzino does his best to live up to the task. Although he's recently made waves in hip-hop circles over his lyrical attacks on Eminem and his controversial maneuvers at The Source magazine (he's listed in the current issue's masthead as "Co-Founder and Visionary"), Redemption reveals there’s a lot more to the man. Redemption's centerpiece is “Make You Wanna Holla,” where over a moody sample from '70s R&B quartet Blue Magic, Benzino laments, “It’s hard to be a rich man/ Especially when you’re black.” “Hip-hop is the 2000 civil rights,” Benzino says in his commanding rasp. “It reflects our culture. That’s why the powers that be want to dictate our creativity by making us only do party songs. But if you listen carefully to a lot of hip-hop albums and singles, there are messages in there. Even though some of these [rap stars] are getting money and having their lives improved a little bit, the people they grew up with still are all screwed up.” It's the struggle for hip-hop’s soul that concerns Benzino, who was born Ray Scott. Perhaps it's the real reason he goes after Marshall Mathers on Redemption's “Lift Your Skirt Up.” He believes that the Detroit rapper’s skin color allows him to get away with lyrics that no record label or audience would tolerate coming from a black man. On the jolting track itself, he likens Eminem to flash-in-the-pan rappers of the past, noting “Five shades darker, girl, you’d be Canibus/ And no one would care about your complicated rhyme style.” One of Benzino’s own antidotes to Em's stranglehold on the rap game is enlisting an army of starry pals to help him present his version of hip-hop. Wyclef Jean provides guitar and hype calls to the Caribbean lilt of “Neva Shuvin’,” Jadakiss provides verses of low-riding menace to “Call My Name,” and the Geto Boys’ Scarface keeps matters malevolent on “44 Cal. Killa.” “I love collaborating,” admits Benzino. “I would have done songs with Nas and I would have done songs with local guys from Denver, Colorado - it doesn't matter. I just love making music and I love collaborating with people coming out of these [slum] cesspools, trying to better themselves.” While the disc contains plenty of the boasting and threats that are hip-hop’s meat and potatoes, Benzino prizes passion, too. The rap ballad “I Remember” ruminates about a love he’s lost. The anthemic “Love” gives it up for everyone from “bastard children trying to touch a million” to “people working late at night on the graveyard shift.” And the thoughtful “Different Kind of Lady” presents another side to ghetto love. "The first verse is about Mary, which is how I refer to weed," explains Benzino. "The second [mentions] Nina, which is a gun. It’s wordplay. Even on the hidden track ‘Love,’ I’m still expressing what’s going on in the hood - even if the word I’m using is love.” “Whatever mood I’m in,” he goes on to explain, “influences me when I go in the studio to write a track. You can’t have love without hate. You can’t have hate without love. You can’t have one without the other. It’s like a battery. You have a positive side and you have a negative side. You can’t have one without the other. But my main priority is letting everybody recognize that I’m a spokesman for the streets.” His critics have suggested that Benzino’s role in The Source has given him an unfair advantage in the hip-hop game. They note that he’s grabbed the cover of the magazine, and even had a centerfold dedicated to himself, despite releasing just one, largely overlooked, album, 2001's The Benzino Project. He counters that he’s actually more involved with what’s happening on the street level than what goes on in the office. “To be honest with you, sometimes I read the magazine and sometimes I don’t,” he says. “I don’t read to get opinions on artists. If I want to get into an artist, I’m going to listen to their music. I experience what a lot of people write. There are articles about artists in there, but most of them I’ve probably met!” However, he stands by The Source’s reputation as a hip-hop Bible. “The Source is a very important tool to expand the [music's] culture. One thing I won’t tolerate [is] anybody trying to make people go at each other or do irresponsible type of journalism in that magazine. The magazine is to make hip-hop grow, make it prosper, and to let people understand where it came from.” Benzino’s own roots are in Boston. Unless you’re counting Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, Beantown isn't what you'd call a hip-hop hotbed - at least as far as producing national acts goes. Benzino did his best to change that when he formed Almighty RSO, which he claims was "the start of hip-hop in Boston. We were right at the forefront of everything." But it wasn’t long before the group signed with Texas’ Rap-a-Lot Records and decided to go west. “If you’re Latino or black, there’s not too much moving around in Boston as far as trying to do music or arts," says Benzino. “So I lived in Texas for two years. If you can ever get out of your surroundings, out of those five mile [housing] blocks that a lot of us stayed in, it’s a good thing. It can really make you see other things, make your mind grow, and see that there are more opportunities.” Although their 1996 debut was optimistically entitled Doomsday: Forever RSO, the group soon called it a day, preferring to operate behind the scenes as production team Hangmen 3. Benzino, Jeff Two Times and Johnny Bananas went on to make jams for Nas and the Outlawz. But the experience Benzino gained through travel was invaluable and informs his concern for the community. “We’ve been all across the country for over 10 years,” he notes, “doing shows, traveling to different cities, going into different projects and neighborhoods. There are people being deprived everywhere! These ghettos are not being paid attention to now.” That’s a situation Benzino is determined to rectify with Redemption. It’s an album all about second chances, of refusing to lie down and die. He hopes that everyone who hears it learns from his example, and realizes that there’s more to hip-hop than the Eminem show. “Hip-hop came from an oppressed society,” he declares, emotion rising in his voice. “At the end of the day, it’s put a lot of food on the table and made a lot of opportunities for people. There was a time when guns and drugs flourished into our communities. Hip-hop help save a lot of people from that. “Redemption is a powerful word, especially for young black and Latino men growing up in these socially deprived hoods of America. Redemption is something that I want to be able to put in all their heads to let them know that it’s not too late.” |
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