The first sound you hear on Benjamin Lyman's debut album as 1010Benja, ten in total, it's either a throat clearing or a dead laugh, an announcement or a challenge. A symphony of programmed horns and strings comes in and Benja starts barking and growling, cover and coughing, shouting ad-libs—“Hey, man! Hey!”—and unleashing a series of effortless vocal runs. A shot goes off. revolutions of an engine. Then sirens and shattered battlefield FX swallow the song, leaving nothing but shrapnel. Playful, weird and surprisingly moving, it's the perfect introduction to Benja's oddball brilliance: a weary optimist and DIY maximalist with a weary, amazing voice meant for the mainstream but made for the arthouse.
Ten Total offers years of anticipation and promise for a transcendent talent who has remained mostly anonymous since the beginning of his career. When Pitchfork called the Kansas City singer-producer “one of the most promising artists of 2018,” he had only released three songs. His first EP, Two Houses, released after that accolade, suggested a rising star at the top of his best work. But as soon as Benja appeared, he disappeared. He's dropped a few singles in recent years, but the initial hype was slightly subdued House of Balloons-season the Weeknd and Nostalgia, Ultra-era Frank Ocean, is gone. It's easy to conclude that 34-year-old Benja missed his moment.
If Ten Total proves anything, it's that Benja is just fine occupying his own self-appointed stratosphere. While his sound has many antecedents—his voice is a supercharged hybrid of Jeremih and Justin Timberlake, his flashy production drawn from '90s Björk and early 2010s Kanye—he's undeniably of, unique in its group. One moment he raps with kinetic ease over a slick Acid Rap-type beat (“Peacemaker”), The next belts out a bright hook over horns and strings and pounding cymbals (“H2HAVEYOU”). Ten Total slips between neo-soul, alt-R&B, drill, gospel, trap and radio-ready pop while Benja obliquely circles a set of key themes: love and redemption, gratitude and faith, loss and release.
His voice, supple and precise, allows him to fly effortlessly between moods and styles. “Peacekeeper” and “Penta,” for example, are skeletal freestyles whose indifference lends them a strange weight. In the first, he balances humor with wisdom, dropping lines about the “trusty hoe,” watching Star Trek, and reading Alan Moore before triumphantly spitting, “I had to go get it, I couldn't fold/I had to get up, they weren't telling me.” In “Penta” he repeats a bar that says he feels stupid before moaning, scratching and making a noise that can only be described as a squeal. It's refreshing and funny to hear Benja stretch his voice to its weirdest depths, à la Playboi Carti or Tom Waits. When the album's strongest songs materialize, like the warm electro-R&B stratter “Twin” or the searing ballad “Waterworks,” the range of his talent is revealed. Benja could make a cleaner, simpler pop or R&B album – he certainly has the voice for it. Instead, he deals with different forms and flows, playing with bright hues and sticky textures to create his own twisted sense of coherence.
