Hip-Hop Lives Here
Hip-Hop Lives Here
NEW YORK — Music has been saving Benjamin Hey!’s life ever since he took a personal pledge on April 15, 2017 to write a new song every day.
Now Hey!, also known as “The Captain,” is hoping his new singles “Ra-ta-tat-tat,” and “No Samples,” can reach out with love to help others and save more lives in the process.
“Ra-ta-tat-tat,” is a single that cries out against gun violence, especially the violence that is killing inner-city young people.
“No Samples,” is a love song that encourages people not to accept second best when it comes to the loves in their lives.
Both songs were released under the John Beyer Music label owned by Hey!’s friend and frequent collaborator, John Beyer.
“With John and I, our goal is to not only have a hit song and hit record, but we want to bring a message to the music,” Hey! said. “We want to really connect to people who love the art of storytelling and listening to a song and being like, wow, not only is it an amazing vocal but there’s an important message that I really connect to that hopefully can move me and change my life.” “Ra-Ta-Tat-Tat,” is an anthem, released in May, seeking to promote peace on the streets of America’s cities, asking people to “Pull off the covers, of hate towards each other. We gotta start using our brains.”
Hey! said the song was originally Beyer’s idea and he was reluctant to even tackle the topic.
“It just pains me to se all these young kids, particularly in the inner-city, killing each other and the gangs and the gun violence,” Beyer said. “It’s not getting better, in fact it seems to be getting worse and I witness it from afar, I saw a glimpse of it when I was growing up myself in Queens and it pains me to watch it.
“I mentioned to Ben that I wanted to write a song about it and he said no, that as the subject matter hit too close to home for him.”
Growing up in the projects in Brooklyn, Hey! saw his fair share of gun violence.
“I could walk out of my first floor apartment, exit my building and then could run back in because someone just pulled out a gun,” Hey! said. “It could be a robbery between fellow drug dealers, it could be an incident with police versus drug dealers. Honestly it was usually around the element of drugs.”
A few months passed and Beyer brought the idea up again. This time Hey! was ready to take the plunge.
The two spent more than an hour crafting the right message.
“With “Ra-ta-tat-tat” it was very important to not just point out the problem but we wanted to offer what we thought was a solution,” Hey! said. “And the solution, according to our opinion is more guidance, more love, more support, more understanding, more reaching back into the community and not just being focused on the finances and the materialism. It really is about guidance, it’s about leadership, it's about love.”
The two turned to video director Doobie Duke Sims to work on the video.
“What happened was we sat at my kitchen island for about 45 minutes to an hour and banged out about 90 percent of the final product right then and there,” Beyer said. “I’d come up with the lyrics and Ben puts them together masterfully with the idea of the lyrics and he makes them rhyme and he mentions the cities in there so people identify with the song and hopefully it sends out a positive message.
“In the song you hear the gun shell dropping and we listened to about 1,000 different gun shells dropping to get the right sound.”
“No Samples,” produced by the hit producer Young Cutta, was released in the last week of September and is a love song of a different feel and vibe.
Hey! said he wrote this song during a period in 2021 when he was isolated and recovering from the Delta variant of COVID-19.
“At the time of being stricken with COVID and being by myself I just felt so lonely and being by myself,” he said. “I was like, damn, I wish I had somebody here, I wish I had somebody loving me or comforting me. While I want that, I don't want to settle for it. That's how this song came about.”
The video for “No Samples” was taped in the Hudson Yards Mall, a new retail and residential development in New York City.
“I said to myself, if you shoot in the city, I want to shoot in a location that’s still new that you won’t see in a lot of music videos,” Hey! said. “It’s only about a year or two years old. We lucked out because when we went in, it was really desolate at the time. So it looks like I shut the whole mall down. Doobie shot that video too.”
Hey! said the message in both songs is based on love — love and caring to address a terrible problem for “Ra-Ta-Tat-Tat” and not settling for just any kind of love in “No Samples.”
“In love you have to hold out for something special and amazing,” Hey! said. “I think at the end of the day, the ultimate form of love is something that feels solid and consistent. Get the steak and not a happy meal.”
Keep up with Hey! on all social media and streaming platforms:
Websites:
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Music
Benjamin Hey! Official website
Socials:
Instagram
TikTok
For “Ra-Ta-Tat-Tat” specifically
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Music
For “No Samples” specifically
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Music
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The Guillemots have made some interesting summer festival choices this year, headlining for nowt at Southbank event Bandstand Busking plus some more small freebie gigs in Sheffield and East London then European gigs in Leiges, Belgium and the Winterthurer Musikfestwochen, Switzerland, in August.
They also popped up on the Big Feastival’s lineup, somehow only warming up the crowds before, ahem, headliners, Athlete. The Big Feastival’s premise is as its names suggests music and delicious reastaurant food rather than dodgy burger vans and greasy noodle takeaways. And it worked. Not least because it was in the foodie’s natural habitat of Clapham.
Sitting on white beanbags to the side of the stage (some kids have thankfully just finished their karaoke rendition of Journey’s ‘Don’t stop beliving’ on the main stage) Fyfe Dangerfield, lead singer of the band and drummer Greig Stewart take out a few minutes to chat to Music-news. The sun is shining, Fyfe is ray-banned up and in a chilled out mood - despite not having taken full advantage of all the gourmet food on offer.
q) What made you decide to play at the Big Feastival?
a) We love food basically. Generally whatever the festival we like to play. We will do almost all of them because we get to play outside, which is always nice.
q) Are there any festivals you wouldn’t play?
a) None we can think of… [glances over to Stewart who says any suggested fascist festival probably wouldn’t make it on their gig list]
q) You recently played a free gig at Bandstand Busking, how did that go?
a) The weather wasn’t great and it’s always going to be a bit hit and miss with playing outside gigs but luckily we still got a good turnout. We didn’t play on the bandstand in the end because of the weather so we actually played inside in the end.
q) Aside from your European dates this summer are there plans for a bigger UK tour?
a) There’ll probably be a tour announced later in the year but nothing confirmed at the moment.
[In fact their website has announced new European and UK dates will be added shortly.]
q) Your first solo album Fly Yellow Moon was well-received. Are there any plans for more solo tours or albums?
a) I will do something at some point but at the moment I’m really keen to do another album with the Guillemots first - which we actually expect to start on quite soon.
q) Very exciting – especially so soon after Walk the River. So back to today’s performance, the festival has got a real family vibe to it – does that change your performance in any way? Are you going to go for a more laidback approach?
a) Not at all, we don’t think of it like that and I don’t want to tailor it too much. We’ll just plan to do our show – it’s different every time and we don’t want to be too strict or change what we do.
q) Finally as it’s a feastival what food have you managed to try so far?
a) I’ve had the popcorn shrimp, which was very good – really tasty and the lamb curry, which was alright but not as good. The portions are a wee bit stingy though so I’m going to eat some more after the show.
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