The first sound you hear on Benjamin Lyman’s debut album as 1010Benja, Ten Total, is either a throat clearing or a deadpan laugh, an announcement or a provocation. A symphony of programmed horns and strings comes in and Benja begins barking and cooing, sheeshing and coughing, shouting ad-libs—“Hey, man! Hey!”—and unleashing a string of effortless vocal runs. A gunshot pops; an engine revs. Then sirens and bit-crushed battlefield FX swallow the song, leaving nothing but shrapnel. Playful, strange, and surprisingly moving, it’s the perfect introduction to Benja’s oddball brilliance: a world-weary optimist and DIY maximalist with a sinewy, astonishing voice meant for the mainstream yet made for the arthouse.
Ten Total delivers on years of anticipation and promise for a transcendent talent who’s remained mostly anonymous since the start of his career. When Pitchfork called the Kansas City singer and producer “one of 2018’s most promising artists,” he’d only put out three songs. His first EP, Two Houses, released on the heels of this acclaim, suggested a burgeoning star on the cusp of his best work. But as quickly as Benja appeared, he vanished. He’s dropped a few singles in recent years, but the initial hype, faintly redolent of House of Balloons-era the Weeknd and Nostalgia, Ultra-era Frank Ocean, has all but dissipated. It’s easy to conclude that the 34-year-old Benja missed his moment.
If Ten Total proves anything, it’s that Benja’s just fine occupying his own self-defined stratosphere. Though his sound has plenty of precedents—his voice a supercharged hybrid of Jeremih and Justin Timberlake, his rangy production pulling from ’90s Björk and early 2010s Kanye—it’s unmistakably his, unique in its agglomeration. One moment he’s rapping with kinetic ease over a slippery Acid Rap-type beat (“Peacekeeper”), the next he’s belting a glamorous hook over horns and strings and clattering cymbals (“H2HAVEYOU”). Ten Total glides between neo-soul, alt-R&B, drill, gospel, trap, and radio-ready pop while Benja obliquely circles a set of core themes: love and redemption, gratitude and faith, loss and deliverance.
His voice, pliable and precise, allows him to flit effortlessly between moods and styles. “Peacekeeper” and “Penta,” for instance, are skeletal freestyles whose nonchalance gives them a curious gravitas. In the former, he balances humor with wisdom, dashing off lines about “trusting hoes,” 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, I couldn’t be told.” On “Penta” he repeats a bar about feeling stupid before groaning, scatting, and making a noise that can only be described as a chortle. It’s invigorating, and funny, to hear Benja stretch his voice to its weirdest depths, à la Playboi Carti or Tom Waits. When the album’s more robust songs materialize, like the warm electro-R&B strutter “Twin” or the searing ballad “Waterworks,” the breadth of his talent reveals itself. Benja could make a cleaner, more straightforward pop or R&B album—he certainly has the voice for it. Instead he dabbles with different forms and flows, playing with bright hues and gummy textures to create his own twisted sense of cohesion.
But when Benja uncorks his voice and goes full pop star, like on “Waterworks” or the show-stopping “I Can,” you sort of wonder why he doesn’t do it all the time. The latter is a passionate, genuinely moving guitar-pop ballad about the fallibility of commitment, about learning to love someone even when it’s hard. Though his writing isn’t exactly revelatory, Benja’s the type of vocalist who really makes you feel what he’s singing; he emotes at such a high frequency that his lyrics function less as literal directions to meaning and more like artfully constructed cairns, reminders that wherever you are is right where you need to be.
Because the moment you begin asking those big questions—what does this song mean? What is this album about?—Benja’s once again huffing and hmphing and hooing and haaing, which he does for over a minute after “I Can’s” guitar solo. He seems to be channeling something words can’t always capture: wonderment, maybe, or provenance. “I need voodoo in my life,” he chants on the album’s closer, perhaps his most direct statement of purpose. Keep the hype and bright lights, he seems to be saying. Just give me room to sing.
