Benga has spoken to ClashMusic, after comments about his involvement with the dubstep scene went viral.
Earlier this year, Benga gave an interview to the NME. Speaking as part of Magnetic Man, the trio’s contagious sense of humour filtered through the quick video chat.
However something Benga said caught our eye. “I’ve been seen to say that dubstep is the music of our generation, but that’s now changed. I believe now that certain artists are the future, I don’t want to be any part of dubstep anymore.”
The comments quickly went viral, with the initial ClashMusic report receiving in excess of four and half thousand Facebook likes. Agreeing to a quick phone interview, Benga expanded on those comments and spoke about his upcoming album and that rapidly expanding live show.
A full feature is forthcoming, but we felt it important to allow Benga space to have his say on those reports.
“The reason that kicked off is because there is a lot of speculation around what we’re doing and what individual artists are doing” he said. “That statement is kinda true and I have brought it up a few times in other interviews and it’s not to say that now I’ve completely stopped working on dubstep – I’ve just moved to other areas. For me to remain creative, I’ve kinda not got to call my music dubstep and for me to keep pushing boundaries and moving around, making songs… I can’t call myself dubstep.”
Continuing, Benga insisted that people shouldn’t judge his creativity by what gets an official release. “I mean, I was sat in the studio the other day making music and I was tearing but I always find it really hard to finish because I just think: ‘oh man, time’s being wasted here’. When I’m on my own, I don’t create stuff like that I just create uptempo things that don’t necessarily come in the dubstep bracket.”
Partner in crime Skream still releases the odd one off 12 inch which harks back to his roots, so we asked Benga if he wanted to do something similar – even anonymously, to avoid press attention. “I ain’t scared” he insisted. “I ain’t scared to put anything out under my name. I mean, you do aliases because you think people won’t like what you do under your name”.
“I’ve got loads of different types of cuts and that’s not to say that every single cut that I make in the studio is in a particular vein. It would be vey, very, very naïve to think that the cuts which make it onto the album are representative of the music I make completely because – as I say – I change and change and change. Whether it’s vocal or not, whether it’s dark or it’s not: keep it moving”.
The full feature is forthcoming on ClashMusic.
