by SCOTT C

At 25 years old, Benji B is the award-winning host of BBC 1Xtra’s Deviation, a dedicated journey into underground hip hop, deep house, broken beats, Detroit techno and more, heard every Thursday night by heads around the world. Along with being a champion of new music, Benji’s claim to fame came while producing U.K. tastemaker Gilles Peterson’s show Worldwide for two years before it eventually got picked up by the BBC in 1998.

The Mirror spoke to Benji, heading our way for Triple 5 Soul’s blowout Soul Session, over the phone from Los Angeles.

Mirror: Can you please tell me how, at 16, you were producing Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide for pirate radio station KISS FM?

Benji B: Radio was always a big thing for me. It’s certainly different now, but when I was a kid, legal radio was shit. It’s not like now, where you can tune in to many stations and hear a hip hop tune, be it commercial or otherwise, or hear something alternative. For us, the radio really came alive on the weekends, when the dial just exploded with music. Pirate radio had such a huge influence on me and everyone around me, because weekends you heard electro, early proto-house, funk, disco, hip hop, early hardcore and techno and basically everything. That was my musical education. I was a club DJ, but radio was always a big part of my life. At 16, I wedged my foot in the door and hung out at KISS as much as I could. When I started working, I wasn’t getting paid for about a year or so, but for me it was a pleasure.

M: How did you meet Gilles?

BB: I met Gilles in the clubs, and just approached him at one point and suggested we do some things together. I thought it could be cool.

M: And that was it?

BB: (laughs) Basically! There were many facets to the types of shit I was interested in, and so back then, I naturally ended up approaching people like Rodigan—who’s famous in the U.K. for playing reggae stuff—Coldcut, Tim Westwood and Gilles as well.

M: For the uninitiated, how would you describe the scope of Deviation, and what you’re trying to achieve from week to week on the show?

BB: To be honest with you, if I had one word to sum it up, other than deviation, I’d probably be a lot more successful, but therein lies the beauty. It’s an opportunity for me to share music that I think should be heard, for which I am blessed and extremely grateful. A very vague and nonspecific answer would be to say that it’s music with soul that covers many BPM. I like to think that it touches on music of various tempos that has a particular feeling, and if you listen to the show a few times, you’ll get it. Ge-ology describes it as an open-minded look into the soul of everything. It’s just about real music, only the problem is, when you say shit like that, it always ends up sounding cliché (laughs). There’s no way I could do my show unless I had a 100 per cent blank canvas to do what I do, and if anyone came into the BBC and tried to playlist my show, I’d jump ship in five seconds.

With Ge-ology, Low Budget and Team Canada at Cabaret tonight, Thursday, Sept. 28, 9 p.m. for free tickets, e-mail montrealsoul@triple5soul.com

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