Exclusive interview with RJ Benjamin about his new 5 track EP out now on iTunes

The strength of each song is the story-line.

The album -” The 5th Story ” and all the songs on it paint a picture of the last 3 years of my life.

Let me tell you about the collab with Ziyon( from Liquideep ) ‘Only Ever Loved You’: I initially wrote this song after an ex-girlfriends family had bullied to the point that I felt my life being threatened three Decembers ago, it’s what I call a “heavy heart” story and after having a long conversation with Ziyon earlier this year, I realised that he had a similar “heavy heart” story to tell.

I played him the song and it becomes a great platform for him to tell that story.

It’s Jazz funk musically and I think people are gonna love how someone well known for house music will sound on a song like this.

The next part of the journey was really a year later and the aftermath of that chaotic relationship which I summed up in my collab with Proverb ‘All Falls Down’: the lyrics are clear in this summation “It all falls down, truth revealed, what goes around comes around” and more-so with the line “It all falls down, nothing to do but just embrace the change. Its over now, tomorrow is a brand new day”. I’m highly thankful to have been musical director on Idols in 2013 and reconnected with long time friend Proverb. Idols director Gavin Wratten heard the song and suggested I perform it as a collab with Proverb and it ended up being one of the most talked about highlights on the 2013 SA Idols season.

Finally in my Collab with Can Skylark ‘So High’: It’s me in the present, I’m unusually happy for my standards of happy. After doing some soul searching in the last year and half, starting with my amazing experience as Musical Director of Clash Of The Choirs and then my stint on Idols which afforded me the luxury of making music without any pressure of that music having to be a certain way in order to gain airplay as well as meeting an amazing woman who understands and can put up with the pressures of my career, I’m just in a very good space. When Can and I started writing ‘So High’, the story of my current relationship was the inspiration for the song and I have no doubt people will feel that happy energy when they listen to it! The song did really well on Heart 104.9fm and for that I am very grateful .It spent something like 16 weeks on the Top 30.

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