Love is the message in Benjamin
Hey!’s new singles “Ra-ta-tat-tat” and “No Samples”
By John Hacker
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:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6UV2d9FAKbzmVeQMuvQ4pL?si=EqefUenJSSKzydQJ4ZGe1A
https://music.apple.com/us/album/no-samples/1639204669?i=1639204672
https://www.instagram.com/thecaptainbenjaminhey/
https://www.tiktok.com/@thecaptainbenjaminhey?_t=8VzgM7OZRyl&_r=1
For “Ra-Ta-Tat-Tat”
specifically:
https://open.spotify.com/album/7DjSOVXHUDKcbb4qTPUGmp?si=BIBKGt17QTCCD7liE2GDIw
https://music.apple.com/us/album/ra-ta-tat-tat/1618363314?i=1618363315
For “No Samples”
specifically:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6UV2d9FAKbzmVeQMuvQ4pL?si=EqefUenJSSKzydQJ4ZGe1A
https://music.apple.com/us/album/no-samples/1639204669?i=1639204672
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