After the almost strictly reggae show that Spragga Benz had just treated us to at the Splash, it was impossible to pass up the chance to catch up with this prolific DJ, now at the head of the Red Square Crew. He could be compared to a Bounty Killer, in that he has revealed talents such as Assassin, Sugar Slick, Greg Hines and Briggy Benz. It was in fact with the last two that he had travelled to Germany. A hot-off-the-stage meeting, then, just after a concert that left everyone in agreement...
Spragga Benz, thank you for agreeing to take a little time to talk with us, the show was very good! First of all, can you tell us about your beginnings in sound system, with La Benz? Tell us what experience you take away from that time and what made you decide to become a DJ?
Spragga Benz Basically, I was a selecta, I gave them a hand getting dubplates in the studio. And going to the studio to get dubplates, I used to meet the artists, the engineers and all that. So one day I was in the studio, Buju Banton was making a dubplate for us and I wanted him to do 4 songs for us, but he only wanted to do 2 and he told me that if I wanted 4 songs, I'd have to do the other 2 myself. At that time I wasn't a DJ, but I said: ‘‘Yo! No problem…’‘, I started coming up with a few things off the top of my head and he seemed to like it. So he encouraged me to keep going and to write the song, which I did as a dubplate for La Benz, and the people in the yard heard it. When we played that song with La Benz, the people there seemed to really enjoy it and they were wondering who this artist was that they'd never heard before. So that's how it started. We started getting paid to do dubs, and we handed out those dubs, while still nobody knew who was making them. It went up a level and here we are today.
At that time, the influence Buju had on you is a bit like the influence you later had on Assassin…
Spragga Benz In a certain sense, probably, even if it's a little different. Buju knew me before I became a DJ and I knew Assassin before he became one, Briggy and each one of them… But the only thing that's the same is that a bigger artist, a better-known artist, helped the emerging talent. The cycle repeats itself…
What can you tell us about your association with Alias Project afterwards? How did it come about?
Spragga Benz Back then, after La Benz, when I started doing dubplates for bigger sounds, like Metromedia, Stone Love and all that, the selecta Webba took me one day to Dave Kelly, at Penthouse. I had this song called Jack it up, which was mashing up the dancehall… He took me to Dave. At that time he wasn't yet working on any of his own projects, he was just doing things for Germain. So we stayed in touch, until he produced the Pepperseed riddim and let me voice it. And since then the collaboration between Alias Project and Spragga Benz has continued. Dave Kelly and I come from the same community, so we already knew each other before making music, since school, but the music made it official somehow.
For your second album you teamed up with a major, Capitol Records; why did you leave them?
Spragga Benz Actually, they left me, because they shut down the black music department. They were done with the black music department. But they didn't understand much about dancehall anyway, because it was new to them. It wasn't like now. They weren't prepared for it and that's what led to the split.
You've also done a lot of combinations with hip-hop stars; do you think there's a kind of brotherhood between hip-hop and dancehall?
Spragga Benz Yes, there must be, because the two are related and both come out of reggae. Dancehall is a higher level of reggae and hip-hop is a higher level of reggae, it's the same thing; so they're related, closely.
Your latest album, “Thug Nature”, is a self-production, produced on the Red Square label; can you tell us what the difference is between Red Square and Benz Speculous?
Spragga Benz Benz Speculous is my original label, from the time I signed with Capitol. Because I didn't really want to sign with Capitol as an artist, I wanted to be in a deal with them. It was a kind of go-between between them and me. And then we already had a crew at the time, with Tomahawk, Black Pearl and Sugar Slick… The same ones we still work with. Red Square is the corner where I grew up and where my friends grew up. It's in that place that they started to love music, as I was making it. We set the example and so we created the Red Square Crew afterwards.
Can you say a word about your experience in cinema? You acted in the film “Shottas”; would you do it again?
Spragga Benz Yes, it was a good experience working with that team, with Kymani and all that; we smoked weed all day during the shoot. It's a good film. Unfortunately, it wasn't shown in the big cinemas for some reason I don't know. But the street knows it and the street loves it, it's a kind of underground cult. We'll do it again, because it was a good experience. If we get a good script, we'll definitely do it again.
These days you come across more as a rasta DJ than as the slackness DJ you were in your youth; what was the revelation for you?
Spragga Benz It's just life, growing up and seeing the things that happen in the world, everything they lie to us about. Even the Bible, which tells you that in the year 2000, God was supposed to come back. All that big fuss around the new millennium, everything you see, it's nothing at all. Nobody can say when the end of the world will be, nobody knows when the world began. It's a decoy, we shouldn't listen and we shouldn't learn what we're being taught and all that ideology about God. Of course, we know there is a supreme creator, but not in the sense that the Bible teaches us, because there are too many contradictions in it and God is not contradictory. So we turned to our elders, we went back to our black roots, not the roots of prejudice, but simply the black roots that come from Solomon and King Selassie. We're progressing in that direction.
I also know that you're very involved in education and that you've done a lot in the past, notably with the Stay in school project; do you still work for this cause today?
Spragga Benz Yeah, we still have our Stay in school project, because it's something necessary and endless: encouraging the younger generations to pay attention to what they learn. We have a wider field of action today, so we can solve problems and all that. There's probably less war and conflict in Jamaica. Right now school is out, it's the holidays. But school starts again in September. So we're standing ready to continue the project all together, we're getting the notebooks and supplies ready. We usually collect computers, software and things like that, in order to take them back to the schools. The project is now taking a much more direct turn, we work hand in hand with the families, in the communities. We go to the bookshop and buy textbooks, for 500 dollars, 1,000 dollars, 1,500 dollars, or even more… We hand them out to different families, to the parents, because we know what the needs are. We buy shoes for others, we buy exercise books and pens, with a message from Red Square or Spragga Benz and often a speech by Marcus Garvey, something empowering, anyway.
To finish, what are your plans for the future? I've already seen you in France alongside Don Carlos; will you be coming back soon?
Spragga Benz I'm available to come back and give them a better performance. Probably with my own band this time and my whole entourage, to give them a full show. I'm looking forward to that… And then, the projects I'm working on at the moment? I'm working on a project called “Shotta Culture”; it's an album with a bit of a hoodlum style. Then I'm working on another one with Rookie Production; we haven't given it a title yet, but it's completely recorded. We'll also have another album with Builders Music, called “Love Rasta”, and also another project with Stephen Marley, which doesn't have a title yet, but we already have something like 8 songs. Finally, the singers I team up with are still active, the various producers too, so we'll surely do a “Thug Nature Volume 2”. In short, there are a great many projects… Red Square is working on an album too, with Assassin, Spragga Benz, Sugar Slick, the whole crew… There's a lot of work in progress…
Do you have just a little message to leave, a big up to send, for Reggaefrance and all your French fans?
Spragga Benz To all the French fans and to Reggaefrance, this is Spragga Benz, and always know that the world is love and positivity, full of life and hope… Blessed love!
Thanks: Genie
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