Interview with Benin City: “One of the UK’s most exciting bands” - Huffington Post

“Named after a Nigerian state capital, Benin City is Theo Buckingham on drums, Tom Leaper on tenor sax, and Joshua Idehen on rhymes.”
1. You have been described as “one of the UK’s most exciting new bands” by the Huffington Post. What gets you guys moving?
We love gigging and making music. We’re inspired by a lot of good stuff around us at the moment: There is a really cool spoken word/music scene in London at the moment and we really want to contribute to it in our own way.

2. How do you as musicians and creators work together?
Musicians are creators as well lol. If you mean how does a non musician get on with musicians then… well the first good thing about Benin City, like any other band is you can stick us in a room and we don’t kill each other after an hour; we get on. It means we get to share ideas with as little ego as possible. Everyone in the band contributes - every idea is tried out no matter how silly it might seem at first -and that helps us manage our different inspirations. I think.
3. Give us the story behind the debut single “Baby.” In what context was the song conceived?
I lived next to a junkie couple for a bit a while back. Argued through the night, mostly her cussing him about ‘the other woman who wouldn’t have him anymore,’ which must’ve been really toxic for both of them. I remember one night he just kept saying ‘what do you want me to say’ over and over. I was playing tekken at the time. INSPIRATION! I stopped playing tekken, wrote some words down and met up with Jon Cottle, a friend of mine and an amazing bass player. Few years later, brought the song into Benin City as a consideration and Tom was like ‘tis good, but i can make it better.’ Horn lines later, voila.
4. What should we all be looking for from you guys in the near future? Any plans?
We’d like to tour, to be honest, I mean we REALLY, REALLY like gig. We’ve just roadtested our three piece which is really killer at the moment. Faithless is coming out on today, so that’ll be swell. We got some festival slots lined up (one I cannot mention on pain of death) a gig at the Embassy Bar on wednesday. But more than that: just getting the album out would be great; so far the response to our singles have been brilliant, which has left us all really humbled but nervous at the same time. Beyond that, we’ll see, I guess.
If you’re in London, make sure you head down to see Benin City live on Wednesday night, and in the meantime Like their Facebook page and of course subscribe to them on Whyd!