RESPECT. INTERVIEW: Oswin Benjamin on the soul (PART 3/3)

There are certain moments in every person’s life that play out exactly how they were supposed to. These are the moments that you envision your whole life, knowing that one day the opportunity for them to become real will happen. Some people grasp these moments, and others let them slip away, being not as prepared as they once thought they were. These type of moments happen with no warning, and occur out of the blue. They may come from something terrible happening, or may just jump out at you in the middle of a mundane day. One of these moments happened to Oswin Benjamin, and he recalls it as being one of the biggest moments in his life to date.

Oz was booked to do a show in Kansas, and had all of his plans set to rock the stage out of town, and prove his skills on the mic. He had already posted promotional tweets and pictures about the show, and people were excited about the moves that the New York kid was making. Three days before he and his boys were set to go on the road for the Kansas show, they decided to call the promoter for the show to ask for an official poster with Oz’s name on it, so that they could promote it on social media to the fans. They were greeted with a shocking response.

Oz had been taken off of the bill for the show. Most people would probably be devastated. And Oz was disappointed, but not in the same way as most people would be. He recalls being more upset at the fact that it was tarnishing his brand to be promoting false information to his fans. “Even down to the jerseys we wear. We do what we want to do because we like it, we are never trying to be something we’re not.” But then his positive outlook on life, which we talked about in parts 1 and 2 of our interview, shined through. He said, “I had a good feeling about it. I knew that something bigger was going to come out of it. It was too big of a thing to go wrong, for something bigger not to happen from it.” A day later, he got a call from one of the biggest hip-hop radio shows in the world, Sway in the Morning, asking if he could come down to the station, to fill in for a rapper who could not make it later that week. He was going to be on a show that would put him in front of a national audience. A show that he would not have been able to attend, had he been in Kansas.

“He told me he needed me to be there at 9:45am, I showed up at 9:00am.”

While writing down his visions earlier in the year, he wrote, “appear on Sway in the Morning” as one of his goals. All of his other goals were accomplished as a domino effect of this one moment. After talking about the Sway experience, I asked him about the MJ jersey that you can spot him wearing in his twitter picture, and on his Instagram (@OswinBmusic).

If you haven’t checked out part 1, or part 2 of this interview yet, then I suggest you go back and read those. Then come back here!

RESPECT.: You’re from New York, but you still rep that Chicago Bulls Jordan jersey. How important is Michael Jordan to you? Are you just a fan of greatness?
Oz: Man, whether it’s rap or basketball, whether you’re from New York or not, you know that Michael Jordan is from New York, and you know that Jay Z is from New York. You can’t be there and not make reference to the two greatest in their given areas or fields. The greatest basketball player ever is Michael Jordan, and the greatest rapper ever is Jay Z, in my opinion. So you can’t be from New York and not pay homage to, or use them kind of as a blueprint for where you want to be. It’s not just rap or basketball, it’s greatness. That’s what everyone should strive for, to be the greatest at whatever they do.

RESPECT.: Yeah I agree. Why else are you doing it, if you’re not trying to be the greatest?
Oz: Yeah, if you’re not trying to be the greatest and have the greatest impact on the world. Because I feel like the greatest is subjective. I feel like that whole Nas and Jay Z conversation, it changes all the time, but it’s like, who had the greatest impact? I feel like who had the greatest impact should be more important than being the greatest person, or the greatest rapper, or basketball player. I want to have the greatest impact on the world.

RESPECT.: I think that’s what gets lost. For the people who are making music just to make it, or to make money, or to get a deal, they forget what’s important. I think you should want to change lives, and that should be your greatest goal.
Oz: Exactly man. That’s the whole point. If you’re not changing lives, if you’re not opening minds, if you’re not allowing people to succeed in a different way, then what are you doing? You’re just taking up space.

RESPECT.: Yeah exactly. You speak a lot on the soul. I study philosophy in school, and Aristotle talks a lot about the soul too. I was curious how your fascination with it came to be, and what you view the soul to be?
Oz: I talk a lot about the soul, and it’s kind of like, me talking about where I want to be. I never want to be labeled as a conscious dude, I just want to be labeled as a human being. I was just in a relationship, and I had to leave it because of the music. I didn’t know if there were going to be other women, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to be faithful, but I want to be as perfect as I can. When I talk about the soul it’s like, even though I have these issues, I want to be as perfect as I can as an individual. I want to reach that point as a person, where certain things don’t matter anymore. I heard of a theory, I don’t know if you know, I think it’s from Plato’s the Republic, and it’s talking about the gold soul, the silver soul, and the bronze soul. You were born into certain types of souls based on what your family did. But it’s interesting if you were born into a certain type of family, but you had the gift of music, then you could propel to a gold soul. You don’t have to stay a bronze soul at the end of the day because it was all about location. So when I talk about the soul, it’s like, just because you started off as a bronze soul, doesn’t mean that’s where you have to end. Just because you started off here, as a drug dealer, or as the ugly dude with low self-esteem, aka the bronze soul, or the majority of society, that doesn’t mean that whatever gifts you have or whatever you feel in your mind, your thoughts, your emotions, that those can’t transpire into something higher than where you already are. So, just taking that whole concept, and just trying to apply it to everything you do. Just the whole soul thing I feel like, is just staying true to who you are. Humanism is my main thing. Yes I’m spiritual, and yes I love God, but I also love bitches with fat asses (laughs).

RESPECT.: Yeah man, you’re human! (more laughs).
Oz: Exactly! And I feel like, when I talk about the soul, that’s what it is. Don’t ever try to be something that you’re not. “What’s good with your soul, what’s good with your spirit?” is just like, who got more soul than me? I am one hundred percent comfortable with who I am. The same Oz that fucked the wrong joint and got clamidia, is the same Oz that will sit in front of you and tell you that God is good, and that I’m gonna be alright. At the end of the day I’mma be what I’m telling you. I may not be the go to guy, for everything that’s benevolent and good, BUT I know where I want to be. So when I talk about the soul, this is my journey, this is my path. And no I don’t have it all together, no it don’t make me a Christian rapper; I am a human being. I’m trying to find my way like everybody else. I’m trying to find my way out of this bronze soul that I was born into, into somewhere higher than that.

RESPECT.: Beautiful. It’s like the most perfect version of yourself right?
Oz: Yeah, exactly.

Then we talked a bit more about Philosophy and had a good wrap up of our conversation. Finally, he ended off by telling me a couple of funny stories. He told me how he rapped for Kendrick Lamar in the Apple Store during a Q & A session. After the host told him that he couldn’t rap, Kendrick said alright (no pun intended), and Kendrick told him that he felt it. He asked him what his name was, and said that he would remember it. “Not too many people say that they rapped for Kendrick, and not too many people can say that he felt it.”

He also did the same thing for Ab-Soul at a CRWN, hosted by Elliot Wilson. He asked the same question, and was denied by the host once again. Ab-Soul, again, said, “sure rap.” Ab told Oswin that he was dope and had a really soulful vibe. Not many people can say that they’ve rapped for 2/4 of the original TDE members, and that they both liked it. You can actually hear the verse that he spit to Ab-Soul at the end of his Dear Summer rendition on his mixtape, which released to the world on Wednesday, and you can check it out in part 2 of this interview here.
Thank you for reading this, and for listening to Oswin Benjamin. We both appreciate you.