Daniel Benson, known by his stage name Bnxn, is enjoying a rare sunny day in London. “It’s giving a little bit of Lagos,” he tells Teen Vogue. “I don't usually like this place because it's always very cold.”
Bnxn (pronounced like Benson) is in London to shoot a commercial for Coca-Cola, beginning a summer that will take him through the next big reintroduction of his career. Come the fall, he’ll release his debut album, Sincerely, Benson, and further cement his place as a global force in music — a feat even more impressive considering that he’s an independent artist. The Afro-fusion musician has quickly become one of the most prominent voices of New Age Afrobeats, joining the likes of fellow Teen Vogue cover stars Ayra Starr and Victony — plus artists like Rema, Bloody Civilian, Omah Lay, and Ckay — who are constantly defining what Afrobeats will become.
It’s the middle of June, the early days of summer, and the 26-year-old artist is posted up at a cafe in West London, his favorite part of the city. The houses are bigger, the streets free of the hustle and bustle of Central London. That may be “where the fun is,” he admits, but he’s drawn to the former neighborhood’s sense of calm order. He’s entering a different phase in his life. Here, he seems to be taking things as they come, finally settling into his own skin. He’s come a long way from the eager-eyed 22-year-old who entered the Afrobeats music industry with a ravenous hunger that kept him on his toes for quite some time. Right now, his feet are firmly planted.
There’s a certain boisterousness in Bnxn's voice, in his life as it is now. His mood is light and cheerful and he punctuates his sentences with urban Naija-speak and carries some of his words with a bright chuckle. He didn’t always know he would dedicate his life to music, but it has followed Bnxn since he was a kid. “My dad had a long-ranging collection, from dancehall to reggae,” says Bnxn, who grew up listening to Bob Marley and Lucky Dube as well as Nigerian music. “[One day] it was D’banj, [then] it was some traditional musician from my state Akwa Ibom.” This early education made him receptive to new sounds. It explains why he doesn’t shy away from exploring various genres, from Amapiano to classic Afro-pop and Nigerian street pop.
Bnxn spent much of his early childhood in Gbagada, a middle-class, residential area of Lagos, before moving with his family to nearby Ogun State. His father had wanted the family to get away from the rambunctious energy of Lagos, Bnxn tells Teen Vogue. In secondary school, he started rapping under the moniker Drizzle. He eventually moved on from rapping and joined a school choir. “The choir helped me identify my voice and shape it a little bit. I started singing in tenor and it was really great to know that there was a position for the type of voice I had,” he says. He found himself soloing in their performances at major school events. “I overcame performance fear at a very early age.”
When he enrolled as a theater arts student at Babcock University in Nigeria in 2014, Bnxn took a break from music and then returned three years later for an internship that he hated. He spent his time writing and making music instead. The day he got fired from the internship, Bnxn remembers listening to Buju Banton — a perfect signal for where his destiny lay.
Bnxn's original stage name was Buju; in 2022, he changed his name in a bid to avoid being mistaken for Banton, which happened often. He remembers hanging out at a club with the artist Burna Boy, who partially inspired this need for reintroduction. “I feel like you need to make a standpoint of that name,” he remembers Burna telling him.
Burna Boy has played a significant role in Bnxn's life, first as an inspiration during his come-up, then as a collaborator. The pair met formally in 2020 after Burna Boy’s team reached out to him to work on the remix of Bnxn’s hit song, “L’enu.” The meeting led to them quarantining together during the early days of the pandemic and living together for most of 2020. “Understanding his person was a whole experience, especially watching [Burna Boy] record the Grammy-winning album, Twice As Tall," Bnxn says. “There's a whole lot I got to understand and experience. He's a beast. He's someone who's so focused, especially when it comes to the craft itself.”
Like the man he looks up to, Bnxn has always approached music-making with striking intentionality. In his EP Sorry I’m Late (2021), Bnxn draws a groovy narrative around trying to appease fans who had been asking for a full-length project. “There was even a voice note from somebody demanding music. I’d never felt like that before,” he told Apple Music in 2021. He turned the pressure into diamonds and songs like “Kilometre” and “Never Stopped” were added to the stack of hit records he had been accumulating.
When he finally did drop that debut album in 2022, Bad Since 97 established Bnxn as an Afrobeats heavyweight. His goal was to stake a formal claim in an evolving soundscape — to bring a dexterity to music-making and a keen attention to lyric writing that is rare to find in the Afrobeats landscape. His tone and lyricism, suffused with witty relatability and imagery, have greatly contributed to his rise.
In all of this, Bnxn has stayed true to his Afro-fusion background, refusing to stick to a specific sound and choosing instead to infuse his work with a recognizable sense of his Nigerian identity. His lyrics are peppered with pidgin and local languages including Yoruba; beyond that, the wittiness in and of his writing is sometimes rooted in a cheeky camaraderie and colorful storytelling where Nigerians excel.
Bnxn’s most impressive power lies in his ability to turn gritty lyricism into soft, lush landscapes. His songs are deliciously oxymoronic. Whether he is singing about hustling in Lagos or getting high at a club, his nasal yet mellow voice transforms these instances into moments of pensive longing. Bnxn attributes these wistful elements to real experiences, like toxic relationships from his past. “It might come out as sad because it's real,” he says.
Afrobeats music can often feel siloed into strict grittiness; masochistic in storytelling and peppy in sonic delivery. Bnxn, however, is expanding the possibilities of the soundscape. He’s one of a class of artists making music draped in the casual vulnerability that pioneers before them often avoided. Take “Loose Emotions,” a bouncy Afro-pop track off his debut album where he sings, “Here's how you lose emotion, something you should know,” unpacking the last pieces of a romantic fallout.
Related: After Tragedy, Afrobeats Outlaw Victony Isn’t Scared of Anything
Bnxn has written songs about his childhood neighborhood, Gbagada, and spun long-winding narratives about living it up in Gwagwalada, a low-income neighborhood in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. “I am very in tune with experiences, and places are the only way I can remember what happened where,” he says. “Everywhere I go that gives me a sense or feeling, I have to sing about it. Even ‘Gwagalada,’ I hadn’t been there, but I’d heard so much about it before I sang about it.”
Bnxn’s art has an intrinsic sense of place and Lagos in particular is inextricably tied to his music. “I really love living in Lagos, because there's no place like it. Lagos has its own chaos, but I feel like I'm a neighborhood hero in that place now,” he says. “I just live there and make people happy by just being there. Lagos is fun, man. It's full of everything I love.”
In his forthcoming work, Bnxn is paying closer attention to the shifting gears of his life. “Now I want more groove and lightness. I want people to be introduced to a lot happier side [of me] on the album,” he says. The project, according to the singer, will also be his most sincere. “It's me explaining a lot of the things that have happened to me elaborately,” he says. “I'm breezing through topics of heartbreak, confidence, reminiscing on experiences that have happened in my life."
When Bnxn thinks about the future of Afrobeats, it’s with a feeling of excitement as well as a sharp sense of how contemporary artists could grow. He feels the privilege of being a part of the new crop of Afrobeats talents, as well as the pressure. “When I started making this path for myself, especially with the kind of music I was making, I wanted people to identify with the sound,” he says. “At the same time, I wanted people to accept it, and it's great to be accepted … I can't even imagine that I'm part of this age where there are people like Omah Lay, like Victony. They're outstanding, they definitely know what they're doing, and that's all I'm about.”
Recently, Bnxn was listening to songs from older Afrobeats artists like 2Baba and Timaya, who, often with well-considered writing, sang pointedly about structural inequities, but also about love and romance. “I was playing songs from back then when people were trying to really prove a point, and God damn!” he says. “Now it's just vibes. People [back then] were dropping punchlines. Right now, there are only a few people who do it.”
Related: Ayra Starr Is the 21-Year-Old Helming a New Era of Afrobeats
Currently, what’s on his mind more than anything else is longevity. The awards are already coming, notably, a 2022 Headies Award for Next Rated Artist, but they’re not the end goal. “Nice to get,” Bnxn says, “but not something I'm really hoping for. I'm going to get a Grammy just doing what I do.”
His self-assurance is hard to question. Bnxn has the track record to prove it. “I'm looking for legendary status,” he says simply. “I want to enjoy this and take it to the highest level possible, Grammy or not.”
Photo Credits
Creative Director: Ade Samuel
Photographer: Stephen Tayo
Digitech: Demola Heshin
Photo Retouching: Jinx Studios
Producer: According to Ade, Inc
Stylist: Jahn Affah
Prop Stylist: Desola Falomo
Hair Stylist: Kehinde Are
Makeup Artist: Ezeikel Onome
Manicurist: Jessica at Kachy Nails
Makeup Assistant: Obidike Uchechukwu
Market Styling Assistant: Jahn Affah
Line Producer: Salma Saliu
Line Producer: Tega Odje
Production Assistants: Wunmi Hassan, Benjamin Bulus, Elizabeth Bulus, Fad Saliu
Art & Design Director: Emily Zirimis
Designer: Liz Coulbourn
Senior Fashion Editor: Tchesmeni Leonard
Associate Entertainment Director: Eugene Shevertalov
Video Credits
Director: Ade Samuel
Videographer: Fedworks
Videographer: Victor Amango
Sound Engineer: Mr Sunday
Gaffer: Geetee
Editor: Oye Joseph
Colorist: Ben Aitar
Voiceover: Ayobamiji Komlafe
Food Stylist: Anu Bello
Editor: Melissa Lawrenz
Senior Director, Programming: Mi-Anne Chan
Senior Manager, Creative Dev: Logan Tsugita
Editorial Credits:
Editor-in-chief: Versha Sharma
Executive Editor: Dani Kwateng
Interim Features Director: Alyssa Hardy
Senior Culture Editor: P. Claire Dodson
Copy Editors: Dawn Rebecky, Leslie Lipton
Audience Development Director: Chantal Waldholz
Senior Social Media Manager: Honestine Fraser
Social Media Manager: Jillian Selzer
