Jarren Benton Beat the Industry GPS

0:00You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in a podcast, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Or your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. You know, when you plug a destination into a GPS, it gives you like the fastest, most logical route. Right. The approved path. Exactly. Stay on the highway, take the exits everyone else takes, follow the blue line. And if you dare to veer off that pre-approved path, the system just absolutely panics. It starts flashing, right? Like recalculating, recalculating. Yeah. Demanding that you turn around and get back on the main road. And you know, the music industry operates like that exact same software. Oh, completely.

1:00If you aren't hitting the standard milestones, playing the expected sounds, and following the traditional timeline, the executives assume you must be lost. Welcome to the deep dive. So glad you're here with us today. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. Today, we're unpacking a massive Wikipedia archive, documenting the journey of an artist who basically spent his entire career making the music industry's GPS scream recalculating. I mean, he really did. We're talking about the American rapper, Jaren Benton. Yes. And our mission today is to explore the career of a guy who actively, almost stubbornly, defied regional expectations, industry norms, and even the traditional timeline of success. Just to build a deeply personal music legacy on his own terms. Okay. Let's unpack this. Yeah. We have to start at the beginning. Down in Decatur, Georgia. Benton was born in 1981, which places his formative years right in the thick of the rising Southern hip hop dominance. And that geographic context is just, well, it's crucial to understanding his early struggles

2:02because of the Atlanta sound, right? Exactly. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Atlanta was really cementing itself as the absolute center of gravity for hip hop. Yeah. There was a very specific down south sound dominating the airwaves and the clubs. It was largely base heavy, bounce driven, and highly localized. Like, if you were there, you played that sound. Right. If you were an up and coming artist in that area, the expectation was that you would slide seamlessly right into that sonic landscape. But Benton just didn't fit that mold at all. No, not even close. He gives this incredibly candid quote to XXL magazine, admitting that his early attempts at rapping were, well, in his own words, kind of whack. Which is hilarious to admit, but, you know, honest. Yeah. He was going around Atlanta, performing at showcases, trying to build a name, but he hit a massive wall. He noted it was incredibly hard to gain traction because his style just didn't fit that typical down south vibe the local crowds were showing up for. And looking at his influences, I mean, it makes perfect sense why he felt like an alien

3:03in his own hometown. Oh, for sure. His musical diet was completely at odds with the local menu. His influence list is wild. It reads like someone left a CD binder open at a frat party in 1999 and just hit shuffle on everything. It really does. He credits hip-hop legends, obviously, outcast, goody mob, Wu Tang clan, M&M, Redmond, Dr. Dre. Yeah. But then he cites deeply lyrical underground guys like ELP, Rascas, and Chino XL. Which is already pulling away from the mainstream club sound. Right. And then he takes a hard left turn into alternative and industrial rock. This is the part that gets me. He brings up nine inch nails, deft tones, and Marilyn Manson. Yeah. It's like trying to sell a sci-fi thriller at a romance novel convention. You might have undeniable talent as a writer, your prose might be incredible, but the local market you're standing in is absolutely not looking for a genre blending, dark, industrial tinged hip-hop sound. They want the club hits. Exactly. What's fascinating here is how that initial rejection acts as a crucible.

4:07How do you mean? Well, when your immediate environment doesn't validate you, you're forced into a corner. Right. You either conform to what the local scene wants, which he clearly refused to do, or you look outward. Yeah. You find your own lane. By embracing Marilyn Manson and Wu Tang simultaneously, Benton was cultivating a sound that couldn't be pigeonholed by geography. He wasn't making Atlanta music, you know. He was making Jared Benton music. Exactly. He isolated himself in his own specific tastes to build something completely separate from the local expectations. I want you, the listener, to think about that for a moment. Think about a time when you felt your own skills or your passions or your weird niche interests just did not align with your immediate environment. Oh, that's a great point. Like, at a job. Right. Maybe it was at a corporate job or in a specific academic program. It feels incredibly frustrating and isolating in the moment. But that friction is often the exact thing that forces you to forge a stronger, more unique identity.

5:08You stop trying to blend in and you start doubling down on what makes you different. And that doubling down is the defining characteristic of Benton throughout the late 2000s. He didn't just give up. No, he focused intensely on refining that eccentric craft rather than trying to like reverse engineer a radio hit for the Atlanta market. Which leads directly into his breakout period between 2009 and 2012. Right. Because eventually his sound catches the ear of the right people. He drops his first official mixtape produced entirely by the beat gods in 2009. Then in 2011, he teams up with producer SMKA for a collaboration mixtape. And the title of this project tells you everything you need to know about his brand of humor and his reliance on shock value. Oh, I know the one. It was called Huffing Glue with Hasselhoff. That title is just wild. Supported by the single Get a Lo to Me. But the real catalyst for his career was a track called Skitzel. Yes, the music video for Skitzel, that somehow crosses the radar of the underground rapper,

6:09Hobson. And Hobson was huge in the underground scene, though. Oh, yeah. Hobson was building a massive independent following of his own at the time. He watches the video, immediately recognizes the raw talent and the shared off-kilter sensibility. And he passes it along to Dame Ritter. Who's the CEO of the independent record label, Funk Volume? Exactly. He goes by Ritter reaches out and by May 2012, Hobson and Ritter officially signed Benton to Funk Volume. Wow. He then drops the mixtape free-basing with Kevin Bacon the following month. Another amazing title. Great. And he's bringing in features from guys like Dizzy Wright, Ritz, and Gangsta Boo. But what's wild is that while all this underground momentum was building, the mainstream establishment was actually watching him closely. He definitely was. He wasn't just getting calls from scrappy independent labels. He was simultaneously being courted by absolute industry heavyweights like Eric Sermon and no ID. Yeah. Literal architects of hip-hop. And they were offering him major label deals with Def Jam recordings in Interscope records.

7:10Yet he says no. He walked away. He walks away from Def Jam to sign with Funk Volume. I have to push back here. Wait, if Def Jam and Interscope come knocking, isn't a professional suicide to say no and go with a relatively small indie label? It looks entirely counterintuitive from the outside. I mean, most people would kill for that deal. Right. But if we connect this to the bigger picture, it makes perfect strategic sense for an artist like Benton. Break that down for us. You have to understand the historic trade-off in the music industry. When you sign with a major label like Def Jam or Interscope, you are getting access to a massive global marketing machine. So radio, billboards? Exactly. You get the big cash advances. You get radio play, high budget videos, and mainstream visibility. The rocket ship to the top. Yeah, but the price of that rocket ship is almost always your creative control and the actual ownership of your master recordings. Ah, right. The fine print. Major labels are notoriously risk averse because they are investing millions.

8:11Think back to that GPS analogy. They want you on the highway. Major label wants you on the highway. If Benton went to Def Jam, the executives might listen to his Maryland Manson influences and his dark humor and say, let's dial that back. Let's make you sound more like what's currently charting on the radio so we can recoup our investment faster. They'd want to sand down his edges to make him palpable for a mass audience. Independent labels, on the other hand, offer a fraction of the upfront money and marketing muscle. Sure. But they give the artist a significantly larger slice of the pie when it comes to royalties. And more importantly, they let the artist steer the ship creatively. Which he needed. Funk volume wasn't going to tell him to change his sound. They signed him specifically because of his eccentric sound. You know, for everyone listening, think about your own career choices. If you were offered the prestigious corporate job at the massive firm, the one with the strict dress code, the rigid hierarchy, but the huge name brand on your resume, would you take it?

9:11A lot of people would. Yeah. Or would you choose the chaotic startup that pays less initially, but lets you completely run your own department and build something in your own image? And Benton chose the startup. He did. Choosing independence comes with a heavy physical and financial toll. I mean, when you say no to deaf jams money, you have to fund your own existence. That explains the insane touring schedule that follows. Oh, the touring was brutal. In late 2012, he hits the road internationally with Hobson, Dizzy Wright, Swizz, and DJ Hoppa. They do 54 shows in 60 days across the US, Europe, and Australia. 54 shows in 60 days. That's almost a show every single night with international travel. And you say no to corporate money. That tour becomes the physical cost of your independence. That is not a glamorous pop star tour. That is blue collar, sweat equity grinding to keep the lights on and build a grassroots following city by city. And that grueling grind sets the stage for his debut studio album in June 2013. My grandma's basement.

10:12Right. And this album represents a pivot for him. How so? He stated at the time that the project had a different vibe. He was a lot more personal, designed so people could learn who Jaren really is beneath all that shock value. Getting past the Huffingloo persona. Exactly. He also featured a more refined production sound because, you know, he still had ambitions to be a household name. He wasn't opposed to success. He just wanted it on his terms. Right. He was proving he could balance his eccentricities with accessibility, but without a major label telling him how to do it. And the personal touch completely worked. My grandma's basement featured a diverse lineup of guests, Ari the Rugged Man, Vinnie Paz, Hobson, and it debuted at number 152 on the Billboard 200. Which is huge. And it hit number four on the Billboard Heat Seekers chart. Right. And for anyone unfamiliar, the Heat Seekers chart is basically Billboard's spotlight for artists bubbling just under the mainstream radar. Like a track of a system for the next big thing. Exactly. So for independent hip-hop album in 2013, charting on the Billboard 200 is a massive validation

11:13of the DIY approach. The momentum snowballs rapidly from there. He drops music videos for tracks like Go Off and Life in the Jungle. He goes on his first solo headlining tour, the grandma's basement tour, and jumps onto tours with Ritz, Snow thigh product, Tech N9, and Freddie Gibbs. He is just everywhere. It's a relentless pace that culminates in a major industry moment in 2014. Here's where it gets really interesting. Oh, the XXL list. Yes. Jaren Benton earns a spot on the 2014 XXL Freshman class. For context, the XXL Freshman list is essentially the hip-hop industries and annual coronation of the next big superstars. Getting on that magazine cover is a career-making moment. Absolutely. But there are two vital details here. First, Benton didn't just get picked by the magazine editors in a boardroom. He won the People's Champ fan vote. Meaning his independent fans mobilized and essentially forced him onto that list. Exactly. And second, and this is the kicker. He was the oldest rapper ever selected to the list. Wow. He was 32 years old.

12:14Which is just unheard of, youth is fiercely fetishized in the music industry. Gatekeepers are almost always looking for the 19-year-old prodigy they can mold and profit off of for the next decade. Right. They want someone they can steer. Breaking through at 32 is practically impossible in that specific format. The real takeaway here is that gatekeepers only have power if they control your audience. Oh, that's a great way to put it. Benton proved that if you own your direct connection to the fans, you can completely override ingrained industry prejudices like ageism. The fans literally forced the industry to acknowledge a 32-year-old in a young man's game. It's like winning a best-new artist award when you've actually been working in the trenches for over 10 years. Right. Right. It's not overnight success. It is fiercely delayed recognition. So he reaches this incredible, validating peak. He defied the geography trap. He defied the major labels. He defied his eight. And then just as he reached at the mountaintop. The ground completely falls out from under him.

13:15Because the independent music business is incredibly fragile. You don't have a massive corporate safety net to catch you when things go wrong, either personally or professional. Right. In early 2015, Benton releases his debut EP titled Slow Motion. It charted on the Billboard 200, which is a great professional milestone. But the story behind the title is just heartbreaking. He was named after an old friend and fellow rapper who had recently passed away. So he's dealing with profound personal grief. Yeah. And then in 2016, his professional home vanishes. Funk volume shuts down. Funk volume, the label he helped build, suddenly shuts down due to internal disputes among the founders. Suddenly the independent infrastructure that supported his rise, you know, the people who booked those massive tours and marketed those albums, it's completely gone. Just wiped out. He's a free agent, but not by choice. The machinery he relied on evaporated overnight, leaving him entirely on his own. He might think losing his label would be the end, or at least force a massive, multi-year hiatus. A lot of artists would quit after that.

14:16But look at the three year period following the collapse. It became an era of aggressive reinvention. He didn't slow down at all. He hasn't just put out another album. He builds his own enterprise literally. He starts his own label, Benton Enterprises, releasing Slow Motion volume two in 2016, as his first project under the new banner. He's leveraging the fierce fanbase he built to fund his own ecosystem. That works. In 2017, he drops his third studio album, The Mink Coat Killer, intended to be a tribute to the Wuteng Clan, referencing his own Wuteng-influenced moniker. He is constantly working to ensure he doesn't lose an ounce of momentum, handling the distribution and marketing himself. So he loses his label in 2016, but by 2018, he links up with a still-movin label and guys like Dizzy Wright and Audio Push to create an entire collaborative album called One Week Notice. And it was called that because they literally recorded the entire album in just seven days. Which is insane. That's not just a guy making music. That's an entrepreneur refusing to let the machine dictate his timeline or his output.

15:19And that relentless output that she refused to quietly fade away eventually attract the attention of the very establishment he initially bypassed. Right. It comes full circle. In 2018, Betton releases a single called Money Bag with Jay Park and announces that his next collaborative album, Yuck Fu, is going to be released under rock nation. Yes. Jay-Z's rock nation. The ultimate inner circle. And it's worth noting just to bring his discography completely up to date. In 2022, he dropped a satirical track titled Nancy. Right. Featuring the rapper Samson. Yes. It's a track centered around former US house speaker Nancy Pelosi. Now as your guides today, we are strictly mapping out his timeline. You want to be very clear to you listening. We aren't taking any political stances or endorsing the viewpoints of the track or the politician. Exactly. We're just impartially conveying the facts from the source material. Right. But it's a factual piece of his history that shows his continued reliance on shock value and pushing boundaries. Looking at that entire timeline, from the funk volume collapse to the rock nation deal,

16:22you really see the mechanics of survival in the modern music landscape. So what does this all mean? How does an indie artist, with no corporate backing, survive losing his label in 2016, only to drop an album recorded in a single week by 2018, and then suddenly walk through the doors of hip-hop's biggest empire at rock nation? This race is an important question about what it actually means to be an independent artist. OK, tell me more. Benton's entire career is a masterclass in adaptability. Being independent isn't just a business model for him. It's a survival skill. He went from a scrappy indie label to becoming his own boss at Benton Enterprises to signing with one of the most prestigious entertainment companies in the world. Yeah. What he proved is that his core value didn't lie in his corporate backing. His value was his own brand. The audience wasn't showing up for funk volume. They were showing up for Jared Benton. I want to challenge you, the listener, to view your own setbacks through that exact lens. When a project fails or a company folds or relationship ends, it's so easy to see

17:25it as a definitive ending. Oh, absolutely. But what if it's just a mandatory reinvention phase? What if the skills you build during the failure, the resilience, the networking, the raw output, are the exact tools you need to build your own enterprise? Benton didn't stop when his local scene rejected him. He didn't stop when the majors wanted to change his sound, and he certainly didn't stop when his label dissolved. He just kept recalculating the rap. Perfect call back to the GPS. To summarize this deep dive, Jared Benton's journey is nothing short of relentless. He started as an alienated kid in Decatur, Georgia, listening to Marilyn Manson and Wu Tang Clan while everyone else was focused on the down south sound. He became an independent trailblazer who gambled on himself, paid the brutal physical cost of that independence on tour, and conquered the XXL freshman list as the oldest inductee at 32. He survived profound personal loss and the sudden collapse of his record label, only to build his own company and eventually find himself walking through the doors of Jay-Z's rock

18:27nation. It's an incredible narrative arc of resilience, but you know, it leaves me with one final, perhaps slightly provocative thought for you to mull over today. Yeah, it's here. Jared Benton built his entire identity on being the outsider. He was the guy who rejected the major labels, the guy who ignored the regional sound, the outlier who forced his way in on his own terms. But what happens to an artist's creative drive when their specific brand of rebellion eventually gets co-opted and rewarded by the establishment? Oh, what? When you sign with a behemoth like rock nation, can you still be the ultimate outsider when you're suddenly invited into the ultimate inner circle? Oh, man, that is a fantastic question to leave off on. How do you keep the edge when you finally won the war? Yeah. We'll leave you to think about that one. Only something to think about. Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive, navigating the off-road map of Jared Benton's career. We warmly invite you back for our next exploration. Until then, keep questioning the road.

19:28You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. We upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this. Even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.