Wolverhampton-born singer and songwriter Benny Atlas is taking listeners on an emotional, layered, and heartfelt experience on his debut mixtape, Better Now You Know, out now. The project is an introspective exploration of various romantic relationships, earnestly detailing each wrong turn and misstep made along the way — in the most literal sense, from West to South East London.

Spread across the tracklist, he created numerous skits named after London postcodes, each audio vignette referencing a past encounter, relationship, or mistake, providing a wider context for the project and Benny’s headspace when writing and recording the other 7 tracks. Here, we connect with Benny as he takes Wonderland behind the scenes of his creative process, on a track-by-track review of Better Now You Know. Keep scrolling…

Some people may call this an 11-track project, the reality is 4 of them are short skits created by my favourite Australian and home-boy Stephen Collins who exec produced and co-wrote the project. I wanted this to be a project people can listen through start to finish and go on a journey with the character throughout. I think the skits really helped glue it all together.

“Uptown” opens the project and is about making mistakes and it being too late to make amends. I wanted this part of the project to show that unlike in “Don’t Say It” where there are no apparent consequences for bad actions, “Uptown” is showing the other side of the coin, that there are very real and painful repercussions for your actions. Basically is starts with hitting rock bottom. We wanted to really hold back on the production, and aimed to create an anti chorus, making a more quiet space for the listener to take in the essence of the song. This song was written in about 2 hours start to finish on one of the first writing sessions we did for the project.

Each postcode represent a different female character in the story that set the tone and narrative for the next track. This character is the one that the protagonist really cared that made him hit rock bottom in Uptown and set him off on a path of destructive behaviour.

“Off White” explores intoxicating relationships and unhealthy habits, it tells the story of two types of addiction, not knowing which one is worse. I wanted at least one song on the project that sounded more like contemporary RnB and even went and used some obvious auto tune on the vocal to achieve this. I wanted the chorus to be moreish, mirroring some of the themes of addiction. Gotta shout out my manager Luke on this one, I wasn’t initially too keen to release “Off White” as a single from the project, I can be pretty weird when it comes to the selection process. He insisted on releasing this one and I’m glad I listened to him. It shows me that you need people around you that you trust and can tell you things that you don’t hear.

Setting some sexy scene vibes for “Don’t Say It”. My partner is an actress, and I actually roped her into recording the skits for me. We did it together and had a lot of fun in the process. Shout out baba!

“Don’t say it” is a song about dating in a world full of instant gratification, demonstrating selfish and toxic traits, and is spoken from a place of assuming that this behaviour is free of consequence. DSI has a playful and cheeky energy about what happens the morning after the night before. It sounds sweet but if you actually listen to the lyrics its pretty nasty. My boy Stephen Collins once again on the co-write. It’s the first time I have collaborated with a songwriter, and I am so glad I did. Stephen took me out of my comfort zone and forced me to be vulnerable on every track, he also helped me shape the story, to make sure that no lyric was wasted. Sam Posener produced the majority of the record, doing an amazing job and gave it his signature, slick RnB sound, which really allowed me to try and channel some of my heroes. It also allowed for continuity throughout. Janeva Burrill, the GOAT of vocal arrangement, she came in and helped me write and record all of the harmonies, which in the end created some of my favourite moments from the whole project.

I tied this into the project narrative but before launching the Benny Atlas project I thought I had left making music behind me. This took me to a period of my life where I wasn’t happy and a lot of energy from those days I channeled into this project. Like a lot of people when there young I was drinking too much and not looking after myself. I had a health scare which left me hospitalised and my family & friends worried for my life. It was a crazy time but really gave me the shake I needed to turn things around. Musically its very much and interlude track on the project.

This features a voice of an artist I’m a huge fan of who took time out of her day to record this and did an amazing job and channeling the character we needed. I’m not sure if we have 100% clearance from her label to mention her so will not drop names, but thank you for being a part of it!

“BNYK” is a confessional song, owning up to my careless ways, tentatively seeking repentance whilst knowing it isn’t deserved. This song is written from the same self-centred space as ‘Don’t Say It’ although less optimistic in its outlook. Like most the songs on this project the chorus came first, and stuck in my head until the next session, which helped encourage me to finish it off. It’s where the character starts to to be honest with people around him even if its not pretty with a ‘it’s better now you know who I am’ statement. The song perhaps implies that even throughout all the painful lessons, nothing has been learnt, and the cycle of toxic and foolish behaviour is likely to continue.

The 2nd interlude on the project, fairly self explanatory with some more honesty and self reflection being split. I love the simplicity of this track, the bed of reverb vocals over the warm piano sound is a perfect combo.

“HTBAM” is about trying to navigate my way through my late 20s, not knowing which way to turn, making mistake after mistake and expecting different outcomes. It acknowledges my moral shortcomings, and explains the slow process of growing from ‘a boy to a man’, whilst being honest about the people who have been damaged along the way. Of all the songs on the project this one felt like the most vulnerable space to write from, and again wasn’t super enthusiastic about releasing it, but I think this was mainly down to its raw nature and close-to-home truths. My band recorded all the music on this one as I wanted it to have a live feel, shout out Mindy, Andreas, Dani and Dolapo. This one took longer than the others to come together, in fact I think we got the master back after lots of back and forth about 2 days before release. I reworked and re-recorded the vocals at least three times. “HTBAM” took a little more elbow grease to come together than the other songs on the project however feel it was needed as the closing track to add some redemption to the character’s journey. Thank you Mindy for pulling this track together, to DEX out in LA who did additional production and quick turnaround on the mix (all for AD Prod and mixing the entire project) as well as JANEVA for looking at the vocals with me.