Before he was the impish foil of rapper Lil Dicky on the FX network’s must-watch cringe comedy Dave, benny blanco was merely one of the biggest music producers in the universe. His shapeshifting, kitchen-sink production ethos is the sound of pop radio in the post-millennium age, midwifing career-defining records for superstars Ed Sheeran, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and countless others — a run of stratospheric chart success culminating in the release of blanco’s first headlining single, the 2018 smash “Eastside.”
blanco’s rise to fame could be the subject of its own television adaptation. Born Benjamin Levin, he dreamed of rapping until he decided “no one cares what a chubby Jewish kid from Virginia thinks” and pivoted to producing hip-hop instrumentals in his makeshift bedroom studio, eventually recording his own vocals on top. After spending his teen years traveling via bus between Virginia and Manhattan in pursuit of music business opportunities, blanco finally landed his first paid gig: scoring Hip-Hop Honeys, a softcore porn video produced by Jonathan Shecter, who co-founded the influential hip-hop magazine The Source. blanco also studied audio engineering prior to interning for Disco D (born David Shayman), the Brooklyn-based producer and Booty Bar Records founder acclaimed for collaborations with rappers like Princess Superstar. Following Disco D’s 2007 suicide, the 19-year-old blanco teamed with rapper Spank Rock to record Bangers & Cash, an EP created in homage to rap pioneers 2 Live Crew; the record caught the attention of hit-making producer Dr. Luke, who signed blanco to his Kasz Money Productions, and under Dr. Luke’s tutelage, the kid’s career exploded.
Armed with co-writing and co-production credits on blockbusters like Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl,” Britney Spears’ “Circus,” Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” and Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok,” blanco spun out of the Kasz Money orbit in 2011, co-writing and co-producing Maroon 5’s slinky electro-pop hit “Moves like Jagger,” which topped the pop charts in 18 countries including the U.S. By 2013, the year he won the Hal David Starlight Award (given to young artists who have already made an impact on the music business) at the 44th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony, blanco had also racked up credits including Wiz Khalifa’s “No Sleep” and “Work Hard, Play Hard,” Rihanna’s “Diamonds” and Ke$ha’s “Die Young,” going on to become a five-time BMI Songwriter of the Year award winner as well as the 2017 iHeartRadio Producer of the Year. The blanco formula succeeded by being everything but formulaic: his focus on infectious melodies, straightforward arrangements, electronic textures and idiosyncratic beats (most culled from his extensive library of homemade samples) proved endlessly adaptable and dependably au courant.
“My role when writing and producing songs is different every time,” blanco told Sound on Sound in 2012. “The best way to approach producing is to know how to fit in, how to be the missing piece. Many people try to do too much and they get in the way, often by doing things they are not good at. But if someone in the room is better than me at something, I’m going to let them do it. If someone is a better guitarist, I’ll let them play the guitar. I have no ego about that. The best producers are those that can bring out the best in everyone, who can really use people for their strengths and talents. Sometimes you write more of a song, sometimes less, sometimes you produce more, sometimes you’re just there for moral support, sometimes you do the lyrics, sometimes you’re just involved with the music, it all depends. If someone has a big ego, they are not going to make it in this business.”
Friends Keep Secrets, one of two labels blanco launched in partnership with Interscope Records in 2014 (the other: Mad Love Records), released “Eastside” in July 2018. The single boasts writing and production contributions from some of the biggest names on blanco’s résumé, including Ed Sheeran (for whom he co-wrote and co-produced the hits “Don’t” and “Castle on the Hill”), producer Andrew Watt and DJ/producer Cashmere Cat. The bittersweet “Eastside” belies blanco’s happy-go-lucky persona: its plaintive guitar and clipped dancehall rhythm cradle a vividly impressionistic portrait of longing and regret brought poignantly to life by featured vocalists Halsey and Khalid, who later performed the song live with blanco at the 2018 American Music Awards. Halsey also performed “Eastside” solo on tour, culminating in a February 2019 appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live where she sang the song while painting an upside-down portrait of a woman’s head on the floor of the Studio 8H stage.
“Eastside” peaked at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 — at that time, blanco’s 27th Top Ten single as a writer, a total including seven number-one hits. He released three additional singles (“I Found You” with Calvin Harris, “Better to Lie” with Jesse and Swae Lee, and “Roses” with Juice Wrld featuring Brendon Urie) before issuing the full-length Friends Keep Secrets album to close out 2018. That same year he co-produced Lil Dicky’s comeback single “Freaky Friday,” which became the rapper’s biggest chart hit to date, and when Lil Dicky (born Dave Burd) teamed with cable network FX and producer Jeff Schaffer to produce the autobiographical comedy Dave, blanco was recruited to play himself — a mega-producer who becomes Lil Dicky’s close collaborator and friend. Dave premiered in March 2020, the same month blanco teamed with celebrity chef Matty Matheson to debut a collaborative cooking show, Matty and Benny Eat Out America, broadcast via blanco’s YouTube channel.
What’s the secret to blanco’s success? “You really have to grab people. A song has to be captivating, and it has to be relatable,” blanco told Sound on Sound. “Nobody wants to listen to a song they can’t relate to. A song needs to grab people’s attention within the first 10 seconds — otherwise, they’re going to the next song.”
