On June 18th, Jahseh Dwayne Ricardo Onfroy, widely known as “XXXTentacion,” was shot and killed while leaving RIVA Motorsports in Deerfield Beach, Florida. As many mourned the loss of the rapper, Sophomore Benji Gourdji sat on the top floor of his house in front of a computer. With a faint idea of a melody in mind and inspiration from XXXTentacion and Lil Peep’s “Falling Down,” Gourdji created “Watch the Rain,” the third track on his debut EP, “The Sad Boy Tape.”.

On January 15th, Sophomore Benji Gourdji released the eight-track EP, which can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, Deezer, Pandora, and YouTube.

Listeners will find Gourdji’s music under his stage name, “Benji the Machine.” The name both alludes to the electronic feel of his music and acts as an homage to his first love: robotics.

“‘Benji the Machine’ combined two different sides of my world,” Gourdji said. “Plus, I like to describe myself as a machine in my songs, because I think a lot of my writing process is kinda formulaic in a way.”

The EP is intended to take listeners through the cycle of a “depressive episode.” Such things can feel too personal to share for some people, but Gourdji appreciates the medium that music has given him to express his emotions. “The ideas behind my music are things I can’t just talk to people about in a conversation,” Gourdji said.

With song titles like “Losing It” and “Post-Breakdown,” The Sad Boy Tape lives up to its name. Gourdji thinks the intimacy is what makes his EP worth listening to. “I hope people would respect someone who is as authentic as I am in my music,” Gourdji said. “I think people would understand my music and connect with it, especially going to a school where a lot of people are stressed all the time like Parker.”

According to his Spotify page, Benji the Machine makes “R&B/Alternative/Indie music with Hip Hop and Trap influences.” But even Gourdji has trouble confining his music to a certain genre. He sees his sound as a blend of all his different music tastes, with the barriers between punk rock, rap, and musical theater blending to create a sound of his own.

“A lot of artists now kind of stay in their lane,” Gourdji said, “but I’ll sing over a trap beat and I’ll do it in a more melodic R&B style than the Lil Uzi Verts will do.”

In addition to Gourdji’s vocals and musical production, six other collaborators are featured in the EP, five of them being Parker students. Sophomores Will Ehrlich, Aaron Rothman and Grayson Schementi and 7th grader Josh Gourdji join Gourdji in the EP’s first track “Losing It.” Junior Jared Saef is featured in the EP’s last track “Are You Coming Back?” Lastly, Niles West sophomore Jake Pranian is featured on “Control Freak.”

Collaboration is not something Gourdji takes lightly. “It’s kind of a risk whenever you ask someone to collaborate,” Gourdji said. “That’s why I really only work with people I trust, people that know what I’m talking about.”

When Gourdji created a song with another artist, he made sure to send them every other part of the song except their verse, to ensure that both collaborators were on the same page going to the collaboration itself.

Being genuine is something important to Gourdji, who did not want to influence his partner’s work with his own. “Whenever I have someone else on a song, I always like to have them add their own perspective on the topic on what’s the songs about,” Gourdji said. “I wouldn’t write lyrics for someone else to sing, because it wouldn’t be authentic.”

Junior Jared Saef is featured on the last track of the EP. Hearing his voice on public streaming platforms has been surreal to him. “I use Spotify to listen to my favorite artists, so it was really cool to hear Benji’s and my collaboration on that same platform,” Saef said.

Saef respects Gourdji’s vulnerability throughout the EP. “I can tell that it’s coming from a deep place,” Saef said. “He’s not just making things up and writing it down. He’s really doing it out of a sense of passion.”

Gourdji’s mother, Susie Gradman ‘87, is hesitant towards the idea of Gourdji’s music being open to the public. “Honestly, I’m a little nervous about it,” Gradman said. “As a parent, I’m protective, and  I don’t want him to put anything out there that maybe he didn’t mean to share or wasn’t intended.” Gradman asks Gourdji to play everything for her before it goes public.

Gradman is happy with the EP. “It’s a little sad,” Gradman said, “but I think that the songs are really good and I’m really happy that he has a passion for music.”

According to Saef, the release of The Sad Boy Tape has been met with positive reactions. “People in school come up and say, ‘I heard you on Benji’s track and I’m so glad that Benji’s track is getting so much attention,’” Saef said.

Sophomore Will Ehrlich describes the EP as raw emotion. “It’s Benji expressing everything he has inside,” Ehrlich said. “It’s very admirable, I wish I could do something like that and I don’t think it’s easy to do.”

Being able to collaborate with Gourdji on multiple tracks was an enjoyable experience for Ehrlich. He found that on songs, all artists were given an equal opportunity to express themselves. “In a given track, it’s Benji getting to tell his story, and his collaborators getting to tell their story,” Ehrlich said.

According to Gourdji, the biggest challenge of the musical production process is found at the beginning. “The hardest part for me is starting a song,” Gourdji said. “Once I get started, it doesn’t take that long to finish. Most of my songs conceptually are done very quickly.”

In fact, the first song Gourdji ever released on SoundCloud, a 2017 track entitled “Vexed” that has since been deleted, took him only 30 minutes.

The Sad Boy Tape does not fully encompass the breadth of Gourdji’s work. In addition to the EP, Gourdji has been making beats for independent artists such as Parker junior Alex Nikolaev, former Parker student Ben Kinnear, and Praninan.

Gourdji hopes to release a “full-length album” by the end of the year, including more hip-hop and trap influences. “I want the album to be more conceptual, more of a full idea than the Sad Boy Tape,” Gourdji said.

In his future projects, Gourdji is looking to diversify the type of songs, “I’m going to try to put a banger or two on there,” he said. “I don’t know if people want to listen to piano ballads all day. It’s still not going to be ‘happy’ per se, because I think I can be more authentic when I’m not being happy in a fake way.”

The authenticity in Gourdji’s music has helped him cope with his emotions. “Concentrating all of my sadness into music is a way for me to get over some of it.”