Album Review: GENESIS FM by BNYX®
A producer who built his reputation moving other people’s bodies makes a debut that only finds a center when the body is the subject.
A radio host kicks the door in on the opening skit and orders calisthenics. Mandal, hosting the fictional station Genesis FM, tells us to drop the phone, drink kombucha and stretch, quit scrolling, and a retrowave synth stab cracks underneath him like a starter pistol. That stab, or something like it, has been quietly written underneath other people’s verses by Benjamin Saint Fort for five years. Born in Delaware to Haitian immigrant parents, raised across Philadelphia and Upper Darby, BNYX® got signed to Working on Dying in 2021 and to Capitol/Field Trip in April 2024, after carrying his hi-hats onto Yeat’s “Talk,” a Drake-and-21-Savage cut, Lil Uzi Vert’s “Just Wanna Rock,” and a Travis Scott single.
Quavo arrives inside “HunchO STEP!” already inside the choreography. The “Step to the left, step to the right” chant is cued with a cinematic synth-pop arrangement laced with it. His flex catalog (F1 coupe from Monaco, Rolex worth a Rick Flair figure-four, “hundred bands on the floor, make her touch her toes”) gets used as percussion fill, not argument. The pace accelerates “what’s happenin,” but BNYX® wires them tighter than the form usually allows. Ledbyher stutters “Come on, girl, for goodness’ sake/Just tap my card, I’m getting bored,” and her impatience matches a kick that lands off the downbeat. “OVERLOADDD” closes the trilogy with industrial-techno four-on-the-floor, distorted commands (“Hands up/Shake it/Hands down/Shake it/Let me see you move it”), and a kick run through saturation until it distorts on its own attack. All three songs put the same body underneath the same producer’s hi-hat grid.
Three guest verses pile onto “fuëgo” and the producer underneath is barely audible. Yeat raps “Big money, tall money, bitch, I’m next/Can’t compare-pare-pare what I do” over what could be one of his own Working on Dying productions. Peso Pluma sings “Veo muchos dígito’ en la bóveda… El Grammy clavado en el sur de Fra,” riding regional Mexican phrasing into rage-trap synths. Bizarrap takes a co-production credit on synths BNYX wrote alone, while the bilingual swing on the bridge earns the marketing copy and the producer credit underneath earns nothing.
Chromeo handles the come-on on “luv yoU right” (“Yeah, when lightning strikes, girl, we better catch it/Yeah, put it in a bottle like you can imagine”), while the production swings underneath with walking synth-bass, four-on-the-floor, and funk guitar scratches. Then the writing turns dirty as Chromeo sings “I could really love you right down if you hit me up/Sittin’ in the studio, thinking what I’d do to you,” and the line reads as a sext and arrives as one. Immanuel Wilkins, who plays jazz alto saxophone for a living, blows a real solo into the song’s exit. Wilkins’s horn carries warmth a synth pad would have faked. Good trade.
A synth-pad fog on “TELEPATHY LOVE” features this airy electronic chords swell, and still buries Clara La San’s airy hook before she finishes singing “Telepathy love/You’re telepathic and it’s turnin’ me on.” Big Sean walks in next and raps “Fuck the datin’ scene, you’re better off damn near goin’ raw in a gloryhole” on “I wanna know ;)” as if a major-label producer debut were the right place for a content-creator-tier bar. Beau Nox repeats “Yes, I’m a fanatic, you, yeah” on “FANatic” while the same four-bar loop cycles unaltered. Don Toliver glides through the New Jack Swing-inflected “Fallen” reverb-washed and melodic, with the loop unchanged underneath him. Six wasted slots. None needed BNYX®.
Anatole Muster, the French accordionist, plays “Time is slipping away” beside BNYX® with an accordion threaded inside a jazz-chord progression while the drum grid stutters and ducks the downbeat. Pitched-up, half-modulated vocals mutter “Time slipped away from me, yeah” inside that grid. The accordion picks up the chord changes. A kick stops under it. The groove is smooth, while the accordion holds. Five cuts outlast the album they sit on. Half a dozen sit on it as filler with Big Sean’s gloryhole bar still credited as adult songwriting in the booklet.
Above Average (★★★☆☆)
Favorite Track(s): “luv yoU right,” “OVERLOADDD,” “Time is slipping away”