Watch Benja bring his breezy bedroom pop to The Intro

Benja's indie bedroom-pop sound will come into full bloom with the upcoming release of his first EP, Ivy, although he's reluctant to box himself in with labels.

"I guess I don't love classifying [my genre], but I guess you kind of have to," he tells host Damhnait Doyle on the latest episode of The Intro, which you can watch above. Benja resigns himself to falling under the indie bedroom-pop umbrella, but adds that he wants to let others decide for themselves to which category his music belongs.

For Benja, being a mixed-race musician also adds another sticky layer of consideration to the question of genre: "A lot of Black artists who make music similar to me, they can be classified as indie R&B," he says, citing Steve Lacy as an example. "But then if a white person's making it, it's [considered] bedroom pop or indie, someone like Mac DeMarco," he points out. 

Thanks to Benja's upbringing, the Toronto singer-songwriter details early musical influences spanning jazz, highlife music, soul and more, and recalls attending operas with his mother as a child. With such a wide and eclectic range of inspirations that have shaped his sonic palate — Erykah Badu and Bob Marley also land on his lengthy list — it's easy to understand why Benja would prefer listeners to be the ones assigning him labels.

Many of his songs have a breezy, wistful quality to them that make for easy listening. Take "Slacker," the upbeat number that kicks off his Intro session. The cheerful song lets Benja show off some of his guitar skills, which he refined while studying jazz at Humber College.

"I feel like since I've spent so much time on guitar it's the truest way I can unpack my feelings and my understanding of the world," he says. A perfect example of fleshing out his emotions via that instrument is "Gone," a tender and delicate love song about being away while travelling on tour. It's a dreamy taste of the honeyed sounds that Benja has crafted in his room.

"'Gone' is just kind of about when you're on the road and you're separated from your partner, and it's a piece to remind you that if there's love there, then everything's fine," he explains.

The theme of love turns up again in his song "Tokyo," inspired by Sofia Coppola's romantic, Tokyo-set film Lost in Translation. It's a jazzier number, complete with a shiny saxophone solo. Benja describes the track as being sweet, beautiful and melancholy — all fitting words for many of the inviting sounds found throughout Ivy.

Benja felt that this year, the timing to put out music was finally right, and Ivy will drop in March. 

"I'm just always making stuff and so once I started getting the songs together, I started to just feel that this should be a project," he says, of the lush EP. "And once I got a good team behind me that I feel confident in, we were like, all right, let's hash this out and get it out to the world."

CBC Music's The Intro spotlights emerging musicians across the country through interviews and live performances, and airs on CBC Gem, YouTube and CBCMusic.ca/TheIntro. Keep an eye out for new episodes every second Tuesday.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.