The Rapture – No Sex For Ben

How fucking cool do you have to be to get Timberland to beatbox on your track? About as cool as New York City dance-punk hipsters The Rapture, I’d say. But Timbo’s appearance and Danger Mouse’s lending a hand in production on third (06) LP ‘Pieces of the People We Love’ just beg the question; who the hell is Ben Rama, what’s he got to do with trashy people and why isn’t he getting some? [Ed: listen to song below if none of these questions make any sense to you]. Having successfully evaded answering these questions, I’ll answer them all with this question; When you generate enough buzz in NYC to get on Madden, GTA4 and Gossip Girl, why write a song about an Aussie indie-DJ who goes by the moniker BenRama TrashPeople? Now, stick that in your proverbial rhetorical questioning pipe and smoke it. Ahuh.

To tell you the truth, I had no idea this absurdly catchy track – lodged soundly in my head from the time I heard the end of it sitting down in my car to later in the day when I finally got to search through my faithful (non-iPod) mp3 player and get that cool rush of blood to the head that comes with nailing a song down after half a day of it floating in the psyche – had anything to do with a DJ who’s in Brisbane. Instead, I loved it for the meaning it took on in the context of our family banter. You see, brother Z has got a best mate named Ben. J probably best described him a couple of nights back in; ‘he’s small and has the name of Michael Jackson’s rat’. The guy seems pretty normal to an outside but, according to brother Z, he has some sort of mysterious and fucking hilarious side to him to which brother Z and his gang of musketeers are the only ones privy to. As such, Ben maintains a semi-godlike status among us mere mortals, the stuff of legends.

Sad thing is that without having seen but one demonstration of this hilarious streak, J, me and the rest of the gang is left wondering whether it’s all a hoax. Maybe Ben isn’t really the superhuman he’s cracked up to be. Maybe he has flaws. He could have a really weak handshake. Or have a fructose absorption problem. Or possibly even laugh at awkward times. This history of silent inquiry lends the refrain of this compulsive Rapture song even more unbridled brilliance. ‘No sex for Ben’ has been kicking around in my head all day and the proposition has not yet failed to flaw me in its beautiful, unintentional humour. To think that mighty Ben couldn’t get sex is like positing that Sandra Bullock’s husband cheated on her because she wasn’t any good in the sack. It’s a preposterous idea and yet wholly possibly at the same time. I love the song mainly for its Ben connotations but also because if you’re going to get someone to beatbox, it might as well be Timberland.

The Rapture – No Sex For Ben