“The more approval I get, the less I feel like myself,” Eddie Benjamin confesses, almost like he’s letting me in on a secret he’s still learning how to hold.
It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in Los Angeles—a holiday he still says with a slight anthropological curiosity, like an expat checking the temperature of a foreign ritual, and Eddie Benjamin is pacing around his house. Or at least, that’s how it sounds. Over Zoom, he pauses often: mid-thought, mid-sentence, mid…whatever is flickering through the inner projector of his introspective mind. Seeking the kind of answer that actually matches what he’s feeling precisely in the moment, the musician collects his words before answering anything so simple as to yes or no.
“I’m a Capricorn,” he confesses proudly, opening up The Pattern app as if to demystify the reasons for his considered way of speaking. It’s the same meticulousness that’s shaped his career, from deliberately relocating himself in the industry’s hub to collaborating with A-listers, producing for marquee names, and navigating the industry with a steadiness far beyond his years.
But before the red carpet flashbulbs and high-stakes intentionality crystallized, he was simply a kid with a vision—and a knack for absorbing music instinctively. The Sydney native grew up in a home where creativity moved through the walls like a current: his choreographer mother marked her routines in the living room at sunrise, while his father, a session drummer, had quit touring for family but was promptly dragged back into playing by an 11-year-old Eddie demanding to know where the drums were hidden. When Eddie saw Prince in concert, he clocked the bass and, in his words, realized that was “the real swag.”
And so began a love affair written in the stars—or in the quiet constellations of his own obsession. Mimicking the masters and experimenting with recording techniques in his bedroom studio, Benjamin traced the grooves of Stevie Wonder, unraveled the harmonies of Miles Davis, and studied the rhythms of Frank Ocean’s discography until he created something new—the sound of Eddie Benjamin. With no plan B in sight, Benjamin bet everything on plan A: Los Angeles.
“If you really want to do something, you don’t ask permission,” says Benjamin. “I was like, ‘Guys, I’m leaving school. I’m going to go to America.’” Luckily, his family followed suit.
The gamble paid off quickly. By 18, he was signed to Epic Records, and his obsessive groundwork and encyclopedic ear finally caught the industry’s attention. Suddenly, the kid who had spent years tinkering, experimenting, and mastering his craft in his bedroom was in studios with Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Sia, quietly shaping Billboard Top 100 hits behind the scenes. While fame in the classic sense was still on the horizon, his touch was resonating everywhere: in hooks, melodies, and the subtle tricks that transform songs into earworms.
Even then, the accolades came with a curious tension. “A lot of my favorite artists were like, ‘Yo, you’re going to be the biggest artist by the time you’re 25,’” he says. For most, that’d be ego fuel. For Benjamin, it was a reality check: acclaim didn’t make him, and it certainly wouldn’t break him. He calls it “the paradox.” Praise turns you into a puppet. “If you let outside comments define how you feel about your work, you become a slave to it.”
By the time the world started catching up, he had already built his reputation as a musician’s musician, a producer’s producer, and an artist unafraid to quietly bend the rules—or blur the genres he so vehemently rejects.
From the quiet rooms where he honed his craft to the sudden glare of the spotlight, Benjamin is learning to move between both worlds with ease. His latest four-track EP, HOME, includes a collaboration with Shawn Mendes and carries a vulnerability with an almost Mk.gee-esque resonance and subtle genre-blurring. Alongside the recent release of his single “Kiss Me,” and a spot on this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Benjamin is introducing the next chapter of himself: an artist shedding old skins, testing boundaries, and refusing to be pinned down. It’s a duality mirrored in the BVLGARI Serpenti collection, whose sinuous coils shift between solitude and spectacle: two facets of global stardom Benjamin would know best.
Rooted in BVLGARI’s heritage of serpent-inspired design, the Serpenti collection showcases the house’s mastery of wearable sculpture perfected over generations. Since its debut as a watch in 1948, Serpenti has evolved into a high jewelry icon of transformation. Each segment engineered for both flexibility and precision, the bracelet’s polished gold coils wrap smoothly around the wrist while the matching necklace drapes over the collarbone in a continuous, sinuous arc. In their refusal to choose between softness and edge, that same duality resonates in Benjamin: measured in private, magnetic in the spotlight, and constantly evolving throughout every space he occupies.
Benjamin can feel the axis tilting again—not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down way but in that quiet, cosmic shuffle he tends to sense before anyone else. “I feel a really big shift coming,” he tells me. “Damn near everything I’ve made the past two weeks I've scrapped. Not because it’s bad, but something in me is changing. I’m more direct now, less protective over everything.”
And yet, the constant in his artistry is the chase. “I’m always exploring, always trying outlandish things.” If the stars have guided him this far, they’re clearly not done—just nudging him toward whatever shape his next evolution decides to take.
