Press Pass: DJ Willy Soul

DJ Willy Soul

“There’s a lot of soul in Charleston,” Will Benrubi says, leaning back in a wrought iron chair. An iced coffee sits on the courtyard table in front of him, mostly iceless now from sitting untouched under the southern sun.

He wears an Andre the Giant t-shirt and dark shades to block the light from his sensitive, h̶u̶n̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ exhausted eyes, but he discusses his passion for rare groove funk with the utmost eloquence. “It’s like aficionado’s music, there’s just naturally a following of people. It’s almost word of mouth, especially in Charleston.”

If you frequent Warehouse on Friday nights, you may have seen this guy spinning. DJ, producer, analog photographer: he does it all. Will Benrubi, or DJ Willy Soul, has experienced every side of the arts industry and knows exactly what this city needs: We need to turn up the funk.

It is everyone’s universal right to get. the funk. down. and Willy Soul’s mission is to orchestrate environments in which that is made not only possible, but mandatory. “It’s about me creating a vibe and then collectively the whole room working together to have the best time.”

As the name might imply, Willy Soul is strongly rooted in funk and soul and takes pride in spinning lots of vinyl. DJing since 13 years old, Benrubi is confident in the style of his sound and in his command of the board. “I’m not just going to play house, I’m not just going to play hip-hop, I’m going to go all around the spectrum.”

An open format DJ, the vibe he prefers to curate at his own parties or at niche venues is a seamless fusion and collaboration of funk, soul, rare groove, house, and hip-hop tracks. “You can talk to people about this music, you can go out and make friends with people through this music,” he says. The songs he plays dare to venture into emotional territory while still being dance songs, a dangerous game that Benrubi has mastered with ease.

Benrubi began writing and photographing for music magazines his senior year of high school and, though he loves both, he “could only interview so many artists and think in [his] head, I want to be on the other side, or see so many people on stage and think, I want to be that guy” before deciding to take the plunge and focus his own energies into the performance side of the industry.

In such a cut-throat field, it’s all about “who you know and how you do it,” but Willy Soul has been meeting exactly who he needs to and making all the right moves, splitting time between Charleston and New York City. He has eyes to make a living doing music production, DJing, and analog photography. He will be relocating up to New York later this month to establish a collective with good homie Noah Jessup, called Velvet Groove Squad. “It’s just straight up uncut funk mixed with house. The goal is to be a rare groove cover band and perform all these really cool funk tracks and our own original stuff.”

Music is an obviously dominant trait in Benrubi genealogy. Will’s great-grandfather owned nightclubs during prohibition (S/O to the Cuban Casino) and his father worked for a rock ‘n’ roll radio station. Will, his two brothers, and his father are all into funk, soul, and jazz, and his dad can go on for days about Brazilian music, acid jazz, and psychedelic rock, which Will incorporates into his DJing.

“It’s cool because the moment you meet somebody in a foreign place and you start talking about, like, Brazilian music, it’s the best feeling ever. It’s cool to build a scene around that.” Velvet Groove Squad is the ultimate way for Benrubi to help cultivate that eclectic scene. With one foot in Charleston and the other in New York City, Benrubi is hoping to import some crazy talented Charleston musicians up to New York to work on “some legitimate shit.”

“These guys make making music easy… it’s like that tingly feeling in the face, like I thought this shit is supposed to be so hard, but we’re all bumping. When everybody’s nodding their heads, that’s all it really takes.”

One such Charleston talent who has blown Benrubi away is Noah Jones, aka Black Orpheus, a member of the band Man-Child (which closed out Charlestown Sounds Music Festival). Julian Harrell linked Will Benrubi up with Jones and the three of them collaborated on their song Focus, which they used to audition for NPR Tiny Desk Concert. “I love having friends who share the same passion as me, we can pursue it together.”

Benrubi wants to make a difference, but making people dance is just one way he goes about it. “I’m just a guy pursuing what I love to do, so to take the selfishness out of it, I want to do as much good with it as I can.” He performs at shows with a cause, like last year’s Peace Jam (benefiting The Branch of Peace Foundation) and donates prints (like at Grizmas, a charity event hosted by artist and friend GRiZ that raised money for Little Kids Rock).

Will’s photography is documentary-based, archiving the energy of Charleston and NYC streets and highlighting the intimate and unexpected moments he feels deserve more attention. Benrubi seeks to send a message with both his photography and music. The central themes of his work are peace, love, and coming together, and as an artist, he hopes to be the most positive human being he can be.

This positivity is manifested in his new Summer ‘17 Funk Party Mix, which we are pleased to officially announce is out today on Soundcloud. The mix is high energy and suited for summertime. It samples from old favorites like Next Episode by Snoop Dogg, but also seamlessly blends lesser known funk songs into the work.

Benrubi is currently working on the forthcoming Funk Edits, out this summer, which will feature “some really cool edits of classic hip-hop and funk tracks basically built for the DJ to play at spots that are more dance floor friendly rather than radio hit friendly... perfect for people who just want to get down.”

He is also creating the debut mix for a new series by Top Notch Vibes, “a house/techno collective and community of people who get down” based in New York. “I’m trying to play with that dance music vibe they provide and add my own unique mark of funk, disco, and soulful house.”

Will and good friend, Disgonuts, “a sick vinyl DJ” based in Brooklyn, have lined up an array of shows downtown this weekend. Check them out at Faculty Lounge on May 6th and keep up with their marathon spree of shows.

Though Will Benrubi will be moving to New York City very soon, he will undoubtedly return frequently and remain a presence in the Charleston music scene. Of the Charleston scene, which Benrubi has come to love and in which he is so ingrained, he says:

“There’s so much potential for the music scene, it’s blossoming and these people aren’t just local acts, these people are going places. It’s going to be cool one day to say ‘oh I played with this person and that person and I collaborated with these people.’ There’s a lot of cool stuff going on here. I’m proud of it, I’m proud of this city, I’m proud of the arts and culture here.”

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