Despite the fact that he's a pasty white Jewish guy from Sydney, Ben Lee would most like to be like rap impresario Jay-Z.
He sings of his love for the Def Jam CEO on the track 'What Would Jay-Z Do?', from his forthcoming, sixth studio album 'Ripe'.Speaking to Undercover, Lee tells us that Jay-Z's music "hit the place in me that Nirvana hit. He was so tapped into his own creativity." Discussing his skills as a freestyle rapper, Lee describes his hero as a "savant".
"But it's is whole story," the 29-year-old continues. "I'm not sure if we've seen in Australian culture that kind of trajectory, of a person to actually be a drug dealer and become the CEO of a multinational record company. There's something about that kind of figure, it's like an Oprah story."
He confesses that he went through a period where he would watch the Muhammad Ali film 'We Can Be Kings' religiously before performances. "It just inspired me," he explains, "and it's interesting too in hip-hop that the artists acknowledge that success and financial liberation and all the things that come with that go hand-in-hand with bettering yourself in life.
"It's not like as an artist, you just make these great records and don't worry about the money. It's important to get paid, and it's important to bring your mum out of the ghetto, and get your friends out. There's like a realness to it that to me makes it the same as punk. Hip-hop and punk are the same thing."
Lee sees Jay-Z as "someone who exemplifies all these things. And on top of all that, he does all that and makes it look effortless. Every generation has one, my parents had Frank Sinatra. But that's something I've never been able to achieve. I'm clumsy. You watch my career, and you see me stumbling around in the dark looking for what I'm trying to find. Someone like Jay-Z just seems to show up with it all the time."
'Ripe' is released in Australia on 15 September.
