Making the music spin in New Orleans

By Michael Patrick Welch
Contributing Writer

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth installment of The Louisiana Weekly’s series on famous local Black DJs.

From the 7th Ward, like his DJ peers Slick Leo, Mannie Fresh, and LBJ, Q93.3’s Wayne “Wild Wayne” Benjamin is today one of the absolute biggest names in Southern radio.

“In 1991, I was in Xavier when I started DJing: biology, pre-med, veterinary medicine. DJing just happened randomly. I didn’t even listen to the radio,” Wayne admits. “I called my first radio gig ‘books and beer money.’ It was just an extra hustle. I was looking for a job and ended up [with] a parttime job at the station answering phones. A guy named Davey P. who was really big at the time, I became kind of his show producer and within a week he realized, ‘This is a good guy for my show,’ and I realized ‘This is a pretty cool job…’ I realized what a great platform it is. It’s amazing how you can influence a whole city with your voice.”

WILD WAYNE

Wayne began his radio career during the golden age of hip-hop. “I loved NWA and gangster rap, but then I was also a huge Tribe Called Quest listener. So I was moving around, through the Daisy Age, Native Tongue and all that stuff,” says Wayne. “There was definitely more variation in the music before than there is today. Radio was a little more carefree then, and not as structured.”

With Q93 now owned by iHeartMedia, Wayne admits, “There’s a lot of research that goes into everything that happens now…everything is metrics and analytics and surveys. And a lot of stuff is automated now, when it was manual before. Everything was more hands-on and analog when I started, compared to how digital everything is now.”

As the person credited with first bringing New Orleans bounce music to the airwaves, Wayne also bemoans the marginalization, if not the banishment of, local music from most radio stations.

“There’s a lot of national programming going on now, whereas we were more focused on what was going on locally and regionally,” he says. “Now we have a really tight playlist with a lot of the same artists. It’s become a lot more corporate. It was a feel and a vibe more before, where we had more input to do whatever the hell we wanted. The labels have consolidated and downsized, so you just have a smaller pool of artists,” he says. “The Digital Age has been a blessing and a curse in that way: Now there are more independent artists, but they don’t get to the same level because they don’t have the machine behind them.”

Now 45 years old with nearly 30 years of experience exclusively at Q93, Wayne says, “I realized early on that, no matter how the technology changes, being the voice of the people is important. That doesn’t change.”

With little control over the music he plays, Wayne has enjoyed expressing his true self through his long-running weekly talk show Real Talk (7 to 9 a.m.). “It was always unadulterated talk, or at least urban talk. It’s a little different now since the station was bought,” he says. “But I am proud that it’s average, every day people speaking on my show, and even when they get crazy, they often make much more sense than the politicians giving the glossy shiny perspective that we see in the media so often. That Saturday morning show was huge with soccer moms, with truck drivers, maybe even some local activists. Everybody is listening to Real Talk.”

Though most people may not know what he looks like in person, Wayne says he is recognized plenty. “There are people who are 25 who have heard my voice their entire life on the radio, so you don’t lead a normal life anymore when you are that accessible,” he says cheerfully. “I mean, I go to the grocery store and cut my own grass, but still you can’t go to a restaurant to eat without being interrupted. I was at the bank recently standing in line, talking on my phone, really oblivious to everyone in the bank while having my conversation. And the person in front of me turns to someone else near us and says, ‘I wish they’d just turn the radio down in here!’ They’d heard my voice, the Wild Wayne voice.”

Since 2000, Wayne has also used his local stature to lead several important community initiatives, mostly via his non-profit Benjamin Foundation, which every year sponsors 50 kids at Dillard University’s free Wild Wayne Summer Experience (formerly Black Love Summer Experience). In 2013 he was invited to meet with President Barack Obama for a D.C. youth conference. Back home, Wayne and rapper Sess 4-5, who helped start the camp, also created Industry Influence, a continuing monthly event for hip-hop artists focusing on education, networking and showcasing their talents.

This article originally published in the July 25, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.