Return To Home Bass: BTS
Snippets, quotes, random riffs on my thought process during the writing of this piece
Hi. Long time since the last Hot Chips :)
Technically not long since I last wrote anything on the internet, technically. In May, I worked with the lovely people at Plum — an insurtech company that gets teams across startups the best insurance plans! They curate a newsletter called “Humanise”, that covers all things workplace culture and wellbeing. I’ve been a fan of their brand for a while, so when they asked me to do a piece for them, I said yes! Here’s my piece on tough career decisions and the emotions we go through when we deal with them.
Back to regular programmimg: this does not follow any story like the original piece. This is purely a zone where I’m putting out all that I left on the cutting floor. It is me nerding out to the max :) But before that, if you haven’t read Return To Home Bass 1-2, you might want to give it a go. I threw myself into it like a dog who sees a chicken bone, and I can never adequately explain how close I am to the pieces.
I have inserted a playlist that I’ve been curating since I wrote RTHB. I keep a rap playlist called 808s 101, that has the JPEGMAFIAs and the Kendrick Lamars of the world. It only made sense to have a desi version of that playlist. I update it fairly regularly as well.
Have fun reading + listening! This is quite the short piece as well :) I’ll be back next month with a piece I’ve already begun working on!
The working title for Return To Home Bass was 8PM in SDA. I think that Drake’s “timezone / place” songs are some of his best. “6PM in New York”, “5AM in Toronto”. And I’ve had one too many good memories over the last 2 years in SDA Market. It is probably my favorite place to be in Delhi. Be it Helter Skelter’s delectable starter palette (with 1-1 on beers), or Spice Aangan’s shawarmas, or the Cake Patisserie. But not Nukkad, never Nukkad. Terrible food.
Yes, if you've seen my Twitter, I do one too many tweets on Drake. Horribly lopsided parasocial relationship — he doesn't help his case either. But “If You're Reading This It's Too Late” made my life in Gurgaon so much easier. I wasn't sure I belonged here. Every day I craved for a day back in time, back at home, when I could be carefree. But I knew that a day like that wouldn't hit the same. I'd pine again for the fast life, even though it would run its (golf) course with me. This album feels very much like that — a hat tip to those days, a hat tip to the days that felt like a sad winter, and a hat tip to being grateful for where you are right now.
Sometime in June 2022, I remember doing the stupidest thing possible. I tried and cold-DMed Prabh Deep on Twitter, fantasizing about him responding to eager fans like me. But I understood that the chance of him responding to it was abysmal. I mean, I don’t blame him, he’s a popular artist. And at the time, likely busy making the tape we now know to be Bhram.
I knew I was going to interview friends. Jayant and Abhiroop are 2 of my dearest friends, not least because of how we bonded over hip-hop. If I had more space on the canvas, I’d have loved to take a deeper look at what subgenres of hip-hop they identify with the most, and hopefully in the context of Delhi. Does Jayant like boom bap more? Why? A poignant thing he told me was the idea that how he listened to music didn’t matter because his identity as an East Delhi native would always take precedence over that, and any music that’s relatable just reinforces that. He feels lonely not because he’s alone, but because he’s surrounded by people who will other him.
What does it say about Abhiroop’s penchant for this very specific brand of hustle rap? As a kid, the people who he hung out with often bullied him. He also always considered himself an outsider of the city because of his dad’s requirement to move around the country as ex-Air Force.
I got to know Ritika and Taran only last year purely through Twitter and found them very cool, and coincidentally absolutely insane connoisseurs of the scene. Ritika waxed lyrical about her love for Seedhe Maut’s Bayaan to the point where she could have an album just out of all that she said. It means a lot to Ritika — who has been affording her own way through college since 19 — that she’s only recently been able to lend her pocket to Seedhe Maut’s gigs.
Taran associates Delhi rap with anti-CAA and Pinjra Tod protests, getting used to comfort zones, car rides, all the things she hates about life. “Delhi people always have opinions they want to push in conversations that don’t even involve them”, she says. Like the time a bus conductor she had zero communication with before told her to lose weight. Above all, she finds home in the lanes scattered with Delhi’s “ghatiya makaan” — ugly bungalows.
Chhavi was someone I met through a mutual friend while I was writing Part 1 — so essentially a godsend. One of the funniest jokes she tells me is that if you ask somebody in West Delhi what their father does for a living, the answer would likely be “we just get rent”. She’s lived through a culture where feminism is only nominal, and woke thought is non-existent. But she’s built her own sense of identity through all of her time in West Delhi.
I feel honored to have gotten to know my older friends a little better, and make some new ones, because of this piece. They gave me answers to questions I probably wouldn’t have been able to ask in a more casual context. It’s also music they’ve lived / are living through, and they’re seeing the same era as I am, but all with different lenses.
Fun incident. I went to an underground gig in Saket to see Saar Punch perform. I came away having a knockout time. Outside the venue, I met Burrah, who casually chatted me up. I told him about Hot Chips, and his eyes visibly lit up at the idea I was working on (which was this). I don’t know whether he did (and even if he didn’t I don’t put it past him, he’s too busy), but he gave me big ups that day. “GET THOSE HOT CHIPS, BOY”, he said as I walked out of the lane. I felt really happy :)
One of the questions I asked Bharg about Sab Chahiye is the frequent use of humor. I felt that Rawal and Bharg had quite the tendency to use animal metaphors the way we watch capybara reels today. The album has 2 songs titled after dogs. Apparently, that’s a Rawal obsession. He’s well-known to show off his own pet dog on his Instagram. But I’ve always been enamored by how dogs are used in Delhi hip-hop. Jungli Kutta, Who Let The Dogs Out, Chitta by Prabh Deep (“tere kutte khade tenu kattan de lei”). It’s reflective of how we see dogs in society. The more exotic breeds get lavishly treated, but the gruffy street goodbois are met with extra armor.
On Baat Bangayi, Rawal says “apna time aayega” which is followed by a laughing track. An A1 use of the laughing track being post-ironic. I often think about Gully Boy’s effect on the scene. While the Delhi scene existed well way before — KR$NA appears and writes EVERY SINGLE BAR in the first rap battle with MC Sher — the sound evolved in the late 2010s. The gullies of Mumbai aren’t the same as the gullies of Delhi, especially in terms of the unique problems they face, and their socio-economic statuses. Delhi’s brand of hustle rap is significantly different from that of Mumbai. Yet, KR$NA did an incredible job writing Sher’s lines.
Apparently, Ikka did the verse for Pew Pew in a day. The work ethic of some of the oldheads of the scene is more hardened than anybody else’s.
Saar Punch has a skit in his EP Oopar Neeche titled “Big Ass (Skit)”. While recovering through his breakup, he met with some friends who were talking about what they wanted in a partner. He didn’t want any of that and would rather stay silent, so when his turn came, he just said “BIG ASS”. And a friend was recording. What you hear is the original voice note.
Saar’s favorite hip-hop sample is Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam on Kanye West and Rihanna’s “Famous”. Huge fan of A$AP Rocky — the goal for him to make smooth tracks like him and Anderson.Paak. I see a lot of Tyler The Creator in him, though, and probably a bit of Amine. He’s busy making new music, but he continues to earn new fans because of Oopar Neeche — particularly for Maykhana — and his latest single, Kyun Tu.
One of the funniest comments I saw on Saar’s older music (which he doesn’t associate with anymore) was “Your lyrics are my college days bro”. Saar wanted to actively move away from that labelling (which he very successfully did on his EP). But on some of his earliest work that you can find on YouTube, you can tell where that college comment comes from. Apparently, lots of people in the comments think he looks like Jasprit Bumrah.
I ask the folks at J Block about the classic “your audience comes from an extremely far-removed reality” conundrum. Let’s be honest, the crowd at city hip-hop gigs is all South Delhi. It doesn’t help when shows keep happening at Saket Social. Lil Kabeer’s answer? “Accha hai bro, mujhe toh maza aata hai. Paise unhi se aate hain.” I lowkey cackled. And if the turnout for a gig was too low, they didn’t take it to heart — it just meant less pressure for them.
Both Bharg and Lonekat give their flowers to DU rock culture as an inspiration. There’s a lovely podcast Lonekat did much after this piece with Culture Ghalib that I would highly recommend listening to (primarily because Lonekat is so articulate). He talks about the peaks of North-east rock — a culture that’s still very much alive.
Lonekat graduated from Delhi University in 2012. He recalls rap-rock continuing to be prevalent while he was in college, and that rockers liked to shit on hip-hop as a genre. While he names Korn and Rage Against The Machine as staples, I like to think of Linkin Park as being the leading light for young Indians who suddenly had access to YouTube in the early 2010s. His first artistic tryst with hip-hop was in 2017 when he chanced on black magic, or as it’s well known, FLStudio. Then a beat was made, and he jammed with a few friends. These days, you could make a hit on your iPad.
J Block are hilarious. Faizan accuses Lonekat of being a “beat maker who misplaces files”. The sample on a beat was gone, and the issue got so bad that they needed to go to Nehru Place to fix the CPU and replace the hard drive. But this was one of the first instances that the two of them collaborated. Faizan learnt the guitar himself, at home. He credits his older brother — musician Agaahi Raahi — who knew all there was to know about the internet. Both brothers released a sweet EP only a couple of days ago. Sweeter was Faizan’s post that accompanied it, it’s a read in itself.
He met Waris through Facebook. Waris doesn’t necessarily think of music as his only avenue for a long-term career. He doesn’t feature on their debut album as a collective, Kho Kho, because he wasn’t in town the 2 days they recorded this album. In FOMO, he made Frootie with Faizan and Moon / dr chaand. It’s one of the few songs you’ll find on his Spotify. However, Waris does have a passion for following in the footsteps of Cole Bennett, gawx, and vuhlandes — he loves being behind the lens, and wants to shoot music videos. He shot one very recently, and it’s gorgeous.
Kabeer is really, really focused on using his voice as an instrument: like Kendrick Lamar’s tone switches, or Kanye beginning with 808s and Heartbreak. I ask him about his voice alternation in Sawariya, from J Block’s album. He quotes aliases used by comic characters as an inspiration — the kind that Daniel Dumile adopted into the now-immortal MF DOOM, may he rest in peace.
Karun started writing poetry while in 6th grade. He remembers a time when he would write quadruplets on Facebook with the hashtag #sher. And then he would move on to Instagram, providing numerical hashtags to each poem. Then the quadruplets became bars when he found out Udbhav — his school junior — makes music that well complemented his poetry. One goal that Karun wants to pull off with Udbhav — score an entire Bollywood soundtrack on their own. There’s a lot they can bring to the table that Bollywood doesn’t have yet. Maybe that time will come sooner than we think, especially now that they have Honey Singh’s endorsement.
Tarun’s deep voice in many of his songs — especially the pit he goes to in Delhi Nightz — is the courtesy of waking up early in the morning just to record music. He studied in Sachdeva Public School in Rohini, where he remembers placing a little firework in one of the Educomp systems in the class. “Bandon ne photo bheji hai katton ki”, Tarun recalls seeing photos of guns in his school. The kids have graduated from Liberty shoes to Jordans.
Tarun always knew that he needed to make his own mark in the world, and no one would hand him anything. He built a successful YouTube channel in The Teen Trolls, with two of his best friends — Karan Chawla and Rishab Batra. He’d lie to his family saying that he’s going for tuition classes, to spend the time making YouTube videos. From there, to doing his first show in the city of Toronto. Watch out, Drake.
Viraj Gulati / Smitt (and previously IDEK?) has a perpetual dilemma to solve. He tells me that his idea of success is to have enough money to make auteur music, but for that, he needs to make more entertainer music. He believes that there is a sweet spot in the auteur-entertainer spectrum which won’t necessarily make anyone disgustingly rich, but would be quite fulfilling as a career. Flying Lotus and Robert Glasper are just some of his life guides. It’s evident that Prabh Deep has magically rubbed off on Smitt — he speaks of his artistry in the way William Wordsworth spoke about daffodils. Smitt recalls trying to put a tune to Prabh’s stories of self-worth, ego, and the fall of his pride. He will be releasing an ‘IDEK?’ album later this year.