Return To Home Bass: Trap Education
The slow and steady rise of trap music in India.
Hi guys, it has been a while :)
I’ll get around to the lack of consistency on some other day — potentially a future piece that might, for the most part, explain it implicitly. That being said, this is a piece I’ve been working on for a long time because there were quite a few places where I was stuck. I’m drawing up a narrative about something relatively new in Indian trap.
I’m not sure how many other narratives about this exist, which obviously manifested in the form of a lack of research on this. There’s a possibility I’ll have missed some things / people / events in here, so please do let me know about the same!
But hopefully, I’ve succeeded in creating a whole journey that spans from Atlanta and Memphis to Pune, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. To aid you in that, I’ve created a playlist that should contain all the songs I mention! It’s a list of 40 bangers, so regardless of whether you’re new or old to trap music, I have a feeling you’ll enjoy the playlist :)
Happy reading!
Bigg Boss Season 16 was something else.
The morning wake-up call was replaced with the Bigg Boss Anthem. Two contestants were apparently punished because of their….overuse of English. One contestant walked out because their pet dog died. A St Bernard named “Mahim” was introduced on day 87. Farah Khan made a guest appearance. Rohit Shetty appeared sometime midway to announce the first contestant of the upcoming season of Khatron Ke Khiladi - who was among the names in the household. Maybe not so different after all, even within the realms of what the show can pull off.
However, what made this season so unique was a certain contestant. At first, everyone was shocked that this person entered his name into the, well, “competition” — especially those in the hip-hop community. Accusations of being a sucker for popularity and genre commodification followed. This (t)rapper had released 2 albums by then. He had more than one song make the rounds on Instagram reels. His debut is one of the finest albums the Indian hip-hop scene ever produced — inspired by the fact that he had to leave his hometown, Pune in order to escape a half-murder charge. The beats, the verses, all him, no feature artist involved.
Oh, he also won Bigg Boss. At that point, Altaf Sheikh / MC STAN had virtually arrived — and performed — on national television. Indian hip-hop took a cheer, it was the biggest stage the community had ever seen. But STAN has never had a smooth career. For the longest time, people would deride the kind of music he made. They felt he “mumbled”, that he had no real substance, called him caste-based slurs because of the way he fashioned himself.
But don’t mind the naysayers. Today, he is the foremost representation of Indian trap music, and this genre has only just begun.
American Made
Trap music has its roots in Atlanta and the crack cocaine epidemic in the city’s poorer neighborhoods. A trap house is where you bought and sold hard drugs. It was never a pretty sight. The houses looked old, rundown, and full of poor people high on the most potent stuff. Urban planning had an unintended role to play in this, as many of these houses were located on one-way streets. It was some of the most terrible damage that American institutions had brought on their own people, another blot on the country’s history of how it treated black people.
By this time, gangsta rap had become a force to reckon with. Politicians wanted parental control advisory stickers, rappers like Ice Cube and Dr Dre had become idols and enterprisers for an entire generation. This crossed over to the southern side of America, where certain artists had begun to get a name for themselves.
Most notable were legendary all-time duo Outkast, who had made a career for themselves not just rhyming their way through these issues, but also creating mass appeal on that way. But there were other artists in the scene who had grittier sounds, like Three 6 Mafia. They came up with a completely new subgenre of their own, now often called the Memphis sound. There was Lil Jon, who’s obviously now known for giving us crunk music. And that annoying (kinda fire though) ad-lib of his.
There was Dungeon Family — an incubator that gave rise to many of Atlanta’s finest, some of whom are very famous musicians today. Like Killer Mike, Janelle Monae, TLC, CeeLo Green, Outkast themselves, and more modern trap artists such as Future. The “dungeon” in question was the basement of Rico Wade, a producer. Wade is possibly the chief architect of Atlanta sound, and by virtue of that, modern trap. He died in April this year. May he rest in peace.
It is tough to pinpoint where trap really began. The biggest distinguishing feature of the trap sound is the complex use of hi-hats — for example: listen below to Where Ya At[1] by Future. The beat is marked by a burst of light cymbal-like patters following the bass thump. Sometimes, there are cowbell sounds too, but that burst is the hallmark of trap music.
Of course, things like hi-hats and snares and bass kicks were not exactly a thing before rap. The story of how rap got invented starts with a Japanese music equipment manufacturer called Roland, and an unprofitable invention of theirs, called the TR-808. Roland intended for the machine to be picked up by electronic music producers, but electronic wasn’t as huge at the time they thought it would be. As a result of that, as well as being sold in the secondhand market, the price of the TR-808 dropped for people in black neighborhoods to be able to buy it. I do a deeper dive of this extremely superb story in this Twitter thread[2].
Producers in the West Coast carried some knowledge spillover to the southside via gigs and parties and such. A DJ from New Orleans named Mannie Fresh was soaking all of this in and started experimenting with the 808. He started using the now-famous hi-hat burst and a unique bounce to define his sound. Producers in Atlanta picked this up and used Fresh as inspiration.
However, landmark events that might be assumed for “firsts” in the history of the genre certainly exist. In 2001, T.I released his debut album, titled “I’m Serious”. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the market was too serious about his release. His label dropped him, after which he dropped mixtapes in the city. When some of them became popular enough, Atlantic Records signed him to a deal. Under whom T.I released Trap Muzik.
“This ain’t no album, this ain’t no game, this is trap”, goes the hook of the title track. It’s life for him, and it’s hard for him to change. He was 22 when he wrote the album. The album is not a glorification of poverty, T.I has zero interest in doing that. In fact, he’s explicit about this album being a slice-of-life work of art, that’s about a set of people and why they behave the way they do. A trapper is a hustler, much like anybody else who wants to make money. But they don’t have other avenues beyond dealing coke to make money.
"It's basically telling people who might look up to me, 'Don't be like me; be better than me.' Don't listen to my songs 'Dope Boys,' 'Trap Niggas,' and all that shit thinking that's what you got to do to be cool. That's what I did. You got your own thing for you to do."
Most importantly, T.I’s biggest claim to fame is that he invented trap music with this album. His claim is that before the release of Trap Muzik, no one combined the words “trap music”[3] to describe the complex hi-hat bouncy sound. He may not be wrong, but that shouldn’t necessarily mean that the sound started with this album.
At around the same time, three more personalities made their indelible mark on the scene. One of them, an upstart in 2005, had a movie-like moment right before the release of his debut album, Trap House. A few gunmen broke into Gucci Mane’s home[4], one of whom was shot and killed by Gucci. He turned himself to the police, only to bail himself out on time to enjoy the release of Trap House. This incident is one of many in Gucci Mane’s life. The man made music the way he lived life — dangerous.
One of the gunmen was a known associate of the other upstart, Young Jeezy, who was already a few years into the game ahead of Gucci. Now, no one likes to indulge in hearsay, but Young Jeezy didn’t have a hit song by that time. Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy hopped on a song called “So Icy”, which took over the streets of Atlanta when launched. Young Jeezy expected it to be on his album, but it went to Gucci’s debut instead. Right after, Young Jeezy told the upstart to “Stay Strapped”[5]. This was the start of one of hip-hop’s most underrated, most dangerous beefs. Probably really only second to 2Pac / Biggie.
The third person was a producer whose name would be plastered all over the music of the 2000s and 2010s. Zaytoven was a barber who wanted to make music. He was introduced to Gucci while still at barber school, and both of them started their careers pretty much together. Together, they made a living selling their own mixtapes from the trunks of their cars. Not only did Zaytoven made the “So Icy” beat, he was the decisive factor in choosing who the song belonged to, because of his friendship and undying loyalty to Gucci. This one song changed everything not just for these three, but ushered in an exciting new era for all of Atlanta hip-hop.
Gucci Mane’s manager was a woman named Debra Antney, a music executive from Queens. She is also the mother of Jamea Malphurs, who wanted to embark on a trap career of his own. His cousin gave him the name “Waka”, after a catchphrase by one of the Muppets characters. In 2009, Waka signed to Gucci Mane’s label, 1017 Records. It was Gucci who christened him with his complete stage name: Waka Flocka Flame. He revolutionized the scene with his most epic hit, “Hard In Da Paint”.
(Gucci and Waka also had a long beef, so the trap scene was always tense. They lived life the way they wrote music.)
Meanwhile, Rico Wade had been training his cousin Nayvadius in the art of Atlanta hip-hop, so that Nayvadius kept off the streets. He performed with a collective called “Da Connect”, one of the members nicknamed Nayvadius as The Future. Over time, Nayvadius would Sean Parker (here’s what I mean by that) his name up and just go by Future. Future brought something new to the table that nobody else did before him: using AutoTune to convey a drugged state. The running joke about Future’s voice today is that the reason his voice has the texture it does is because of — besides AutoTune — how much lean (cough syrup + Sprite) he consumes.
Around the same time, Gucci Mane also signed Jeffrey Lamar Williams — who called himself Young Thug — in 2013, after hearing his first 3 mixtapes. Young Thug distinguished himself with a high-pitched AutoTune croon that was very different from that of someone like T-Pain. His first mixtape as part of Gucci’s label, 1017 Thug was lauded as one of the best mixtapes of 2013 by many music publications.
Future and Young Thug would effectively represent a new wave of Atlanta trap, one that replaced the old guard. Their style was characterized as mumble rap, a term often used in a derogatory fashion since so much of what they said didn’t seem to make sense. However, people came around to it, because what was important in their music wasn’t necessarily the lyrics, but the vibe that they created. A vibe where designer drugs (more advanced and laced than crack), lust, crime and pain formed a potent cocktail of their own. Instrumental to creating this vibe were producers like Zaytoven, Honourable C-Note, and possibly hip-hop’s biggest producer today, Metro Boomin’ — who has also been Future’s biggest and most frequent collaborator since the early days of both of their careers.
Future and Young Thug were truly influential in a way nobody before them had been. They set the template for everybody who came after them — Future brags[6] about the fact that he laid the groundwork, and that he was the beginning. And he’s not wrong. Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, Gunna, Desiigner, Lil Durk, Lil Baby, 2 Chainz, all of them owe their now-thriving careers to Future and Young Thug.
To a large extent, it’s this version of trap music that has had such incredible appeal across other genres and regions. It spilled over to EDM, pop, mainstream hip-hop, and even regions — Latin trap is extremely popular. Artists like Beyonce and Lady Gaga began incorporating trap elements into their own music. When Atlanta trap reached immense commercial appeal with Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen, or Rae Sremmurd’s Swang, trap artists began to be held in the same regard as modern pop stars.
And this is where our story starts. A genre that has travelled all the way from rundown drug houses in Atlanta to the slums of Pune, high-rises of Noida and Mumbai, to the lanes of Delhi, Chandigarh and Kolkata, and even the hills of the North-East. All of them understanding the true essence of trap music but adapting them to tell their own stories.
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When you watch the trailer video[7] for Darcy’s second album, Full Moon, two things become clear. One, it’s Darcy’s scarily-blurry view of the world, visualized with the most jarring red-heavy video filter. Two, it evokes plenty of horror tropes — wolf sounds, screams, and, more laterally, Raat Akeli Hai.
And then you hear the bass drone kick in, hard, followed by the words:
“Launde mai atak gaya tha, bacchiiii”
Darcy is a hip-hop artist who originally hails from Mumbai, but has lived a substantial part of his life in Delhi. When you listen to him, you can hear the influences of the hip-hop scenes of both cities. And yet, it feels like he doesn’t need to embody either of them because of how unique his style is. He’s had two great full-length releases in the mixtape Hyper, and one of my favorite Indian EPs OR albums ever in Full Moon (which Darcy made at the dizzying speed of one month).
What struck out to me about Darcy the most in our conversation was how bold his thinking is. He refuses to bow down to convention. When I asked him about whether he was worried about accusations of appropriating black music, he had a simple answer: “Meri galti hai kya mere paas internet hai?” He compares us taking to trap to how toffees were expensive for Indians pre-independence. Motivated by the Swadeshi movement, a certain Mohanlal Chauhan went to Germany to learn how to make them, came back, and opened one of the greatest Indian companies in Parle.
“I lived that life. I failed in 11th grade, and my parents were struggling financially then. I was peddling in order to get a side income.” Darcy identified with the music of Future and Young Thug while trying to navigate community and family tensions as an adolescent. Moving from Mumbai to Delhi as a kid was also a massive culture shock. He loves Mumbai, finds its people extremely chill. People didn’t really care much if you were better than somebody — “tu behtar hai toh kya karu mai?” Delhi was hot-headed, violent, full of people who wanted to one-up each other constantly. It broke him from inside. “Garam khoon hai Delhi mai.”
This sentiment somewhat echoes in the music of AB17 — who I covered very briefly in my first Delhi hip-hop piece[8]. He hails from a colony in Najafgarh, where the hot-headedness that Delhi is known for has manifested into criminal activity. He drowns himself in melodies that sound like they are audial representations of substance abuse. He wants to stay lowkey, avoid conflict, stay high, drunk, or have raw sex, and is absolutely unfiltered about all of these experiences. He provides a playbook to survive in Delhi-71, but he’s honest about what all of it really is:
“Samjho baawe hum rap ke zariye dukh baant'te”
A common theme in Darcy’s music is the weight of unrealized potential. Much of the content in his first album, Hyper, stems from failing 11th grade. One of the songs is even titled “SRCC”, referring to the premier undergraduate college that is part of Delhi University. The weight of unrealized potential is as much societally inflicted on you as it’s individualistic. Darcy is fed up with being in rat races that cause kids to be depressed if they fall merely a centimeter short of the outcome. He wants to dream beyond the structures that confine him. He asks simple questions that echo general middle-class frustrations of India.
Which is why trap is the most natural expression of his artistry. The drug stories are aplenty in his music. His imagery of a lost childhood is jarring when he narrates in Purani Jeans that in the age of eating Cadbury Perks, he and his friends were popping percocets (“perkys”) instead. But it’s not the drugs that embody the idea of trapping for him. Darcy spares no bars on telling you that the biggest trap of them all is the Indian education system. The drugs are just a symptom of the cause.
Education has been target numero uno for many Indian rappers. In India, lucrative careers only take a few paths — the IIT-JEE, the NEET, the Armed Forces exams, the entrance test for Delhi University, to name most of them. They’re intensely competitive exams with extremely low success rates. Being a rapper is (or was) an uncertain and unproven path, and it definitely doesn’t come with social status. But for Darcy (and maybe even in general, if you really think about it), trap music was as much of a gamble as education.
I ask internet music reviewer LOREM.wav — real name Arihant Arora — what he thinks of the social contexts that trap has adopted in India. “Indian rappers are mostly aspirational, and they want to be like the people [Western rappers] they’re listening to — even if they’re not selling or trapping”, he says. “So their early work tends to emulate that lifestyle a little, but they eventually infuse their own (usually generic) social contexts into it.”
LOREM’s introduction to Indian trap music was an artist called Doperman, who he has featured on the top 20 of his highly-anticipated “All-Time Top 100 Desi Hip-Hop Albums”[9] list. Doperman studied in Atlanta and raps primarily in English. His songs harken back to a style of punk rap popularized by Playboi Carti, Ken Carson, and Yeat. Doperman enjoys his memes and anime, and his extremely-online aesthetic is heavily inspired by both of those things.
LOREM highlighted Indian rappers Loka as likely the first to infuse Indian social contexts into it, and both him and DRV as among the first to do trap in Hindi. Loka is one of the early innovators of Indian — specifically Mumbai — trap, having done it since 2019. He gained notoriety last year because he was jailed for 8 weeks on charges of supposedly importing 27.5 kilograms of weed. Right out of the gate, he took out Side A of his next release, Loka Kaha Hai. It was a heartfelt set of songs that covered his take on the Indian prison system, police, family finances, and his relationship with his mother. We had our own version of “Free Young Thug” with Loka, with many artists like Darcy and Delhi-based Darcy calling to “Free Loka”. “It wasn’t just an internet meme”, says Darcy, who also gives his respect to Loka as one of the pioneers of bringing an Indian sensibility to trap music.
However, there is also some evidence that trap in any Indian language might predate them as a whole. Punjabi rapper Sikander Kahlon, who is extremely prolific with his output (sometimes releasing 2 albums in a year), made an album in 2015 titled The Punjabi Trap with producer Kaka Sady. The production is very much in the style of the Gucci Mane / T.I-era of trap, with fairly conventional lyrics of flexing and luxury. The album is fairly cross-genre, not just restricting itself to trap, but extending to more new-wave sounds originated by the likes of Lil Wayne and Drake.
Poverty inevitably finds its way into Indian trap. Hip-hop in India had become a force to reckon with when DIVINE and Naezy introduced us to gully rap. But MC STAN’s music is jarring. Not only does he speak about the emotional and physical violence that poverty can inflict on you, the beats that he makes sound like that violence. STAN made every single beat for his scintillating debut album, Tadipaar. The title track has a section where the main beat switches into a frantic heartbeat, while STAN narrates that he was stabbed. You hear screams. Then the beat switches to a mellow, bass-heavy, ominous instrumental. where STAN says:
“TikTok ki kasam, I’m bad for your health
Nako baba wapis, Yerwada Jail”
And STAN isn’t fronting. He was exiled from Pune because he risked arrest on a murder charge. He was banned from his area, Tadiwala Road — hence the album title Tadipaar. He’s seen friends get murdered, his parents cry because of what their son was getting into, and been a victim of police brutality and casteism. He saw himself in the lyrics of 2Pac, NWA, Future. Tadipaar may not have been the first Indian trap album, but it has since been deemed one of Indian hip-hop’s most genre-defying works. It also made Marathi rap — a subgenre that thrives well today — truly mainstream.'
The criticisms of the trap sound that Future and Young Thug are known for has translated to Indian contexts but with an additional layer of social harm. With modern American trap, the complaint was that it wasn’t “real rap”. With India, specifically someone like MC STAN, his socio-economic background and his caste are often brought up derogatorily when it comes to the way he looks. He’s often called a “chhapri”, because he poses to be in a certain way. This is a label that STAN unfortunately has not been able to shake off even with becoming financially successful.
Here is breakout rapper Emiway Bantai’s song, “Classy Chapri”, from his 2023 album King of the Streets. He challenges the ones who said he would never amount to anything because he’s a “chhapri”, and that he’s already built a brand at the national level for himself. The song title also stresses that caste plays into the perceptions of Emiway Bantai more than socio-economic class. Emiway Bantai is one of the industry’s most successful musicians who also runs his own label. Money is not an issue for him. This Reddit post somewhat digs into the issue deeper, identifying this as significantly pronounced for alternative hip-hop in Mumbai and Pune.
I ask Darcy about this, and he evokes a rule of hip-hop that has existed ever since the genre was born — “free speech”. While he may himself not condone using such slurs any longer, it’s impossible to stop a rapper from saying something. Free speech has been an absolute rule for the genre that allows for advocating screwing the authorities in the same vein as treating women like playthings. Words are all a rapper has. If you’re stopping them from saying something, you’re stealing their words.
Rappers of all kinds, including those belonging to minorities, operate under this closed logic loop. That naturally leads to questions like what it means to own the slurs that mark your own identity, the way Emiway does. It raises questions about all-too-common homophobic bars, and what that means for who hip-hop can include. Today, hip-hop undoubtedly involves more rappers who belong to minorities more than it ever did, and that’s a great sign of progress. But it’s difficult to upend a framework that has been stacked against them since the start of the genre.
In India, money doesn’t play God. A million gods and goddesses do, and they always have, even with the rise of money’s role in India’s recent history. Even with all the rules of free speech that hip-hop / trap holds dear, few artists will dare to spark communal sentiment. Two of the biggest names in Indian hip-hop, DIVINE and KR$NA squashed their beef a day after the latter invoked a jibe at DIVINE’s Christian beliefs. Even if it happens in our polarized society today, it will be met with backlash of how it’s a grand new low for Indian hip-hop.
But religion has also been a source of spirituality for some rappers. One of MC STAN’s most popular tracks is “Astaghfirullah”, where he asks Allah to forgive him of all his sins that he’s committed. He talks about how he often doesn’t get entry into a mosque anymore because of his fashion style. Darcy’s Full Moon is replete with religious imagery, right down to the album cover. “I’ve deeply questioned myself whether God is real or just a myth that has always been fed to us”. But Darcy, a patron of Amar Chitra Kathas and some of the epics, receives a lot of his power from believing in a higher power. He credits his grandfather with this influence.
I speak to DRV — real name Dhruv Rajpal — who is hot off a string of single releases this year. His last solo album was titled Nakshatra, which he quotes as a spiritual journey. The album cover depicts one man with 4 hands facing the mountains, where the 4 hands are supposed to depict godly energies. However, he doesn’t necessarily believe in blind faith. “Religion is a gift that keeps on giving, but I have unanswered questions about big stuff”, he says. Nakshatra is a source of spirituality for him, but anything beyond that is still up for debate.
The title (and opening) track also ends with an homage to his grandfather, with a voice note from him narrating how hard he had to work post-Partition to feed himself. DRV has familial ties with erstwhile-Multan, which is a part of his identity that he’s never shied away from expressing. That sort of hunger for the best probably passed onto DRV himself, when he rapped a ferocious set of bars:
“Jai Shiv, Shankar
Kabhi na mitey ye hunger
800 crore log apke darshak hun mai manch par”
While a genre can often reflect the semblance of the city it comes from — the way Delhi rap can be hot-headed — trap has picked up not just in Delhi and Mumbai. It has crossed that confinement. Below is “Shoishob”, by rapper Archiesman Kundu (aka Archies) and producer Rawhit. Kundu talks about his very-Bengali childhood, saying that his “shoishob hoye rob” (my childhood was robbed), that he was bad at math, that he learnt rap to escape where he came from raps fully in his mother tongue. Archies hails from the Medinipur district in West Bengal, and moved to Kolkata for pursuing a creative career. He raps about quintessential Bengali survival kit items, like having fish fry, egg rolls, and naps.
Or take MC Insane, who doesn’t hail from either of the major cities. He takes significant inspiration from emo rap, in the vein of XXXTentacion, Lil Peep, Juice WRLD and Lil Uzi Vert. Much like his Western predecessors, he’s extremely vulnerable about his pain — especially when it comes to love and relationships. He uses AutoTune to an extreme degree to vocalize the pain of not being understood, and also has the word “Emo” tattooed below his left eye. All extremely reminiscent of the SoundCloud rappers who birthed this style. Much like his predecessors, he has explicit lines about wanting to be in the infamous 27 Club. His song “Forgive Me” has amassed nearly 6 million views on YouTube.
Trap has certainly acquired a form of its own in India. Even if not everyone uses it in the context it was originally intended, it has become a legitimate expression of their struggles, pain and ambitions. In no way do they intend to designate themselves as copycats of the original sound. They are dedicated to pushing not just the idea of Indian trap, but also diffuse that idea into more mainstream Indian hip-hop and popular Indian sounds.
No Rules
It’s late afternoon at Deer Park. I’m waiting to meet one of two artists behind one of my favorite Indian hip-hop songs to-date, titled “Court Kacheri”. It’s a simple, catchy hook that sounds like something you’d expect from someone who hails from Delhi-NCR (it helps that the other artist, DRV, was once a lawyer):
“Court kacheri karaiyo na matter sultane ka mauka ko de
Aaj se pehle nahi pata tha mujrim bhi jake wahan law padte”
Lawyers trapping in the streets of Hauz Khas sounds like a fever dream to me, and it probably even did to rapper Boyblanck, who arrives wearing shades to hide his bloodshot eyes. He’s accompanied by his indie manager, Manvendra Krishna. After enjoying some activity that people with bloodshot eyes generally do, I take them both to my favorite spot in Humayunpur, Lea Izakaya. True to myself, I wanted my interviewees to eat some of the best Asian food in Delhi while they answered my questions.
Born Raghav Bhatia, Boyblanck’s biggest claim to fame to-date is that he provided an original composition for Anurag Kashyap on his most recent film, Kennedy. “He treated me like I’m an extremely gullible 20-something who is easily influenced by herd activity”, he says. But Anurag Kashyap was also very receptive of the potential of Indian trap, and he was convinced by the coincidence that in his earliest days of rapping, Boyblanck had made a song called Mr Kennedy.
Boyblanck confirms something to me that LOREM had said earlier about Indian trap artists. “I copied Future, Young Thug, A$AP Rocky. Even though I wrote in English, it didn’t feel like my words, and took me a while to find my original voice.” Purely in terms of vocalization style, Boyblanck is as close as one may get to having an Indian Young Thug. He credits DRV with making Hindi trap sound cool to him. Today, Boyblanck’s Slim Shady-esque alias is Vicky Donor. In his words, he’s the dad of everybody that matters in the rap game:
“Jaise mai Vicky Donor yahan pe bacche saare mere
Baje saade chhe the launde thane mai the”
The funniest coincidence in this regard is that apparently, he discovered that Anurag Kashyap’s apartment building also houses the actual Vicky Donor himself, Ayushman Khurana.
I ask Boyblanck what it means to rep Noida in a sea of people that proudly wear Delhi on their sleeves. He wanted to change the bad reputation that Noida keep receiving as a fairly real-life representation of an Indian version of Grand Theft Auto. Many of his bars are about the randomness of the city. It’s unpredictable, the kids there are weird, the roads are wild, and for some reason people are often in jail. But it’s his city. He wants to make a visual and audio identity for it, the way it was done for Compton or Harlem. And along with some of his other artist friends, namely — J1SIX, Scoolboypax, and Yoosh — Boyblanck has begun a collective named G16 (in honour of UP-16) to create that identity.
From all that I’ve read and heard about the desi hip-hop scene, what is undeniable is that Kanye West’s influence on this relatively-new wave of Indian hip-hop has been greater than the next two artists combined. While he might be busy with his usual shenanigans to see this, Kanye introduced the idea of a melody to hip-hop. For once, you could add synths, electric guitars, things that rockstars use. In many ways, Kanye was the first rockstar of hip-hop, too. He wanted his music to fill every crevice of a stadium. As he delved deeper into more melancholic, melodious hip-hop, he may have set the stage for a crossover with what came out of Atlanta. “When I listen to him objectively, I can only wonder how he even came up with this song structure and harmony”, says Boyblanck.
To an extent, this also holds true for A$AP Rocky. And it goes beyond having that one song of his play in Gully Boy. A$AP is a perpetual experimenter — if there’s one thing he doesn’t lack, it’s the ability to stretch the possibility of what his sound can do. “I didn’t understand A$AP for a year but I loved it”, says Darcy. Many credit Rocky with pushing the envelope of psychedelic rap, fusing Pink Floyd-ian harmonies with rap verses.
Originally a guitarist who took from rock and progressive metal, DRV didn’t really know that the new genre he’d picked up while still in law college was called “trap”. From just knowing the guitar to producing entire 808-infused beats on his own, DRV name-dropped three people (who are close collaborators) that the new wave of hip-hop loves to invoke: Kanye West, Mike Dean, Jeff Bhasker — the latter of which DRV has personally met and played his work. “Kanye does both trap drums and the drums he gets from samples in the same song — you can’t just have the one”, he says. The pure rock influences still exist, too — DRV samples the great opening riff of RHCP’s “Californication” on his track “Chadhai”.
Indian trap is nothing without its producers. Some common names you’re likely to find include $ohunnid, hype, AAKASH, Vamp, and Atlanta-based babywxve — who has worked with globally famous Lil Durk. Part of the deal that Indian artists got with globalization and the rise of SoundCloud is not just our exposure to Western music, but also collaboration with Western producers (and sometimes, artists).
In fact, while speaking to $ohunnid, what surprised me was his casual mention of the fact that he didn’t listen to music until he was 18. When he started to do so, the popular names of hip-hop didn’t appeal to him. “I didn’t like the mainstream stuff like J Cole and Lil Baby too much, I wanted to get into underground shit”. Now 21, $ohunnid cites Yeat and Ken Carson as initial influences, but now quotes what he listens to as stuff that may be too unconventional even for a comfortable enjoyer of trap music. Having said that, however, he’s trying to find creative ways to make conventional trap music sound palatable to Indian audiences. That involves including Indian percussion as well as samples of Indian music.
Or take the producer Rawhit, who produced the Bengali hip-hop track Shoishob. Rohit Dey is a 22 year-old from Guwahati who didn’t listen to music too much either until he discovered the Kendricks and Savages of the world. He has played an important role in shaping the sounds of some of Kolkata’s rappers, most notably his frequent collaborator Archisman Kundu / Archies. He believes that Bengali hip-hop today is at the kind of juncture that Bombay hip-hop was at in its earliest days — people aren’t ready for it yet, but it’s positioned in a great way to age well. Globalization and the internet have enabled him to work with trap producers and sound engineers based out of Atlanta, and he’s never met them except through the Discord screen. Rawhit’s long-term vision is simple, one that, given recent events, will make lots of sense:
“I want a Hanumankind-like event for Bengali hip-hop.”
No discussion of trap music is complete without a full-blown deconstruction of flex bars, and we certainly bring very Indian sensibilities to that game. Boyblanck’s Vicky Donor bar is one such bar, but if you’re a rapper whose first name is Uday, your first instinct undoubtedly has to be titling a track after the famous “Control Uday” quote by Nana Patekar on Welcome. Indeed, we have such a song by Chandigarh-based Uday Bakshi, who has been in the scene for more than a few years. Uday Bakshi has quite the cult following behind him, and is well recognized by many of the stalwarts of the Delhi scene who started along with him, including Seedhe Maut, DRV and Full Power.
How about being, well, anti-drugs? Xanax, or xannies as they’re informally and infamously known, have been a staple especially for the emo rap wave of rappers. But Qaab’s biggest flex is that he doesn’t need drugs or alcohol to give you dope. Or how about taking down the entire map of Ghaziabad as an 11th grader? This is something that native Vasudev made a cult hit out of in the track named after the city.
Boyblanck has a fully-loaded arsenal of flex bars. From boasting how he went to a party where someone played his own unreleased material, to comparing his talent to the magic bat from cult hit “Chain Khuli Ki Main Khuli”, to — invoking his alias — holding a baby shower (“godh bharai”), BB’s range of similes and metaphors transitions smoothly into an ability to create outlandish (and very funny) punchlines that are characteristic of hip-hop. “I love being challenged, making lyrics fun”, he says.
Naturally, the biggest section of flex bars is devoted to the good ol’ love for money. This is a descriptive list of the things our rappers have said: rejecting PayTM for cold hard cash, wanting 10 Peti, name-dropping Mukesh Ambani right after narrating an encounter with the police, comparing contracts to a maths book because one never reads either properly, throwing shade at South Delhi high fashion because they couldn’t land themselves better drip. Rappers love being materialistic, and they loving flexing how much their shows net them. For some of them, a successful music career upgraded entire lifestyles.
But what’s changed is not just that these are artists making money by creating a new genre out of thin air. These are artists who are as independent as they come. They don’t necessarily associate with huge, mainstream labels in terms of long-term contracts. MC STAN continues to release his music under his own Hindi Records. DRV, Darcy and Boyblanck operate primarily independently, with the odd high-profile release (like a music video) under a music marketing agency. That adds weight to how they earn money. In an era where independent music and indie labels are gaining a larger share in the music market pie, this holds a lot of significance — especially in a country like India where the ways in which you can do so have been fairly limited for a long time.
Much like Kanye and A$AP, both Boyblanck and Darcy believe in the power of audio-visual experiences. “I wanted people to imagine a movie when they’re listening to HYP3R”, says Darcy. In an interesting contrast to Boyblanck’s body of work, Darcy has more loyalty to Indian director Sriram Raghavan (who I wrote on earlier this year) than his contemporary Anurag Kashyap. He has a love for noir, which he believes Raghavan is a master of. He also quotes Gaspar Noe as a major influence on his artistry. But he’s at his most insightful when he’s talking about Kal Ho Na Ho — “Every sequence is naturally connected to the next song, and vice versa. Karan Johar ne crazy kar diya bro.”
But making music videos comes with constraints for indie artists. It comes with requirements for budgets, and it’s much easier to pull off a music video with a label deal. The dreams, however, are not small. “I want to build a musical identity for Noida the same way Drake, PARTYNEXTDOOR and The Weeknd did for Toronto”, says Boyblanck. He has more than a few music videos, some of which are backed by a label called Artiste First. The label has a wide roster that doesn’t just restrict itself to hip-hop, and claims 100+ million views from all of its videos.
Boyblanck is brutally honest about the supposed Delhi-Mumbai divide. “Bombay is more street / grittier than Delhi, bro. Who are we lying to when we say we’re ‘harder’?” He understands the socio-economic contexts within which trap emerged, so despite what his eyes seemed to say at the time, he found it duplicitous to advocate for something he didn’t practice or find the need to do. Darcy echoes the same concerns, especially since he was driven to dealing by virtue of being left with little choice. There’s a fairly thin line between expression and appropriation, which trap artists in India all too well. Someone like MC STAN speaks from a set of lived experiences that may be all too true for many in India.
Yet, there’s an optimistic view of the same that DRV holds, especially having worked extensively with artists in both cities. “Everyone is living their own reality, and I think all perceptions about the Delhi-Mumbai stuff should be detached”. His belief likely comes from the fact that it is still very early days for everyone involved in creating a subculture out of Indian trap, whichever part of India they may be from. DRV embodies the same belief that the mythical Chef Gusteau from Pixar classic Ratatouille always endorsed / advertised:
“Anyone can cook.”
Bolly-woo Type Shit
Some 40 minutes into only the second episode of Prime Video’s biggest debut for India, Farzi, you see Shahid Kapoor’s character printing buckets of fake money. It’s a stylish montage with paper cutting, a running washing machine (to clean the notes), scored to a really fun song composed by the great duo of Sachin-Jigar, titled Fark Nahi Padta. Farzi was far and away 2023’s biggest OTT release. But what few people must have known was that the song was a showcase for an up-and-coming artist based out of Delhi. The extremely-catchy hook of the track was sung by DRV.
“Sachin and Jigar wanted to get a new-school trap voice in the song”, says DRV. He had no idea when he was initially contacted that they were the ones reaching out to him, and that he was going to play a part in a Shahid Kapoor / Vijay Sethupathi-led project. But he was asked to deliver the hook in his most natural style. DRV didn’t have a role in composing the song — the hook was written by Jigar Saraiya’s wife, Pia[10]. The duo heard DRV and Darcy’s “Coco”, which inspired them to get DRV’s raspy voice onboard.
It’s a huge moment for the prospect of an Indian trap subculture. It’s a signal that the who’s who of mainstream Hindi music are tuned into more underground sounds, and see plenty of merit in enmeshing those sounds into conventional Bollywood music. The YouTube comments to the song are filled with a recognition of DRV’s role.
The Hindi music industry (and Bollywood, since those two have differences) has given a fair bit of love to the idea of Indian hip-hop. The most notable event that spurred this development was the rise of Mafia Mundeer and their eventual split. Honey Singh, Raftaar, Badshah and Ikka have experienced solid success in their move to more mainstream careers. In fact, the use of AutoTune by all of them may have some kind of precedent when it comes to recognizing its role of making one’s voice a whole instrument in trap music.
Let alone Honey Singh — there may be solid evidence that one of the first instances of trap was most likely actually truly mainstream. The beat for Imran Khan’s legendary hit from 2013, Satisfya, is alarmingly close to emulating all the elements needed to qualify as a trap beat. It sounds like a song that Ludacris might have made.
But this comes with a caveat. In his initial days, Honey Singh had to make his music more palatable to Indian sensibilities in order to be known as a hip-hop star. That involved making a move to Punjabi music for a while. In many ways, he took less after the Ludacris’ and Jeezys of the world, but more after Jason Derulo and Pitbull. Which makes the acceptance of the new-school sound all the more interesting — it’s an entirely new template that isn’t as colored by the need to sound conventional.
The adoption of this “new-school” trap music in the mainstream could not be an isolated incident. Sachin-Jigar have also partnered with MC STAN to provide the title track for the 2023 film Farrey. STAN has received an overwhelming amount of fanfare not just for a trap artist, but for an indie one. From getting a “P-TOWN REPRESENT” shoutout from actor Ranveer Singh[11], to winning Bigg Boss, STAN has always wanted to reach the stratosphere.
However, it’s fair to note that Sachin and Jigar are a bit of an outlier when it comes to how innovative they are in the grand scheme of Bollywood composition. They break boundaries regularly, but they have also earned that privilege with their share of hits. And it is certainly a privilege to break boundaries in conventional Hindi music because it’s much easier to play it safe. Why try something new when you could revive a retro song for the new century for the umpteenth time?
When you keep that in mind, it also makes sense for why a maverick like Boyblanck was adopted by one of the biggest offbeat names of conventional Hindi film-making. Last year, BB saw his work at the Cannes Film Festival because of Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy. The story of how this partnership even happened is a matter of chance — a friend of BB’s who was interning under Kashyap just accidentally played a song of his (titled “Mr Kennedy”) loud enough for the director to hear. True to himself, Kashyap gave him full creative freedom, only retaining the final yes/no. A track with Kashmiri rapper Ahmer was rejected in the process.
But this is just Bollywood. The Indian music industry is composed of majors like Universal, Warner, Sony, JioSaavn as well as more new-age Indian startups like Azadi Records, OML, DIVINE’s Gully Gang, Raftaar’s Kalamkaar Records and so on. The non-Bollywood music landscape has grown in the last 10 years, with labels looking to tap into new sources of revenue in the form of groundbreaking artists. Some of those artists who enjoyed early success under a major have gone on to open their own agencies.
Manvendra, the manager for both DRV and Boyblanck, has worked under and liaised with some of the majors in India. He condenses where these labels lie in the adoption curve for Indian trap in a simple sentence — “Labels are not yet fully willing to risk finance behind trap music”. To them, MC STAN (and Loka) was an outlier that set a huge precedent but may not have necessarily indicated a trend of moving towards the genre. Without his success, it would be very hard for anyone to make a bet on any idea of Indian trap music. This compounds against them in the deals room where they may be included, but not necessarily heard.
This can be said for any new genre on the rise. It took some time for Indian hip-hop to break out of its underground roots — it was only in 2014 when DIVINE was noticed by Sony Music, and only in 2015-16 where Sez on the Beat broke out. Now, Indian hip-hop is extremely close to becoming a global export, with Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs cracking the Billboard Top 100 in the US. Hip-hop has successfully become a thriving market in India, with dizzying variety across genres.
Which leads us to the natural question: where does Indian trap lie in the broader context of Indian hip-hop? Conventional rappers are increasingly choosing to rap on instrumentals heavily influenced by trap. One of 2021’s biggest Indian rap songs was Seedhe Maut’s Nanchaku, which had a highly-lauded feature by MC STAN. With 29M views on YouTube, it’s arguably Seedhe Maut’s biggest song. But those views pale in comparison to an average MC STAN original. In all likelihood — and with due respect to both artists — it was the feature artist who gave the song a majority chunk of viewership than the main artist.
Of course, this is an outlier. But the collaborations with trap artists and the active choice to rap on trap beats are increasing. One of 2023’s most-lauded songs was a collaboration between two artists who are not only NOT known for their trap music to begin with but would also normally NOT be associated with each other. Yet, Raftaar and Prabh Deep are pioneers of Delhi hip-hop in their own right, going back-to-back on the catchy “Trap Praa”.
In India, trap music isn’t necessarily an offshoot of hip-hop. Some of these artists have been around for only a little less longer than the most popular rappers of India, unlike in the West where trap was a trailing function of classic rap. Indian hip-hop is also seeing itself transform into a bit of a global export this year. Ahmedabad-based Dhanji is working with the official Indian account of the Premier League to make a song for them. Seedhe Maut and desi producer Hisab worked on a song with renowned American rapper Mick Jenkins, who made one of my favorite songs in “Vibe”. Of course, both of them are predated by DIVINE working with Nas, as well as with Pusha-T and Vince Staples for the movie adaptation of The White Tiger.
The optimism for the adoption of trap and mumble rap in India, therefore, is not without reason. It comes with some precedent not just for hip-hop, but also for itself. The genre itself has its own merits that is making well-known producers notice its potential in raising their own game. India’s new music markets are expanding, and will someday be among the biggest in the world. This is happening simultaneously as other, more popular markets are being exhausted.
“In India, people without numbers are treated like shit. I want to make music on my own terms, fame and money are (important) by-products”, says Darcy. There is certainly a wish to be accepted as one is, without having to resort to marketing gimmicks. That authenticity has always been a staple of trap. When Young Thug released one of his most celebrated albums in Jeffrey, it broke the internet with the very album cover, and defied hip-hop norms. It showed Young Thug in an androgynous dress. It’s that kind of expression that this generation of artists wants to vie and be accepted for, especially in an age where artists realize that community-building on the internet is an extremely important function. “We will have biopics made on all of us”, Darcy says, indicating tremendous confidence in the potential of Indian trap.
There’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing the stank faces of those who think they’ve heard something ground-breaking for the first time. “They need to have that “I fuck with that” expression”, Boyblanck puts it bluntly. A proud moment for him and Manvendra was when they found out that Infamous Snippets had placed right beside Drake’s Views on Apple Music’s global hip-hop charts. Being right beside someone whose music may have inspired you in many ways is an unbeatable feeling. It’s moments like these that affirm that taste-making is a powerful activity, that you are doing something that probably no one else in India might be.
The trappers of India want to make their own rules of the game. They don’t want audiences to dictate their creativity. They do not want to fall victim to the musician analogy of people constantly making song requests to DJs. They want to be known as creators and innovators who started something new, who struck gold where no one else thought to look.
“The perception of trap music is an exercise in futility because subcultures can’t be planned”, says DRV. It’s an extremely potent sentiment (and one that I agree with), because the planning of sub-cultures is less magical than them occurring spontaneously, accidentally, coincidentally. There needs to be a confluence of factors for something to succeed, and more often than not, you can’t predict that. There’s an element of “right place, right time” that needs to take shape.
But that’s what makes it special. It indicates a belief that what he and artists like him are creating will certainly get people to believe in magic. And there’s no time like the present to do so.
Thanks section!
LOREM.wav / Arihant Arora — one of the best documenters of Indian hip-hop, he is our version of Anthony Fantano. Doesn’t hold back his opinions, loves heaping praises on lesser-known artists that he finds awesome, and understands the A to Z of music reviewing. His Instagram page is a gem and deserves at least double the followers he currently has.
Darcy — for being extremely receptive to a cold Instagram DM. Full Moon is one of the best projects I’ve heard in Indian music (and by that I mean in all of Indian music), and Darcy is coming off a lot more. He’d make an excellent podcast guest if you’re reading this — we went from Gaspar Noe to Green Day to Vile Parle to cultural appropriation. His latest releases, RED and FIFA are out now.
$ohunnid — for a really scintillating interview on what goes into his music. He has produced for both Darcy and Boyblanck, and some of that work is in the playlist. His latest work, a collaboration with rapper ABDUL, titled emotions is out now!
DRV / Dhruv Rajpal — since he’s spent a fair amount of time in the scene, DRV is a bit of a historian on the subject. He’s been on a streak of releases this year. His latest is a collaborative album with Qaab, titled “Trapanese” — out on all streaming platforms now!
Rawhit / Rohit Dey — Bengali hip-hop is not supposed to fit bhadralok sensibilities, which is exactly why I love it. And Rawhit is at the forefront of this movement. His latest work is with his most frequent collaborator, Archies, and is titled Northern Ties.
Manvendra Krishna — for being extremely helpful for liaising with my interviews of Boyblanck and DRV, and providing me with a lot of context. A&R professionals who are a) in their early 20s, b) have a strong worldview, and c) truly love the artists they back are amazing to speak to.
Boyblanck / Raghav Bhatia — when artists tell you that there are songs of theirs where they probably got outrapped by someone else, that’s when you know you’re in a special conversation. He is also on a streak of his own, with two knockout full-length releases this year in Infamous Snippets Vol 1 and In Surveillance of Angels. Two of my favorite tracks of the year come from him — in Invisible (produced by $ohunnid) and Heroine (featuring Darcy and a killer SEGA sample).
Usual suspects for proofreading: Sunaina Bose, Kushan Patel,
, , for checking this out, helping with edits, as always!
so immersive - felt like i was in the room making this music. so good!