Vernacular Rap and Hip-Hop: Native Rhythm

 RAP IS steadily growing in India. Zoya Akhtar’s 2019 box-office buster Gully Boy was at the time widely credited with putting Hindi rap on the map for the average Indian listener. But the film only pinpointed the mainstream explosion of a burgeon­ing music subculture that had long been gathering a dedicated following. Rap had always been a beloved but comparatively niche genre in India; until the tide began to turn after the pandemic. The rapper Badshah’s song Paagal (2019) got 74.8 million views on YouTube in 24 hours. The Digital Music Study 2022 by Indian Music Industry (IMI) listed ‘Indian hip-hop/rap’ as a favourite genre for nearly 30 per cent of respondents in its survey. By 2023, hip-hop was the fourth most listened-to genre on Spotify India. Rap had also solidified its place in the Indian music zeitgeist. But the newest wave in this movement in the last few years has been possibly its most exciting–the increasing interest in regional rap.

Regional rap has always had a following. This can be seen in the suc­cess of artists all over India like Rakesh Adiga of the Kannada band Urban Lads, Pakistani-American rapper Bohemia and Punjabi rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh, Telugu singer Noel Sean, Bengaluru rapper Smokey the Ghost, and Swadesi Crew and MC Mawali from Maharashtra. These singers have had their audiences, albeit smaller ones. But in the last few years, regional rap has broken past its language barrier and onto the main stage, capturing an audience far beyond its original territory. A Ken Research report found that regional music accounted for 34 per cent of total music consumption in India (2023), while data from Spotify noted that specifically regional hip-hop in languages like Haryanvi and Malayalam saw extremely high growth (500-600 per cent growth in streams on Spotify) in recent years.

THE UPTICK IN regional rap follows a particular trend that has been happening across many aspects of culture and lifestyle– a lean into the endemic. It could be another aspect of the general deep dive into hyperregional cultures that has been happening across the country– from highlighting regional ingredients and recipes at restaurants, to an increase in country-wide viewership of re­gional cinema, with non-Hindi films increasing in view­ership to 47 per cent in 2024 (and Hindi films themselves slipping to 40-45 per cent of OTT viewership versus 70 per cent of the total viewership share in 2021).

The reasons for this renewed appreciation for the local are many, but one of the less complicated ones among them is a desire to reconnect with our roots in the face of globalisation. In a world with more access to cultures across the world, there is both a slight loss of identity in the influx of stimuli and content, and also a reminder that our own cultures and subcultures exist and have so much to offer. Much like the rise of AI is creating a counter-movement adamant to avoid codependence with it, regional content is increasingly popular because it resonates in a way that global content simply cannot.

For rap in particular, artists like Tamillian rap­per Arivu, Punjabi singer Ikka Singh, Malayali rapper ThirumaLi and Ahmer who raps in Koshur and Urdu have proven through their Spotify streams and YouTube views that there is no dearth of in­terest in what they have to say–and the languages they choose to say it in. Rapper-songwriter Ahmer says that the music scene has definitely made more room for rapping in different languages, which is natural because India is so incredibly diverse. He adds, "But at the same time, I feel like we still haven’t gotten full exposure in certain regions because of the conditions we face, whether political or otherwise–and that always comes into play. That’s why you don’t see many playlists dedicated to music from Kashmir, especially in our mother tongue.”

However he admits the shift has been big in the last several years. This has happened because, as he says, “There are more hip-hop artists, and every new voice adds to the scene. The more artists there are, the more new sounds are discovered.”

Apart from the new sounds that enter the arena with the ver­nacular of this new breed of rap artists, there are also new narratives. Tamil rapper Arivu’s lyrics draw heavily from his Dalit and refugee heritage to critique systemic op­pression in India. Ikka Singh’s music will often focus on the struggles of the middle class in Jamnapaar, East Delhi, where he was raised. Kolkata-based Cizzy (Bengali rapper Rounok Chakraborty) paints a picture of the city’s culture, lifestyle, and urban nostalgia, including how it’s been impacted by the pandemic and demonetisation. Regional rap, then, be­comes about much more than exposure to new languages and styles of the genre; it gives the listener a backstage pass to the nuances of a region, city or subculture that they would never privy to with­out the story coming from the source.

“Using our own language makes the impact stronger; it connects us to more people who understand what we go through,” says Ahmer. “But sometimes, it gets twisted, and people assume we’re only speaking for one community, or one side of the pain, which isn’t true. We keep every community in Kashmir in mind. We sit with everyone, we make music with everyone, and they all speak Kashmiri too. But we also must share our stories about the pain and the things we’ve lived through. When that gets banned or blacklisted, hip-hop suffers. Representing our communities and our streets is the entire point of hip-hop.”

Rap has always been a form of re­sistance. While American rap culture, originating in the South Bronx (New York) in the 1970s was an emblem of marginalised Black and Latino youth speaking out against the systemic issues of poverty, racism, and political neglect affecting their communities, it gradually became more about point-proving, money and the luxury life in the mainstream. The trajec­tory it had in India was almost reversed, at least in the main­stream. The first commercial rappers of note in India started off with surface subjects, from Baba Sehgal in the ’90s who rapped about cold water in ‘Thanda Thanda Pani’ (ironically, knocked off to a beat from Vanilla Ice’s ‘Ice Ice, Baby’, plagiriased in itself) or asking women to sit in his car, to Yo Yo Honey Singh who was obsessed with ‘blue eyes’, ‘brown girls’ and bottles of vodka at the club in the 2010s.

IT TOOK NEARLY two decades for rap, across languages, to start ‘uncomfortable’ conversations about caste, class, bigotry and systemic inequal­ity and make it into the mainstream in India. Those dialogues existed, but remained niche, finding audiences in the thousands (if that) with people who were in the slim overlap of speaking the language and enjoying rap as a genre. But over the years, both an access to transla­tions as well as the growing popularity of multicultural music throughout the country has allowed regional rap its long deserved place in the sun.

It can, however, still be a studio barrier at times, Ahmer points out. “Rapping in a regional language won’t instantly give you a huge listener base, so it’s a battle you have to fight slowly. The industry has evolved, but I think there’s still time before Kashmiri hip-hop gets the recognition it deserves. There are so many incredible writers and skilled artists here, but it’s not a simple case: politics, perceptions, and other factors always come into play.” But when it comes to an audience, there isn’t necessar­ily that disconnect. “I’ve done shows in almost every city, rapping in Kashmiri. I always tell people, ‘this is my language,’ and I’ve seen how they connect with it; sometimes, even translating the lyrics helps them understand better.”

But rapping in Koshur is integral to his music. “There are songs I wouldn’t want in any other language. The first one is Kasheer; it reflects everything I wanted to highlight: our pain, the struggles we face, and the realities you won’t see in cinema. Then there’s Takabur, also in Kashmiri. Poetry in Kashmiri can’t be replicated, it has a beauty of its own. Sadly, we’ve lost a lot of it because every­thing has been fused and mixed so much that the younger generation is finding it more challenging to speak Kashmiri. But rapping in your own language does create an authenticity to the stories we’re trying to tell,” says Ahmer.

As it gains more traction with the Indian listener, regional rap has found a strong foothold in the country’s music zeitgeist. It is the harbinger of a new wave in music; genres from across the world expressed in incredibly personal forms, laced with the realities of territo­ries we only have a surface-level under­standing of. It is music, of course. But it is also the start of a conversation.