A hip-hop showcase featuring five acts at a Khar venue will prove that there's more to it than gully rap
A still from the video for Gari-B ki Kahani by Tadpatri Talkies
The growing evolution of hip-hop in India will take a further step forward this weekend when five acts take over the stage at an event called Traphouse Deli. But look away now if your definition of "hip-hop in India" is confined to gully rap. For, these acts have nothing to do with the movement that started in the narrow bylanes of Dharavi and Mahim, before gaining mainstream credence in 2015. Instead, one of the acts, ViceVersa, embodies a wholly western ethos while another, MC Heam, raps in straight-up Hindi, as opposed to the Bambaiyya version. And yet another, Tadpatri Talkies, in fact parodies the likes of DIVINE and Naezy, considered to be the poster boys of gully rap in the city.
We had caught up with the six members of Tadpatri Talkies in November last year before the launch of their debut album, Bhookh. The songs in it involved a humorous takedown of the hip-hop circuit in the country, and not just gully rap specifically. The comedy collective had developed a couple of characters — Gari-B and Badboy Bandya — with a single-minded purpose of holding up a mirror to the growing tribe of rappers in Mumbai, Punjab and Delhi. In fact, one of their videos even had the duo killing the "machhar rappers" of Dharavi with mosquito squatters. Their lyrics, too, lampooned the fetishisation of poverty that gully rap often indulged in. And needless to say, none of this sat well with certain factions of Mumbai's hip-hop community.
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ViceVersa performs at a gig
"I don't think these people understood what we were doing," says Sidharth Raveendran, who essays the role of Gari-B in the videos. "They thought that we were hating on them and thus simplified it to a diss track. But it wasn't that at all. The parody was actually a [well-meaning] dig at the entire scene, and not any specific people. It wasn't intended as a takedown or character assassination of anyone. We didn't mean any malice."
In Suburbia
In the same breath, however, he adds that the graph of gully rap is now undergoing a downward spiral. It flew too close to the sun too soon and burnt its wings. "Every brand and event organiser is trying to milk the sh*t out of the genre to a point where its currency is automatically going to diminish. That's why in 2018-19 you'll see a lot of artistes coming up who are counter-gully rap, but not necessarily in a premeditated manner. It's more like, 'Achha, tum log ne gully rap sun liya, now listen to something else,'" says Gaurang Bailoor, who's also a part of Tadpatri Talkies.
MC Heam
What he's pointing towards are crews in far-flung suburbs like Nallasopara whose hip-hop lexicon doesn't include words like "aiba" and "bantai" that are typical to Dharavi. "The kids in those areas are more into a hardcore story-telling style of hip-hop, and have built their own eco-system. Right now, everyone who was not a gully rapper is understanding the consequences of not supporting others like them when gully rap was growing. So they have become extra helpful towards each other and built a sense of community, which is the next league in the underground," Bailoor feels.
Fully filmy
Sure, we tell him, but what about the brouhaha surrounding Gully Boy, the Bollywood film based largely on DIVINE and Naezy that's slated for a February 2019 release? Won't that send the graph of gully rap spiralling upwards again? Fat chance, Bailoor thinks. And he adds, "When Rock On! or Rockstar happened, did it mean that you had a lot of bands coming out of India? At best you had some engineering boys picking up the guitar to impress chicks.
What I mean is that 'gully rap' has become a buzzword, and Bollywood loves to pick up on these things to build some plot line around it. They have a larger audience to talk to. So, it's either going to be a love story or a personal struggle kind of thing. It's not really going to be about hip-hop, I think."
On: August 31, 9 pm to 12 am
At: The Habitat, Hotel Unicontinental, Khar West.
Call: 9833358490
Entry: Rs 100
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