Divine, 27
Hip-hop artiste

Given that the country's obsession with Bollywood music has relegated other genres to the fringes, it is ironic that one of the most awaited Bollywood releases — Ranveer Singh's Gully Boy — is based on Mumbai's street rappers, including a 27-year-old called Divine. Before hip-hop happened to him, he was Vivian Fernandes. Varied as they may be in sound, his tracks offer a peek into his universe — the gullies of Andheri's JB Nagar where he grew up. "My struggles and challenges made me stronger and focused. I grew up alone. My mother, Nathaline, was a single parent, and she worked in Qatar to fund my brother's and my upbringing. My parents separated when I was in class seven. So, technically, I grew up with my friends and grandmother, until she was alive," he remembers. He has often spoken about craving for a pair of shoes when he was the only child at church to turn up in slippers, but it was another buy — a laptop while he was at Bandra's National College — that introduced him to the world of hip hop.