What makes a 27-year-old from Tentulipadar, a village in Odisha's Koraput district, rap like his life depends on it? If you ask Sumeet Samos, he will tell you it's exactly that.

The post graduate in Spanish and Latin American Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University [JNU] uses hip hop to advance his anti-caste critique, rooting the lyrics in his lived experiences as a Dalit man and following in the footsteps of politically conscious hip hop greats like Tupac Shakur. It was when the writer first heard Samos spit these bars in Ladai Seekh Le (2018): "Mar ke bhi jina hai, hum ladai seekh le," (we need to survive a thousand deaths, let's get used to resisting) that they knew they were onto something different. "I wrote Ladai Seekh Le in the aftermath of Dalit scholar Muthukrishnan's death. Everyone around me, including people who were friends with him, were in despair. I wanted to reinvigorate their tired spirit," Samos remembers, speaking about the song that first made people
notice him.