The early 2010s brought a new wave of rap music in India with Yo Yo Honey Singh standing at the absolute forefront and being the face of the, then-newly emerging, rap scene. He is still credited for popularising rap music in Bollywood as well as the Indian music scene.
After Yo Yo Honey Singh‘s meteoric rise and sudden fall (due to a mental disorder), India saw a huge number of commercial rappers like Badshah, Raftaar, Ikka, and more who garnered their own niche with their huge pop rap singles and Bollywood numbers like Raftaar’s mega-hit “Swag mera” desi and Badshah’s party favorite “Saturday Saturday” due to which “Rap” went on to become just a 30 to a 60-second bridge in the middle of these commercial dance numbers which was being added in hope to reach out to the Indian youth and increase the song’s retention value therefore, containing simple and mostly nonsensical lyrics in order to resonate with the Indian teens.
Amidst this Bollywood rap wave, an extremely underground community was slowly gaining attention which was termed as the Desi Hip Hop community (Desi Hip Hop – term said to be popularised by the Pakistani-American rapper Bohemia). Although the underground rap scene in India saw its first breakout with Young Prozpekt’s (Currently known as KR$NA) 2010 single “Kaisa Mera Desh” which charted at number 2 on the YouTube trending charts a day after it was released, The Indian Underground rap scene still did not have a huge audience up till 2016 with the rise of rappers like Divine and Naezy. Naezy is credited for being the first underground rapper who made an entire hardcore lyrical rap song in Hindi called “Aafat” which was released in 2014 on Naezy’s YouTube channel and was recorded and shot on an iPad gifted to him by his Dad. Right around this time, Rapper DIVINE switched from making songs in English to rapping in Hindi and the two underdogs collaborated for the song Mere Gully Mein which later went on to get Co-signed by the popular music composer and Singer Vishal Dadlani and was later re-released by Sony Music India. Divine’s hard-hitting lyrics with local slang resonated with the youth across India and he went on to become a phenomenon. The DHH scene saw its biggest breakout in 2018 this is when I discovered this community which had an extremely loyal and niche fan following and to no one’s surprise it was due to the massive Rap feud between the, then Underdog Rapper, Emiway Bantai and one of the OGs of DHH (Desi Hip Hop) scene, Rapper Raftaar. The feud started over an interview between Raaj Jones and Raftaar where Raftaar stated his opinion about the live events situation in DHH back then and mentioned Emiway Bantai as an example. Emiway, who was about to get signed under Raftaar’s music label immediately replied to the interview with a diss track targeted towards Raftaar along with Divine and MC STAN called “Samajh Mein Aaya Kya”. This led to a back-and-forth of diss tracks by both the rappers Raftaar and Emiway and this rap beef garnered a huge audience for the underground rap scene, currently the diss tracks have an accumulated YouTube view of a staggering 600 million. Emiway Bantai grew to prominence after this beef and right after the beef came to an end, Excel Entertainment and Zoya Akhtar announced their film Gully Boy loosely based on the lives of rappers Divine and Naezy with Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt in the lead roles. The film went on to become a box office hit and suddenly India saw a huge wave of underground rappers paving their way to the charts. The Desi Hip Hop community has been on a massive rise since then and currently is attracting a huge number of people. Rappers Like Seedhe Maut, KR$NA, ChaarDiwaari, Yashraj, Talha Anjum, and many more have risen to great prominence and are selling out venues across the country. The music is different from anything India has ever heard before and personally, I think this is not even half the recognition this genre is about to witness in the coming years with a lot of record labels and businessmen investing in this Scene. Recently the Malyali rapper HanumanKind witnessed global recognition with his single “Big Dawgs” which charted on the Billboard 200 charts in the Top 10 which is still a dream for many major mainstream artists in India. HanumanKind very recently performed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Modi & US” Event in New York which is a commendable feat considering that his music was very underground before his Hit single. Before I put the last full stop to this article, Here are some of my recommendations for Underground DHH rappers who deserve to get noticed by the masses:-
1. Rebel 7
2. The Siege
3. Shreyas Sagvekar
4. Frappe Ash
5. Rawal
Thank you for reading the article, drop your recommendations in the comments and let us know your current favorite DHH artists.
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