I recorded a chill hip-hop / R&B / afro set at my house in BLR recently, to complement a real-time visual of the weather outside. You might want to listen to it while reading this, especially since this is also about music :)

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Sometime earlier this month, one Saturday night, me, my girlfriend, and my flatmate (and one of my closest buddies) were on a YouTube trip.

We were looking for videos that showed the samples behind popular Bollywood songs. Most of these videos were naturally wowing us; we were in awe of the creativity of our producers who took from international tunes and gave them an Indian veneer to make them popular forever.

One producer in particular took so much from Turkish music specifically that I was lowkey impressed by his plagiarism. In other words, he was commodifying Turkish music for Indian markets. He’s far from the only Indian culprit, but he is the most infamous one. I am, of course, talking about Pritam.

I think it’s hard to not be impressed by him, and I say this begrudgingly. Pritam has topped so many people’s Spotify Wrapped lists that the streaming age just amplified his already-outsized impact. He’s the culmination of what commodified music looks like, and I don’t mean that in a purely bad way. He has an ear for what really works, and will literally go any distance to find those tunes (even Turkey), and his ability to go that distance is backed by a strong team/label.

Anyway, the next Sunday morning after belting some tight ghee podi masala dosa for Sunday breakfast, I was chatting with my girlfriend about Campa Cola.I know, it was an enthralling conversation to have on a Sunday morning. From Pritam to Campa Cola, really?

But I’ll make a connection between them soon. At work, I was writing on the strategy Reliance was pursuing in order to get Indians to consume a cola that, for once, was made in India. My girlfriend’s job involves doing a lot of market research to see what people like their fast-moving consumer goods to have or to say.

Both of us felt like Reliance was attempting to brute-force their way into an industry dominated by two American giants (and some local players that I like) — the same way it did in the telecom industry when it launched Jio some years ago. Few markets feel as saturated as the one for soft drinks, though. Unless your formula is truly different, Coca-Cola will remain the de facto synonym for cola. It’s a proper noun that became a daily-usage verb of its own, which is not a phenomenon too many others can claim to have effected.

But that’s the thing — cola is commodified to an extent that few things could possibly change the market further. What else can Campa Cola do, really? I mean, sure, nationalism sells, so it’s doing that, but it certainly doesn’t sell more than the idea that your product a) shouldn’t suck, and b) should at least be available on the shelves of your nearest kirana store (see the comments section on this video to see what I mean). The brand itself has a lot of nostalgia, but Campa is purely a country for old men — I’m fairly certain Gen Z couldn’t care less for it.

So, Reliance does what it does best — drop its prices so low that everyone is compelled to take notice. Because how else do you commodify a market that’s already commodified? You know how there’s that saying from Jeff Bezos about someone else’s margin being his opportunity? That’s usually true, but Reliance would go so far as to say that unless your bottom-line is painted bloody red, you’ve barely tasted opportunity.

This piece isn’t about cola, obviously. It has more relevance to the Saturday night we looked into Pritam’s work than the morning after. But somehow, somewhere, Campa Cola and Pritam represent the same things. They are both symbols of commodification, embodying the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all.

But Pritam was an edge case of success that people actually appreciate for the creativity involved, despite the “popular music” tag it gets. If you’ve been paying attention — or not, because your lack of it may be precisely why it hasn’t worked — Bollywood music has been sucking big time. None of the tunes really sound memorable anymore. They’re copies of commodified afro house music, and being a copy of a fake sounds like drugged-out people playing musical chairs in hell. A sonic nightmare blunt rotation.

I have no idea why I’m writing this per se. It isn’t even an out-and-out takedown of commodification, but rather why it’s important to remember that music fundamentally resists it. Music isn’t like other commodities that are mass-produced — it’s not cars, it’s not TVs, and it’s certainly not cola. To view music as a vehicle for short-term profits defeats the purpose of not just music but also profit.

It’s the artistic equivalent of “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” and I’m mostly here to say why. Unlike a lot of my pieces, this won’t take long.

Popularity contests

I’d like to start by saying that the commodification of music is mostly inevitable.

However, I don’t say this necessarily with a lot of cynicism. It doesn’t have to be all bad. If you’re AR Rahman putting basslines in your music when no one else did, that will catch a lot of notice. It will get more producers to do the same, because before ARR, it felt unintuitive, and now it looks profitable. And sure, they might not do it as well, but they know that this is the new wave of music. They might as well die trying to copy it badly rather than not at all.

Certain waves of commodification were genuinely quite good. Take, for instance, the dance-pop wave. Artists like Madonna figured out that pop could really benefit from a splash of disco and house music elements. So, she made songs that exemplified those elements, like Vogue, Into The Groove, and countless other hits. Every female popstar who came after her, from Kylie Minogue to Britney Spears, owed tribute to Madonna for starting that wave.

Marketing is a key part of commodification. Popular music needs a story that can be advertised on the biggest screen possible. For Kanye West, it was the idea that hip-hop lacked the feel that would ensure it gets played the same way in huge stadiums as “Bohemian Rhapsody” — which was how Graduation was born. For 50 Cent, while it wasn’t orchestrated, it was getting shot right before the release of Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ (touche). For The Weeknd, it was, well, sex and drugs wrapped in a persona which he probably actually doesn’t share a lot with. And every artist who’s come after each of these guys I’ve mentioned here has tried to emulate their style and success.

And it’s much better when there’s competition involved. Tupac and Biggie, Shreya Ghoshal and Sunidhi Chauhan, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, Britney Spears (who did a Pepsi ad) and Christina Aguilera (Coke). These rivalries are almost entirely commercial, often the product of myth-building done by fanbases. They’re hardly planned, and even when they are (by labels), it’s mostly just for show.

Now, what you read was commodification through marketing. There is also the technology side of things. Until the advent of music software, you could only use instruments to make music — maybe a beat machine, if you could get one for cheap. The computer made music production accessible to anyone with a laptop. You didn’t need a physical guitar anymore to recreate its twang, you could get FLStudio to do it for you.

I’m not really sympathetic to the arguments against technology in music. There used to be a time when electronic music was called inorganic simply because it didn’t involve real instruments. But this argument always mistook a touch-and-feel sensibility for musical authenticity. You couldn’t possibly argue after listening to Daft Punk’s Discovery that it didn’t rouse you like a rock band would. That it didn’t come from the heart just because the music was made with buttons. The method may be unconventional, but the music was always real.

But more importantly, this argument represented a fear that did not ever fully realize itself — that instruments would cease to be used altogether. That is hardly true. Music is a game of skill whose value lies in not in capability, but creation. Now, the gear you might use to play that game might change — the piano is just one form factor of music. For all you know, music can be made by banging your slippers in rhythm, and anyone can do it. We have never, ever stopped observing the game itself, be it drum solos or slick transitions on a DJ console.

This is also why I don’t get the complaint of there being too many DJs. That every cheeky bugger with a $100 console is calling themselves a DJ. My answer is: let them? DJ technology dropped the cost curve for DJing for so many people, that you could do without buying expensive vinyl sets to start doing some sweet transitions. Like, this YouTube comment doesn’t sit well with me.

Think Different

Which lands me to what you were probably expecting this piece to say. That commodification isn’t really as high and dandy as I make it out to be.

That’s obviously true. Between Spotify getting AI bands to chart on its most popular playlists, to afro house being fully butchered by certain artists (yes, I mean Keinemusik), brute-forcing music for profit has had its fair share of pure rumble-and-tumbles. Commodification makes chasing hits (as opposed to discovering them in a trial-and-error process) the name of the game. And that game can be ugly when it’s played without any consideration of the roots of that music. This neither involves good marketing nor a technological shift.

Obviously, while enabling the marketing layer further, social media has amplified this problem I’ve mentioned above to an unfathomable degree. You may have read Ted Gioia’s wonderful (and scary) piece on enshittification and dopamine culture. And you’ve probably seen this chart of his.

But it was never my intention to really elaborate upon these well-known complaints. What I’m really here to say is that some of these cheap tricks to get people to consume music are, from a music business point-of-view, futile business moves in the long run. When you hear enough complaints about music being a certain way, you can almost always guarantee that the status quo won’t last forever. People always use their brains, they aren’t idiots.

Take this reel about DJ gigs being commercialized like music festivals. I’d like you to watch it, because the guy is spot on with how intimate club gigs have turned into commercial festivals, where every moment isn’t optimized for dancing but for shareable Instagram content.

Now, he’s right in almost everything he says. Almost, not because I disagree with him, but because he misses something: that private equity fundamentally misunderstands music as a commodity. The revenue extraction-risk minimization model he talks about has an obvious (and I think short) lifespan. When one risk gets minimized, other risks open up.

Why are DJ gigs being festivalized? It’s to farm content on social media — so it only works as long as social media content pays. What happens when, well, the payouts from content start dipping? What happens when people start getting tired of the music? What happens when in your 6 DJ lineup, 5 have the same 2 songs? That’s when people start asking “where’s the skill in this, anyone can play a popular song and get away with it?” I mean, for ages, people have already been asking what the skill is in being a DJ. There’s no doubt they’ll ask similar questions about club gigs.

The problem with commoditizing something is that sooner or later, you get bored of your commodity. There’s always room for something new and shiny, and that depends on how differentiated the product can get. You got the latest FIFA game? Congratulations for wearing the clown hat, it looks the same as the last one. Nothing feels new about it. The latest iPhone has no new features, Huawei’s and OnePlus’ products look better. As long as there’s scope to make a differentiated product, the status quo is always going to fall short, and that’s worth remembering.

Nowhere is this more potent than in music. Product differentiation is extremely high in music, even if, in the short-term, it helps to just make more of the same. Why music has a lot of product differentiation is because authenticity is a big part of how we consume music. We value artists who tell great, new stories.

After Bob Dylan was found by Columbia Records, the hunt was on for the next Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan (and American folk music broadly) was now the effective commodity. Labels were producing cheap Bob Dylan-esque ripoffs to cash in on the wave. If this sounds familiar, you can replace “Bob Dylan” with “iPhone”.

Except, a) looking at folk music the same way as smartphones is stupid because of how different they are in product type, and b) the wave of American folk music (like many other genres) eventually died out. There was never really going to be another Bob Dylan, he was one of one, a unique medley of the times he lived in and the lives he interacted with. Bob Dylan had become the solution to a problem that didn’t exist before he was discovered. His stardom caused a new cash grab that yielded pretty middling results.

And you could name plenty of genres like that that died naturally. American folk, grunge, Britpop — all products of a certain time. What I really wonder is how many genres went through the same miserable cycle of labels looking for the next Bob Dylan / Nirvana / Coldplay, effectively putting blinders on changing the paradigm of music altogether by searching for new, unique artists.

If you want an easy parallel to understand this, just look at Bollywood. Its problem statement has always been framed as: “how do we replace the stardom of Shah Rukh Khan”? But what it should probably be is: “how do we find good talent?” At the risk of oversimplification (I’m willing to take my chances), the stagnation of that industry can be boiled down to this error — to the point where the current solution to replacing SRK is….get his son on-screen?

Turns out, the music industry is not that different, because how it treats (or mistreats) new blood is a pretty good symptom for how that industry will evolve. Double-click on this next video to see what I mean (not from the start, but from the given timestamp) — just watch 20 seconds.

In fact, much like with music today, private equity once tried to enter film and was likely met with a similar backlash about money spoiling the art. But, interestingly, PE got their hands burnt. The risk-reward ratio in the film industry was too high for them to get into the game again. And much like music, films have massive potential for product differentiation. Look where making all those shitty Marvel movies has landed Disney today — at the risk of being a dying company that simply can’t innovate anymore.

I found this fun comment on Reddit about investing in film, which emphasized that success hinged primarily on loving films. I expect funds to come to a similar realization about club gigs and music festivals — that why people love a certain piece of music or film matters a lot to any business model in the entertainment industry.

How I look at a phenomenon like the festivalization of club gigs is similar to how, at some point in the last 10 years, every product was subject to the subscription model. Digital goods, physical goods, didn’t matter. People thought subscriptions would become the one-size-fits-all dominant business model in the world. That has obviously not turned out to be true anymore.

Authenticity is baked into how we consume music and even produce music — even if it’s hardly mixed and mastered. There has never been a time when we didn’t like our music to have stories. And that has never changed — not just for music, but for every commodity in Ted Gioia’s chart except handwritten letters. We still hugely value real film, real journalism, probably more so because they look really good today in contrast to the stink coming from short-form content.

As long as you’re looking at music from an inauthentic lens, sooner or later, the chicken always comes home to roost for your business metrics.

The New Abnormal

What the brute-force commodification of music misses is how innovation in music happens in the first place.

Let’s go back to that Bob Dylan story. I’ve narrated this story before, but if you haven’t read the piece where I did it — Columbia had no faith in him. They absolutely didn’t think he would be a rockstar or American folk music would be a hit. But music scout John Hammond played hardball with his label and convinced them otherwise. Of course, since then, they knew not to doubt Hammond’s ear (they did once more, though, with Leonard Cohen).

Music is never planned. It’s tinkered upon at the margins, like the early caveman hitting at two stones randomly only to realize that this produces a spark that can light a fire. You have to love it a lot to keep tinkering at that one snare drum for 2 years until it sounds like magic. You’ll know when you’ll have struck gold. You’ll have the kind of face that JAY-Z had in Timbaland’s studio when he first heard the beat that would eventually become “Dirt On Your Shoulder”.

Second is a trend that music industry professionals have been keenly watching (see the tweet screenshot below). The product differentiation so inherent to music has been translating to a more natural outcome — that of niche fandoms. The end state that many project for this is that the future of music won’t be marked by a few superstars at the top (as has been the case for long), but many mid-tier stars who have sizeable (but not Taylor Swift-level) fanbases. The end state may not be as strong, but it’s certainly headed there, and it’s partly because of the type of commodity music is.

If you think about it, it’s not that far off from the restaurant space. You have your big chains and all that, but you know the gourmet shit only comes from that one restaurant that few frequent: but those who do, they swear by it.

This decentralization has larger implications: what does it mean for mass production in music (and artistic industries overall)? Certain genres/industries did follow a factory model (see: K-Pop), but it soon lands into a diminishing returns problem. Even if the factory model isn’t borderline exploitative, and is just your average team of songwriters, engineers and marketers surrounded by a popstar, it still doesn’t solve the problem of discovery. Your label-assembled rockstar team is now an echo chamber with little outside connection to the independent / underground scene.

And this is going to be even more painful in the AI age, where the pop song faces further devaluation. Platforms like Suno will swing the pendulum in the opposite direction — where being authentic matters more than ever. For the record, we’re seeing this exact pendulum swing in the writing field.

With music, one is hopeful about decentralization driven by a confluence of a) granular marketing, b) better technology, c) a more demanding, less voluminous fanbase that wants to see you live. This, in turn, might render a mass production mindset more useless than ever. This isn’t to say labels will stop existing, but it is to say that how they operate now might need re-thinking.

I’m mostly sending in this draft unedited (I probably should have checked it with a friend in the music industry), so I had no real agenda to push here that I haven’t pushed already.

If you’ve been a reader of Hot Chips, you probably already know that music is something I feel strongly about. And it matters to me that good music gets out there. Big star, small indie player, doesn’t matter.

Over time, this involves asking a lot of questions. Is popular music necessarily always good? What does it mean to be “making music for yourself”, considering that we always feel the need to have an audience for our art? What does it mean to consume art?

I don’t have clear answers to any of these questions. But what I do know is that no matter what, one thing is constant: more often than not, good music wins. Conversely, complacency in music never helps. It’s the beginning of your descent as a musician who builds and curates new tastes.

There’s always going to be good music. And, like always, it’ll come from places you’ll never expect, in ways you’d never imagined, with emotions you’re yet to discover.

I would have recorded a new set for the purpose of this piece, but I’ve been moving plenty recently (more on that at the very end) and was only able to unpack my console a week ago. I’ve been writing this piece at orderless intervals, whenever I found time. But I hope that by the end of the piece, the set a) gets you dancing and b) makes sense to you.

And hi, it’s been a while :)

As a kid, I used to learn Hindustani classical music.

I was pretty good at it. I had a grade of approval from one of those places of learning (I don’t remember which one) and was asked repeatedly to sing at society functions. My teacher was also our neighbor with who we continue to share strong camaraderie as a family. She lives on the 7th floor, while we live in the 3rd, to this date. I would find myself taking the elevator to go to class every other day, right after school and before cricket with the boys.

In all honesty, I found ragas boring. I found little reason to exert my vocal cords to pitch levels that only made sense to make if I were dying. Bhairon, Bhairav, they all sounded the same to me. I don’t mean disrespect to the craft or to my sweet neighbor. But I wanted to get out of her house to go play outside as soon as possible. I was good at it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to do it forever.

My parents tell me that my first words in kindergarten were actually lyrics. My KG teacher had a hard time talking to me, seeing as how I mostly spoke in songs. I was potty-trained to the B4U Music channel, because I was too stubborn to learn another way. It wasn’t eating and watching TV that was my bad habit — in fact, it was exactly the inverse activity of eating.

But I suppose my parents figured out that I loved music, and they would do everything to nurture a sense of ambition in that direction. Of course, I got sent to learn the most obvious hobby someone with a sweet, moldable voice could pick up in India. I don’t remember what specifically led me to quitting music classes. My parents, especially my father, would try to inculcate in me an appreciation for our national traditional arts. As a teen, he was involved in the Hyderabad chapter of SPICMACAY. But I could not care less than I already did about the ustads of the world. Sorry, Pa.

Instead, what did pique my interest was all the other music that was out there in the world. It was the “Life In A Metro” soundtrack, that me and my parents would find every opportunity to sing-along with. “O Meri Jaan” was a favorite to play in the car. I would skip “Alvida” because it sounded too sad, much to my mom’s chagrin.

There was tons and tons of Bryan Adams — I was a huge fan of Heaven. When I first heard “With Or Without You” by U2, I knew this song would stay with me forever. We had no pause button when it came to Eagles and Hotel California. For many years, I had no idea that the version of Hotel California I kept hearing at home was not the original — it was the Hell Freezes Overr version. But neither of these versions is the best. That, I owe to The Big Lebowski.

Because The Internet

I may not fully know why I lost touch with my Indian roots, but I do recall clearly the moment I discovered a world of music that I thought my parents might secretly disapprove of.

I was at the house of one of the guys who I played cricket with. He was a bit of an asshole, a classic older dude who used the privilege of being older than us to bully us fairly often. None of the moms in the neighborhood liked him, and we were always warned of hanging out around him. However, one day at his house, he played this foreign-sounding tune. It was a Japanese-seeming guy rapping over a piano instrumental, and one other white guy doing the singing.

The song was called “In The End”.

I’d found God, and it was a collective called Linkin Park. I proceeded to remember every single song on their debut album, Hybrid Theory, be it a blood-curling hit like Crawling, or some deep cut like A Place For My Head. I read up on their history, mugged up the lyrics to Meteora, and waited for every new release. Linkin Park, and Green Day soon after, were all I wanted to hear. The Eagles of the world could now fly away from this nest of mine as far as I was concerned.

This was also my introduction to YouTube, which was barely 2-3 years old at the time. I had no idea how it would revolutionize my future digital consumption and learning. I also learned how to dig into torrents and why seeding was so important. Unfortunately, my internet connection was supplied by BSNL.

By this time, my parents put me in synthesizer classes. I really enjoyed them, because I now had the chance to re-create songs I loved, like the “In The End” instrumental. In my free time, I’d load up my small Casio keyboard and practice a sequence of keys that I thought would lead me to the desired result. I couldn’t get enough of it.

Unfortunately, my synth teacher was pretty hell bent on getting me to just learn the keys to “Ajeeb Dastaan Hai Yeh” and “Pehla Nasha”, and not much else. It was a struggle to get him to open his ears to a different world of sound.

My cousins from Hyderabad would sometimes come over and introduce me to more music. That’s how I heard tracks like “Like A G6”, a bunch of Pitbull, a bunch of Enrique, lots of Akon, and among all the pop hits of the 2000s, “Stronger” and “Empire State of Mind” stood out.

The elder cousin was a die-hard fan of Eminem. He had pirated every album Slim Shady had ever made. To my parents, Kanye West and Slim Shady represented creative destruction — both in the sense of the new replacing the old (and their discomfort with that), and a threat to their perceptions of what makes the “wholeness” of music. To be honest, if I were a dad and heard my kid bopping to “You could be my black Kate Moss tonight” I’d feel like censoring it out too.

I didn’t care. I felt like I perceived music in a whole new fashion that I couldn’t explain it at the time. I knew music was meant to be fused, tried, experimented on. I could be anything as long as there was melody involved. If Mike Shinoda rapped over one of these ragas, I’d probably have benefited from that approach a lot more than what my dad would have invented. We aren’t there yet, but we’re close.

But my parents were always supportive no matter the musical style. My dad bought an iPod classic when he went to the US on a work trip. In the beginning, I had to ask him to load songs onto iTunes, because I didn’t know how downloading things online worked. That iPod saw me through some key phases of my pre-teens — be it the time “American Idiot” was on replay every day, or when I openly advocated for Limp Bizkit’s twisted musical supremacy (I still do, albeit discreetly). Or the time I had “Love Story” on loop while vacationing in Munnar, Kerala — yes, I had a small Fearless phase.

Only much later—combined with the powers of piracy and an upgraded computer—did I realize that I could load a ton of songs into my pocket. When my younger brother threw down the iPod with some disgust a couple of years later, I had the strong urge to indulge in a little human trafficking. In other words, I felt like every other slighted elder sibling in the world.

I used to get what’s new in the world of music from VH1. I’d look forward to checking out their Top Ten Hits every other day. When I’d tune into Top Ten, I’d always wonder what the background music behind the program was. Only nearly a decade later did I conclude that Daft Punk’s Robot Rock sounded exactly like it. Through VH1, I learnt about David Guetta, Usher, Alanis Morrissette, Kelly Clarkson, LMFAO, pretty much all of the early 2010s. Party rock was in the house every night with me.

I never got the hype around Bangarang, back when Skrillex the world’s most infamous musician. And I truly, madly, deeply hated “Get Lucky”. I hated that it was so infectiously recall-worthy, even if I didn’t take to the melody. It took me a long while to admit to myself that I really enjoyed it. I had absolutely no idea how important Daft Punk would be to me a few years later when I would listen to “Random Access Memories” in its entirety. I had no idea how important Skrillex would be to me in a few years’ time when I would re-discover his later work.

And for me, the news of the death of rock was greatly exaggerated. VH1 introduced me to Foo Fighters in 2011. I had no idea what their legacy was back then, but I was aware that they had a new album called “Wasting Light”. I heard Rope and Walk and knew that I had to be a rockstar in life like Dave Grohl. I did not know how important the release of this album was at the time for rock as a whole. For me, the U2s and Linkin Parks of the world were still as relevant as ever.

I was fully tuned into Western pop. I enjoyed Macklemore and never understood the hate he got; Imagine Dragons were obviously a thing (“It’s Time” > Radioactive), Katy Perry was still a hitmaker bar none, Adele was the world’s best singer. Royals was a bop. If I liked what I was hearing, it went on my iPod. For some reason, I was also into Muse. The drone of Uprising was very fascinating to hear every time a VH1 ad played it. It took me months to find out what song it was, and that too because I chanced upon the music video randomly. If only I had Shazam back then.

When I first heard Animals by Martin Garrix, I felt I’d entered a brave new world — one that broke every rule of music I was taught. None of the sounds seemed to come from strings or conventional instruments. It sounded space-y, and the EDM artists seemed to be very self-aware about this trait of their genre. This was the era of big room house.

In this while. I moved more and more away from Bollywood. I used to shun all Hindi music, actively believing the genre to be vastly inferior to the production quality I was hearing elsewhere.

As you could probably tell by now, I was a finicky-as-fuck listener of music. If it didn’t click in the first 30 seconds, I dropped the song. Never mind warnings of the attention economy and deficit today, I was already functioning on a short-term span of focus before Instagram became a thing. I have corrected my ways since then but I also didn’t search for The Weeknd’s work beyond “The Hills” for a short-yet-shameful amount of time. A hit was a hit, and unless the artist was truly exceptional and revolutionary (like Linkin Park was), I wasn’t compelled to be more curious about their broader discography.

This might be probably why by the tenth grade, I’d created my own perceptions of what music was to me, effectively erring the same way my music teachers or my parents did. I didn’t realize that I was succumbing to the same syndrome without understanding that everything I was hearing had rules, too. They were just more fashionable. I’d made the rules to seemingly appear “cool”.

But pop music thrived on repetitive patterns, had the same song structure and synth lines, and it didn’t go beyond the same 4-5 moods. Sometimes just straight up a copy of a popular Y2K song. New rules.

While what I found lacking in Bollywood music is still fairly relevant, such criticisms could really apply to any new genre I was hooked on to at any given time. Big room house just became more of the same beat drop, and the rest of the song didn’t seem to matter to anyone. If the drop sucked, so did the song, and that isn’t good song structure by any means. That was where EDM seemed to be headed.

At around the same time, some weird phenomenon called “mumble rap” had surfaced on the internet. I, an easily impressionable teenager, went along with the usual “this isn’t real rap” narrative everyone else was driving. I was a bit too bound by my rules to realize that I actually quite liked what it had to offer. It defied purist notions of music while still sounding coherent.

After the smashing of the iPod classic, with some appeasement, a Nano 6th Generation was purchased on the event of my 12th birthday. I was pretty pissed that I couldn’t fit any games onto that device. I wore the Nano like a watch once I got a band for it from Dubai. It was cool, but I had no idea it would become a mere collector’s item due to the advent of smartphones.

In 8th grade, my parents had gifted me a smartphone — a cheaper variant of the Sony Xperia line. It was far easier to rip music and load it onto your phone than have a middleman software like iTunes do the job. It still took me a while to graduate from the iPod, I was really attached to it.

Learning Curve

Come 2017. I was in 12th grade, and my biggest motivation by then was to get into the hallows of Delhi University’s North Campus. I’d set my sights on ripping apart the CBSE syllabus, which required a lot of motivational music. 2017 was the year I dove into hip-hop. Most importantly, I discovered an artist with two first names, who had released a music video with Don Cheadle. It was called “DNA”.

I don’t think my YouTube had ever seen such an abuse of the replay button before. I would roll back the seek nonstop to the point where the beat switch takes place. That was the first time I experienced a beat switch in any shape or form. I was hearing a vocal sample that sounded like a news bite (it was). It wasn’t like any other rap song I’d heard earlier. It switched flows seamlessly between two different beats while continuing to sound cohesive. I had decided that this Kendrick Lamar needs to be studied more. He was breaking rules that I thought would apply to music forever.

I heard everything he had to offer. I heard his singles, “To Pimp A Butterfly”, “Good Kid m.A.A.d City”, all in the time I was prepping for my boards. I saw the trailer for Black Panther, which was soundtracked by “Legend Has It”. That was my formal introduction to Run The Jewels, even though I had no idea who Killer Mike was and how important he was to American hip-hop. Closer to release date, I was more hyped for the album accompanying the movie than the movie itself. The album curation and production was led by Kendrick Lamar, after all.

I watched Straight Outta Compton some 10-15 times after it was first released. As a kid, I’d keep an eye out for Oscar season and the films that made the lists. Films around music were my favorite. After Whiplash came out, I fell in love with the soundtrack. But if you asked me a thing about Miles Davis or Charlie Parker beyond what was said in the movie, I’d have nothing. I love movie soundtracks.

I couldn’t tell you who the Nine Inch Nails were, but I could recite you every musical note ever pronounced in The Social Network. Not only do I owe my discovery of Trent Reznor to this movie, but also my love for the legendary White Stripes. They are my favorite rock band/duo of all time simply because I heard Ball and Biscuit in the iconic opening scene. I knew who Jack White was as a kid, because his solo career was being massively advertise on VH1 in 2014. I did not put 2 and 2 together right then to realize he’s the same guy in Seven Nation Army.

But what really convinced me that they were among the best of their peers was listening to their cover of Jolene.

The Big Short was why I tried my hand at metal. I wasn’t too gung-ho on Metallica and had only heard snippets of their work, but listening to Master of Puppets while seeing Michael Burry’s premiums on his mortgage-backed securities rise without reason did something to me. Or when he was casually just drawing down the overall return on his investment on the whiteboard every passing day while some destructive screaming played behind him. The Big Short was my gateway into Pantera. God bless Pantera, they deserved to have a longer career.

8 Mile left a deep impression on me. The movie was really good, and of course it has Lose Yourself. But it was the battle rap at the end that I was awestruck by. One of the greatest double entenderes that I’ve heard to this date comes from Eminem / Rabbit’s 2nd round battle with Lotto:

“My motto, fuck Lotto, I’ll get the 7 digits from your mother for a dollar tomorrow.”

Rabbit’s mother was inconsistently employed and was heavily dependent on monthly lottery tickets to change her fortunes and get out of the abusive relationship she was in with his step-dad. Rabbit uses that lived experience (and those of his peers) to diss Lotto and say that he’ll get the winning numbers for the local tambola from his mom for cheap. However, by “getting digits”, he also means that he’ll get her phone number from a pimp for sex instead of from Lotto.

For the budding writer in me, this vulgarity opened up a whole world of possibilities that went beyond the drab Shakespeare I was reading in class — we had “The Merchant of Venice”. I deeply enjoyed that battle rap was highly competitive to the point that it could be humiliating for the loser.

Inspired by such excellent lyricism, I tried my hand at poetry. My teenage poetry was just a series of attempts to make pun after pun and rhyme after rhyme. It is deeply embarrassing to look back at it now, especially since my teen self took pride in such writing.

But I wrote a lot in 2017, the same year I started coursing through the rap encyclopedia. In the span of the last week of May that year, I wrote 2 short pieces on my seemingly groundbreaking thoughts on music. I wrote about my love for “DNA” and modified the lyrics to give it a more Indian feel — it is terrible and I’m never sharing that with the rest of the world.

6 days after that, I wrote a short tidbit on how much I disliked Attention by Charlie Puth, even though I didn’t realize that while I found the vocals annoying, I enjoyed the anti-drop. This fact will be important towards the end of the story.

Now that rap was cool, pop wasn’t. I had become a devotee of Kanye West, the man who made that bitch famous. I could not hide my disdain for modern pop and its shitty rules and how bland it sounded. Like, I had become “Taylor Swift sucks and she did not deserve to win the Grammy over To Pimp A Butterfly in 2015” levels of annoying. The new cool kids on the Pranav Manie playlist block were Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Run The Jewels, Migos, and just about whoever was popular in rap.

Until now, if you suspected that rap was also going to be a passing phase for the low-attention span person like me, I would not blame you. But it has stuck with me since. I update my hip-hop omnibus playlist on Spotify to this day with new hip-hop tracks. The playlist is 104 hours long.

One of my foundational hip-hop albums was Pusha-T’s Daytona. The only real reason I knew it existed is because 2018 was the year we saw Kanye enter his “dragon energy”, brewing controversy on the daily and telling us that he hates being bipolar, it’s awesome. He also produced 4 albums (including his own, Ye) successively in a long stretch, now known collectively as his Wyoming Sessions. Daytona was one of them.

The beats on it ranged from bleak and sparse to luxurious and lush with piano. And what album is only 7 songs long? Why is this artist spending all of his 7 songs to rap about cocaine? But those questions didn’t matter by the time I finished listening to all of them. The fact that he could rap about cocaine in so many different ways with so many different wordplay schemes put shame to the permutations & combinations chapter in my Maths book. And Pusha gave us a life-ending, filthy diss track in its aftermath. I spent a lot of time dissecting the Drake diss bars.

School’s Out Forever

I entered college in 2018. All I heard in that first year was rap. I was the go-to guy in my quizzing and debating clubs for all things hip-hop. It was frustratingly obvious to everyone that I listened to hardly anything else. I was a fairly standard listener and watcher of most American culture and did not pay much heed to anything desi.

But living in Delhi is a wonderful experience as a music listener. College was my first whirlwind of emotions, especially for a homebody like me. Living alone, stumbling as an almost-adult, navigating student life and finding my tribe, figuring out what I like doing and how to sustain it, and doing all of that in a city I’ve always wanted to be in. All of this required a soundtrack to help me out.

College is also a time you break perceptions of the world, form new ones, and start to get challenged about what you think you know. It’s probably not a coincidence, then, that as college progressed, I felt more and more similarly about music. That it was not supposed to have rules.

I found myself uncontrollably breaking into dance whenever and wherever “Emosanal Attyachaar” was played. “Wake Up Sid” was required watching because I realized I didn’t know how to make eggs either — currently, I can make you a killer grilled cheese egg bacon sandwich. This meant that Iktara was required listening. My seniors made me watch Khosla Ka Ghosla in the middle of the night as a fresher and I could not be more grateful that I did not sleep then. I was finding out what it means to enjoy culture without pre-conceptions, to quote the great Giorgio Moroder.

Speaking of who — I heard Random Access Memories for the first time in this phase of life which led to me going through Daft Punk’s entire catalog. I let music make me tear up when it had to — the way Giorgio By Moroder did when I heard it first — or make me feel high without a drug. There was a song for every moment and every phase of life. I didn’t really sing or play an instrument any longer, but I was never more attuned to what the music was trying to tell me.

When CoVID disrupted my final year, I didn’t have much to rely on except music. But I never consumed music in escapist defiance. On the contrary, I use it to integrate myself with my surroundings. The song that I’m playing at any given moment has to resonate with how I’m interacting with the rest of the world.

And at the time, I was mentally in the gutter. Some of the top songs on my Spotify Wrapped that year — “Present Tense” by Pearl Jam, “Motion Sickness” by Phoebe Bridgers, “Karma Police” by Radiohead, “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” by Bob Dylan. Holy quartet of overthinking and anxiety.

A lot of songs came from the soundtrack of The Sopranos. I watched a lot of golden age TV in that period, and that also informed my playlists — like Mazzy Star’s “Look On Down From The Bridge”. Plenty of rap and rock to keep me afloat — Run The Jewels, Denzel Curry and Riz Ahmed took out new albums that year, and Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana and pre-Stadium Arcadium-era RHCP were repeat customers. Of course, there was always hype music for the times I needed it.

As the wave slowly but surely simmered down, the sounds in my ears became more joyful, energetic. I was reconnecting with friends, especially those who lived close to me. Moments like those would have me playing Real Friends by Kanye West, or warm Elliott Smith that would make me feel nice. I heard a lot of new hopeful, optimistic music in the year that I would keep with me forever. It got me to writing one of the first pieces on Medium (here) that would pave the path towards this newsletter.

For the first time in 2021, I was also exposed to desi hip-hop. This was around the time college was supposed to end for me, but our (remote) exams had been postponed. My introduction to the niche was Seedhe Maut — I felt like personally dapping them up when I heard Namastute for the first time. It was what I’d been waiting for all my life. It was Hindi rap that sounded ferocious.

My 2021 Spotify Wrapped stood in walking contradiction to 2020. Desi headbanger after desi headbanger, male rapper after male rapper, interspersed with all-male rock bands, giving a little way to some introspective tracks — particularly, Father John Misty’s Leaving LA was medicine to cope with college ending — but then back to male rappers, especially Kanye with the release of Donda.

I was also extremely restless in 2021. I wanted to move out of home and experience the outside world, especially now that I had a job. I was done living in a nuclear fallout shelter-like situation. When I did get out there, I wanted to maximize for life experiences within the means of my budget constraint. I hadn’t really been to gigs while in college, an attitude that I decisively changed starting with Seedhe Maut’s first show of their tour that year.

Living in Delhi-NCR as someone with a job has been far more liberating for me than living as a student. Besides the 9-5, everyday seemed like something new was waiting to unfold. This was aided by my ever-deeper dive into Delhi’s burgeoning hip-hop scene, and the unfortunate peak of the side of me that enjoys Drake. There were new albums from Kendrick Lamar, Pusha-T and J.I.D that were on rotation — all 3 albums were in my top 5 that year. I went to more hip-hop gigs that blew my mind.

But most importantly, I started to take this newsletter seriously.

While I do write what classifies as purely non-fiction, I try to imagine scenes from a movie when I do so. Alcoholics Autonomous was viewed as characterizing the metaphorical lifeblood of a manufactured city in Gurgaon that doesn’t have much else to offer by way of being a city. One of the things that worked for the piece was backing it with a song — specifically, Miss Alissa by Eagles of Death Metal.

My pieces on Delhi hip-hop were an exercise in structure, because what you’re listening to exemplifies the geography of Delhi that the song (or the artist) represents and embodies. There was no point writing a Delhi hip-hop piece that stuck to any one section of Delhi. This was a belief I internalized after realizing that living in Gurgaon had made me some version of that meme about corporate employees typing up banal stuff while listening to the most disgusting metal.

My writing and my music share a symbiotic relationship that influence one another. I enjoy having them interact the way they do. What that also meant was that I would just often write about music. In retrospect, this was a pattern that existed throughout my life, but I never considered it seriously. I assume it was because I was focused on chasing paths that were well-trodden.

However, music and writing were looking increasingly more viable as something I could give significant time.

Toh Mere Sang Naacho Gao

The first sign of my mixing ability was not obvious to me. In 2022, AP Dhillon released Summer High — surely enough, summer was well over by then and it was pouring cats and dogs in Gurgaon. The song was extremely catchy and a welcome turn in sonics for APD. But what stood out to me the most was how similar it sounded to one Tame Impala song.

On the surface, I’ve always wondered what other song can go well with the one I’m listening to at a given moment. As my music library expanded, this task became easier and honestly more fun. Just random bulb switches in my head that would say, “What if this guitar solo had a verse?” It also helped that some of the new music I was listening to was extremely difficult to bucket into one genre.

But with finding out that Summer High and The Less I Know The Better were likely non-identical sonic twins, I thought I hit a jackpot that nobody did. A very naive thought, but I could potentially beat whoever else thought of it by actually proving that those two songs went together like butter. While I knew nothing about being a DJ at the time, I did employ some jugaad. I got a ripped version of a DJ software for Android, loaded the two tracks, equalized their tempos, and let it rip. Not that it should have been shocking, but the result sounded like magic. I put it up on my socials, expecting it to blow up. It didn’t, but people did notice.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that I could be involved in this music thing directly. I was happy watching from the sidelines, cheering on for my favorite new artists, writing and tweeting about them. But the adrenaline rush that I got from mixing was undeniable. It was the start of me looking for greener, more exciting pastures in life.

What tipped me over to the dark side was watching Boiler Room sets on YouTube.

It was only in the last couple of years that I was exposed to the idea of a Boiler Room. I wasn’t immediately attracted to them because they didn’t really seem to play a lot of music that I had taste for. Of course, I had no idea that Boiler Room did go beyond house and techno. But there was one Boiler Room in particular that seeded in my head the idea that I might just want to pick up a console.

I knew Kenny Beats from his wacky livestreams with rappers, and producing songs for them. His collaboration album with Denzel Curry soundtracked much of my lockdown. I didn’t know he was also a DJ. His Barcelona Boiler Room was a pure hip-hop set designed to get the crowd bumping. The set was so raucous that all that crowd jumping cracked the dance floor and forced the set to end far too early. Kenny Beats was playing my playlist in a way that it all sounded like one long insane track. The crowd was under his masterful thumb.

But even within the set, there was one blend that caught my attention more than any other. It was this transition from ROSALIA to A$AP Rocky, one that I knew I had to replicate first thing when I bought a DJ console.

(Click on it to watch the transition specifically, it links to the moment itself rather than from the start of the video)

I vowed to buy myself a console only if I wouldn’t stash it in some old dungeon somewhere after 3 months of trying and failing. I really wanted to give it a real shot and get good at it, even as a hobby. I wanted to be able to come up with my own blends on the go. I relished the idea that such blends can take audiences aback in a sense of “Wow, how did the DJ even think of this?” I knew that I wanted to mix hip-hop primarily, but in extremely creative ways.

After plenty of deliberation and a very hectic year afflicted with a bit of professional grief and a horrible bout of dengue, I was ready to turn the last quarter of 2023 around. I bought the cheapest console I could get — the Numark Party Mix II, with a set of studio speakers that wouldn’t set me back massively but would also double for mini home theatre experiences.

I was immediately addicted to it like a moth to a flame. I would put up Instagram stories every other day of my mixing experiments. To Numark’s credit, the console was very beginner-friendly unlike modern-day club-level consoles, which are woefully intimidating to look at as a rookie, much less play. My console had limited capabilities but enough for what rookie me needed.

From October to December 2023, I spent post-work hours coming up with blend ideas like a bartender. Chhaiya Chhaiya with Still D.R.E, or Amplifier with Black and Yellow, I was determined to make them fun without worrying too much about what my eventual sound palette would be. It was time to brew enough new cocktails to be able to test them out in the open.

And test them out I did, far sooner than I ever thought I would. Within 2 months of buying the console, I felt prepared enough to host my first house party as a DJ (or even as a host, to be honest). It was the debut show of easymanie, a name I decided on way before I even picked up the console, in a moment of dreamy machination about what my name would be if I were ever a DJ or musician of any kind. The ifs and buts were out of the picture now.

A friend of mine made a killer red-hued poster titled “Gurgaon’s very own — The easymanie show” with a picture of me in black-tinted sunglasses. I invited around 25 friends to come see me flail around with music, but by then I had built some amount of confidence that I wasn’t particularly bad at it. These friends were fully willing to subject themselves to my rookie performance.

The party killed. People were there not just for the party (which was great), but also for the music and for me playing it. This whole thing going well was the strongest Jagermeister shot of confidence that I could get. I wanted more. So did my friends, who were very willing to host me at their houses and let me set the vibe for the night.

Not long after, at one such friend’s house, I met someone who was also playing that night right after me. He looked like he’d been mixing for a long time, he had amazing chops. We immediately struck out as friends and bonded over music. I had no idea that that friendship / partnership would lead me to some wonderful roads I hadn’t planned for in my life.

We exchanged the music we listened to — neither of us were necessarily always at home with the other’s preferred genres. He thrived in electronic music, be it house of any kind or bass music like dubstep. I did a lot of hip-hop and pop. But we built a deep mutual appreciation, while also realizing that we shared a love for bass, rap, and most importantly, their intersection.

That intersection was where we thrived the most as a duo. Our blends were high on energy, and the line between underground and mainstream didn’t matter much as long as it sounded knockout. We were more than comfortable with the idea that this was going to be a process of trial and error, but that was where the fun lay, more than in the outcome. But we also had some delicious outcomes.

Within 6 months of picking up a console, I wanted to play in a club. My friend hadn’t tested his blends out in a club either till now, despite having been mixing longer than me. My first gig was with him at a bar in CyberHub as part of a collective called Backdoor Parade.

The set wasn’t coherent at all, there was a technical fuckup, and the transition from playing at home to playing on a club console was jarring enough for us. But out of the 45 minutes allotted to us, we had 20 minutes of people dancing to what we were doing. We were mashing up lesser-known tech house with some of the most popular tracks known to desi Gen-Z audiences. We had people turn their heads and pay attention to us, even for a slight while.

Those 20 minutes were by no means perfect, but they changed my course for the rest of the year. I found myself tinkering with new tunes, new genres, fusing tunes that had no business being fused, discovering my style in the meantime, and scouting for places I could play all the time. But most importantly, I discovered what music meant to me, and how I felt about it. I was bitten by a bug that was always there but could never find a good, sweet spot to bite me.

What Goes Around Comes Around

My first gig was a year and 2 months ago. In that time, I’ve played a few great gigs, and I continue to hope to play more, albeit in a new city (I recently shifted base to Bangalore). But I wasn’t fully able to square what was it about this new hobby that revitalized my relationship with every type of music I’d heard in the 25 years I have continued to exist.

On the surface of it, being a DJ has made me more open to creative experimentation and fusion. But I wonder if this tendency always existed, given all the influences I’ve had since childhood. I didn’t really enjoy sticking to a lane, which naturally manifested in me eventually growing out of genres in which I was deeply invested. But more than nostalgia having me go back those tunes, it was some illuminating moment of discovery that made me realize that those genres I considered so disparate might have had quite a few things in common.

It’s also not a secret to anyone smart enough that desi producers constantly attempted to adapt to the globalizing nature of sound in the last 2 decades. Like, can’t you tell Vishal-Shekhar borrowed significantly from Daft Punk on Ghungroo? I started to see those similarities far more easily, even though they were out there in broad daylight. But I didn’t see them this as something to disparage — on the contrary, it was cool! Ghungroo is a lovely song with its own identity that I enjoy, but it opened my eyes to the idea that music producers were just as attuned to that globalizing sound as I thought I was — most likely more.

What was more impactful to me was seeing this relationship the other way round in hip-hop. Sampling is quintessential to the genre, and hip-hop is shameless about where the foundation of the instrumental comes from. I was hooked to digging for samples to my favorite hip-hop songs while in my late teens — I would watch YouTube videos devoted to finding samples nonstop. Imagine my surprise when I found that so many of those samples came from Bollywood.

Every person has a different perspective on music. My near and dear ones couldn’t have more divergent perspectives on what music means to them. I learnt plenty from them. Writing on music has ensured that I was exposed to various (sometimes mind-blowing) viewpoints, some of which I’ve used to confirm my hypotheses / biases. These viewpoints were personal, social, political, industrial/commercial, technical, and mostly a fusion of some or all of them.

As a DJ, you begin to appreciate the technical aspects a lot more than usual. But what was notable that the technical perspectives on music that I received from people who didn’t study it didn’t belie any fundamentals of any form of classical, notated music theory. As a former student of music theory, I didn’t particularly enjoy the emphasis on theory (this is true of me in general). Now, I was far more convinced that you could do away with reading music.

Fuck theory.

The turning point on this came with a YouTube video by the Rolling Stone channel, where Charlie Puth broke down how he made Attention. I was dazzled by the simplicity of the breakdown. This was an uber-famous graduate of the world-class Berklee College of Music, saying that he had very little patience for notating his music. That his most famous song to-date is just a bunch of voice notes to himself.

Since then, the usual slate of pop has received far more respect from me. If you haven’t seen this video, you must, and I rarely make an imposition on my readers:

If you haven’t kept up with the times, bedroom producers are everywhere. The friend who I perform with often makes music on FLStudio without any reading music theory. Good music can come from anywhere, and nobody has an effective monopoly on making a hit any longer. What did matter was understanding that music has a history, and your future work is one of many interpretations of that history. It’s as true for the commercial bangers as it is for the underground favorite.

This is the philosophy that I’m now wedded to, that feels like a moment of tying up all of the various strands of my relationship with music. Music is inherently an adaptive and evolutionary good. It changes extremely quickly, and now that anyone can make it, the speed of change will only accelerate. It creates perceptions and rules that are meant to be eventually broken in ways that can’t be predicted.

This is not to say that I’m the most adaptive or forward-looking DJ or anything (I’d like to be one), but my enjoyment of music — as a listener, as a DJ, as a writer — has never been higher.

And the road to this realization was a long, winding coming-of-age story that I’m glad I got to experience in its wholeness.

Thank you to the following people for proofreading: Sarojini Sapru, Sunaina Bose, Ritwik Tripathy.

This is the first time in a long time that I’ve written a personal story on here. Usually, these stories of mine have been pretty raw and unedited. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that music has burrowed into every bit of my psyche. I never thought I’d be pursuing it in any capacity.

I have also shifted jobs and addresses—I am now based out of Bangalore. It has been a tearful goodbye to my second home in Delhi-NCR (and that’s a story for later).

I won’t be as frequent as I used to be, but the quality of stories should be the same/better, some might even be personal! I have a few drafts on the backburner—including a project that fuses my DJ skills with my writing. I should finish all of those drafts within the year, now that my life has stabilized a little from the nonstop flux of the last 6 months.

And if, by chance, you’re mildly interested in the rest of my journey as a DJ, here’s a playlist of my stuff, and here’s my Instagram :)

The genesis of this piece lies in Delhi’s best-known jazz club – The Piano Man.

The two of us attended a gig that we had been looking forward to for a while – a gig that we knew would be different from what we were used to. The Piano Man first opened in Safdarjung in 2015 with the aim of fostering art and music scenes in the capital. In the nine years since, the club has branched out to two more locations in Delhi-NCR. It has helped cultivate extremely talented live musicians across genres. If you’re an indie singer starting out, or a small rock band trying to make a mark, you have to notch up a Piano Man gig at some point. It’s no secret that the club takes after the New York speakeasies of the 1920s. It’s usually where Delhi’s elite go to enjoy ‘eclectic’ forms of music and blow smoke rings.

This is why the gig we attended together on May 19th 2024 was so disruptive. First, it was a hip-hop show. Until very recently, rap was never platformed at venues like The Piano Man, and this was an interesting exception. Second, in the vein of orchestral arrangements that artists like Kendrick Lamar or Black Thought often undertake, this rapper was not backed by a DJ but rather by a live band. And not just any band – a trumpet, a trombone, someone on the drums, a synthesizer, backup singers, a bass guitarist – fronted by one man wearing a bespoke brown suit who called himself Dhanji Kumar. The show exceeded expectations, it was fun, it was energetic, it was smooth, it was everything we had ever wanted from a live performance, and more. It was the first time this venue ever hosted a rap gig.

In fact, the credit for the first ever rap gig in the history of any Piano Man venue in Delhi also goes to Dhanji, who performed at the Gurgaon branch in 2023.

The audience wasn’t your usual Piano Man suspects. It was a group of young people – teens, twenty-somethings, college-going kids and recent graduates who were hooked on this cult-like figure of Desi Hip Hop’s greatest showman. Dhanji was in his element, and hot off the success of his solo debut album, RUAB. This crowd wasn’t there to further bougie speakeasy culture. This was a crowd ready to throw the gauntlet down for an artist who was doing something they had never seen before – doing hip hop like we hadn’t yet seen in India.

Dhanji released his first album independently less than a year ago. To add to his allure, his Spotify bio tells us nothing concrete about who he is, but rather is a quote from the celebrated author Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote, which contains the following words:

“….and the authors who compose them and the actors who perform them say they must be like this because that is just how the mob wants them, and no other way; the plays that have a design and follow the story as art demands appeal to a handful of discerning persons who understand them, while everyone else is incapable of comprehending their artistry…”

If like us, you hang around the nooks and corners of Desi hip hop Twitter, you would have stumbled across anonymous accounts posting “RVAB SEASON”. Till that moment, Dhanji — real name Jayraj Ganatra — had solved his “1000 fans” problem ten times over. His niche fanbase has been unwaveringly loyal to him, picking up his unique inflections and adlibs and plastering them wherever they could (“GENUAN”). His art, while groundbreaking, has managed to appeal to the mob in the Cervantes quote. But he has also pleased the “handful of discerning persons”. RVAB earned a 7.8 on Pitchfork — which, if you didn’t know already, is infamous for their usually stingy ratings. Critic Bhanuj Kappal describes the album:

“Propulsive basslines slouch and swagger in lockstep with tightly syncopated drums and bright horns spar with keening synths, all filtered through the dusty, sepia-toned lens of 1970s Indian parallel cinema. RUAB sounds like the background score for a Blaxploitation-meets-Hindi-film-noir movie, with Dhanji and his hometown of Ahmedabad as the main protagonists.”

When the crowd heard the word “GENUAN” after a small instrumental segue, and it seemed like the trombone player was ready for a jump-up, and one of the trumpet guys got his phone out, the venue erupted. They knew that a simultaneous scream of “colony se callertune tak, Dhanji classic” was coming. Dhanji’s runaway hit, Guru had no right to sound this slick with a live band, especially in comparison to the original song.

We were immediately cognizant that we were watching one of the best live performances Delhi had seen in a while. Personally, neither of us thought that Piano Man had ever sold out the way it did for Dhanji. Neither had we ever seen the sleek chic venue overpopulated by raging hormones the way it was that evening. The crowd knew every lyric. This was a mosh-pit — completely ill-fitting for a suave club like this one. The show broke every rule in the book, and that’s what made it so fun. If one could summarize Dhanji’s career to this point, it would have to be defined by rule-breaking experimentation. Miguel de Cervantes would be flabbergasted at Dhanji’s meteoric rise.

Dhanji pulls off a lot with what seems like very little. The Piano Man show was an ambitious gig. Even as recently as ten years ago, you would have needed a label or an agency affiliation to organize a show of this scale at a similar venue. He is truly independent – working closely with his manager Saqlen Hasan Khan, who had no formal experience with music management prior to this role. The duo had a blockbuster year: in addition to their Piano Man gig, they collaborated with the (English) Premier League’s India account and secured a spot on Lollapalooza India’s 2025 lineup. All of this is the work of a super-lean team not on anyone’s payroll but their own.

It’s All Happening

Towards the end of the movie Almost Famous (2000), the super-fan Sapphire critiques part-time groupies by saying, “They don’t even know what it is to be a fan. Y’know? To truly love some silly little piece of music, or some band, so much that it hurts”. Being a fan can be all-consuming, it can at times even seem like a job. And for some fans in the contemporary Delhi hip hop scene, different roles and identities blend into each other.

This past year we interviewed three managers who started out as super-fans and transitioned into innovators in the Delhi hip hop scene. They do not have formal training in the music business, yet they manage some of the scene’s most exciting acts. Two of the artists have made it onto Spotify’s RAP 91 playlist, and one has a song in an Anurag Kashyap movie. Speak to Mithran Samuel, who manages Kinari, and one of the first things he might say to you is, “I fucking love rap and I fucking love Kinari”. Speak to Saqlen, and he would likely say something -similar - minus the profanities - about the artist he manages – Dhanji. In conversation with Manvendra Krishna – manager of trap artists Boyblanck and DRV – about his strategy, he says “it’s not about the genre, it’s always about the artist, you have to love your artist”.

Saqlen, Mithran, and Manvendra have pushed boundaries and redefined conventional understandings of what is possible in alt-music spaces in the country. We started this piece talking about Dhanji’s gig at The Piano Man – what we witnessed was something novel and exciting that frankly changed our expectations of the live music scene in Delhi. As gig-goers (and fans!) it was an education. Kinari’s live shows have introduced rap music to a female-led audience – given hip-hop’s dismal record with gender, this is quite an amazing feat. Boyblanck and DRV are making their uniquely Indian life experiences sound stylish in the context of trap music.

A native of Bareilly, Saqlen often visited Delhi to meet friends who made music. He was ambitious and looking for opportunities. He hadn’t intended to be a manager, and in some ways, he fell into it because of the friends that he had and the crowd that he was hanging out with. He is a devotee of hip hop and has been ever since he was a teen – listening to the music, dissecting lyrics and interpreting meanings, and joining online forums and communities. He is passionate about hip hop culture and sees its potential in India. His evolution from small-town Bareilly student to manager of India’s fastest-rising rappers is meteoric.

His experience in business marketing – specifically, activation and retention – was his initial value-add to artist management. He is responsible for building a full-blown brand around Dhanji as one of the most eclectic, unique rappers India has seen in recent memory. “It’s about doing something no one has ever done before. I’m not doing it for the sake of it, I want to make an impact”, he says.

And, in the vein of Kendrick Lamar’s verse in Control, Saqlen wants to make sure that the core fans of other artists have never heard of them. He’s deeply competitive about music and is willing to out-innovate anyone in the race. This also means that he operates with a brutal level of honesty about where he thinks hip-hop is headed: “we’re the fastest-growing genre in India, but we’re not being bold enough with our creative or business risks”. He also believes that audiences need educating. On some level, this is an evocation of the famous Noel Gallagher snippet where he says that 99% of customers are idiots and they don’t know what they want. This is best exemplified in a quote from an interview Dhanji has with The Indian Music Diaries:

“I love the polarizing effect my music has on people. I would have hated it if I was just a boring artist who constantly makes good music, the type of music that everyone enjoys. I am really glad I’m not that and I strive everyday to not be like that. This does not mean that I’m trying to make obtuse and esoteric kinda music. I’m trying my hardest to make it palatable, but this is completely me, and that’s just Ruab.”

Saqlen’s focus on advancing hip hop culture is echoed by Mithran. When Mithran graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Political Science, he didn’t set out to be a manager. He and Kinari first collaborated during Mithran’s residency at Khoj Foundation when they put together an iteration of their now infamous ‘Meetha World’ party. It was a place for Delhi’s queers to listen to good rap music, vibe, and be sexy. The success of that event led them to solidify their relationship as manager and artist. “When you like an artist you want to be their friend, and as you get closer, the next natural step is to want to manage them.”

Meetha World is a sexy rap party. It’s an important part of Delhi’s nightlife fabric, not in the least because it’s fun, but because as Mithran notes – it fills a gap in the city’s scene for cool, queer party scenes that are accessible. It is a rap party, with Kinari under her alias DJ Nasbandi spinning hardcore hip hop tunes. The first Meetha World was an exercise in managing a venture with a tight budget. The gig was pulled off in 10K and was part of Mithran’s residency at Khoj. It was set up to be an event and not a party (an important distinction). Using a low-key guerrilla approach, Mithran managed to pull off a rager with 400 RSVPs and nearly as many attendees. It was a product offering of the highest order that met every need of its target audience. The venue was a safe space and free and led to subsequent chargeable gigs (at nominal ticket prices), with a solid crowd showing up every time. A new artist’s first gig is rarely a success (especially without alcohol); Meetha World defied all those standards.

For Mithran, being an independent manager means having the freedom to curate gigs and live shows the way that he and Kinari want. It means redefining expectations and standards around what rap scenes and nightlife scenes in Delhi should look like. The independence is tied in with definitions of underground – being visible without being mainstream and having the flexibility to experiment and not be formulaic about their approach to rap. And that’s what all of Kinari’s live gigs have tried to exemplify: underground rap scenes that are sexy. Through his approach to marketing, Mithran has tried to think about rap culture in the city more broadly and figure out how to draw a more diverse gender audience to their gigs.

In March of last year, Kinari launched her album Kattar Kinnar and went on an India tour. The album launch in Delhi was called Mujrewaali Madhuri, and renowned Mujra dancer Khushi Sheikh opened for Kinari. The crowd at Nehru Place Social was lit. This gig and the subsequent tour were impeccably curated – from ensuring that the sound of the opening act aligned with Kinari and hyped the crowd up for the main act, the visuals, the iconic posters, and the theatre of it all. This is part of what Mithran is putting his energy into – putting on shows that are novel and contribute to the culture; and making sure that the audience has a good time and appreciates rap and the production behind it. Gigs like this redefine expectations of live music in the capital. And what they do is recognize and celebrate Kinari’s identity all the while centering rap as a genre.

For Manvendra, rap offers an authenticity that is hard to come across in other genres. For him, his connection to Boyblanck and DRV is personal. “They make music that speaks to me. It’s as though my views of the world are being shaped by their lyrics”. That relatability ensures that their collaborations are expansive – there is room to experiment and grow. The connection to the artist is essential. “The first time I met Raghav [Boyblanck’s real name], he said he is making music that he wants to listen to in his car”, says Manvendra.

While a student at Ashoka University, Manvendra gained key experience working at multiple labels, including UMG, Big Bang Music and Gully Gang, the agency founded by DIVINE. He worked at the intersection of brands and music, implementing live IPs and 360-degree campaigns between brands and artists. He’s used that experience to not only manage six of Boyblanck’s projects — 3 of them last year alone, but also guide DRV to some of his biggest successes yet. His latest album, Polaris has been making significant waves in the Spotify and Apple Music India charts. Most notably, a remix by Raftaar of his track “Party Mai Aa” has reached stratospheric heights of virality on Instagram.

While its origins lie in the drug houses of Atlanta, trap music has found a fairly relevant Indian social context. Artists like MC STAN, Loka, Darcy and DRV have led the charge, inserting themselves as game-changers the same way mumble rappers like Future once sought to do classic hip-hop – one of us has covered Indian trap last year here. Manvendra’s challenge is unique because both the artists he represents belong to a sub-genre that has only just begun to bloom in India. There is little precedent for him. “Diaspora Indians love trappers like Future, Young Thug and Metro Boomin. I have to figure out how to export Indian trap to those exact guys”, says Manvendra.

For each of these managers independence represents a certain kind of freedom. They are not opposed to labels and the financing that would bring. Rather they highlight in different ways the flexibilities, creativities, and personalization that their independence (to this point) has afforded them. The relationship between managers and their artists in each of these instances is extremely personal. Manvendra emphasizes how the process of working together on something as personal as music makes the artist and manager best friends. This friendship lends itself to a loyalty that is hard to find with labels. And while the relationship with the artist is paramount, each of the managers understand and think deeply about the genre(s) that their artists are experimenting with, and each of them enjoys the genre. They think about that tangled messy word – ‘culture’, and how their artists are contributing to it.

You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet

As we interviewed managers and wrote this article, we paused frequently to ask ourselves what the music management business was like in India like ten or fifteen years ago. “You kids have it too easy”, we’re told by Ritnika Nayan. Ritnika is a longtime executive, now-music entrepreneur who runs an agency called Music Gets Me High (MGMH). Her career spans nearly 20 years and plenty of accomplishments. Some of her credentials include: doing artist management for Sula Fest, working on some of India’s most loved music festivals like Ziro, Bandland and Lollapalooza, and seeing Nucleya through the earliest, commercially-roughest days of his solo career.

Today, Ritnika has taken a step back from actively managing artists, but through MGMH works on festival management and consultancy, artist mentoring, as well as distribution and publishing. She also runs a certificate course in Music Business Management at the Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication. She started the course five years ago, because she noticed that there was no formal education in India for prospective managers.

To a large extent, she’s right. Music management is far more streamlined and has become far more accessible in an age of streaming and social media. Most of the music that we listen to is on our phones, and much of the feedback is received in real time. India has also graduated from hosting a couple of music festivals that struggled to make money in the early days, to having global franchises like Lollapalooza make their foray into this market. Which makes the journey up until this point, and what happened between those two points all the more important. An entire generation of music managers across genres — a generation that Ritnika was an instrumental part of — saw the space evolve before their eyes.

Ritnika studied music business in the UK, with tutelage under Peter Jenner, the legendary manager of Pink Floyd. But her overseas experience didn’t strike immediately while trying to scale independent Indian music. “It was a big learning curve for me because nothing was organized and managers didn’t really exist”, she says. Her first success was with renowned Indian electronic act Jalebee Cartel, who have since disbanded. She was instrumental in pushing their sound onto European markets, and supported their first international tour, where they performed at the legendary Berlin techno club Tresor.

Scaling electronic-first, or really any kind of alternative musicians in India was a massive challenge, particularly in the pre-streaming age. Ritnika recalls how challenging it was to introduce India to any notion of dubstep even in the prime of the Americanization of the genre led by Skrillex. Jalebee Cartel and MIDIval Punditz were the first acts from India to make a breakthrough electronic-first artists.

Festivals were far harder to pull off as well. Ritnika recalls the first edition of the Eastwind Music Festival in 2008, which was the first of its kind to host over 60 different musical groups to primarily play their original compositions. It was a welcome alternative to the pub scene, where these groups mostly did covers of contemporary popular music. But it wasn’t all rosy – the promoter nearly went bankrupt as the main sponsor had pulled out. “Many of us volunteered to work on the festival without pay, just so that it could succeed”, says Ritnika. Eastwind did not progress beyond a 2nd edition. “The first edition of Lollapalooza India had 60,000 people – this wouldn’t have happened 15 years ago, that too for non-Bollywood”, says Ritnika, showing the sheer scope of evolution in the industry.

Ritnika is a strong believer in there being no better alternative than being an independent artist. As she says, “I started my own digital distribution company just to tell artists you don’t need a label”. There are exceptions, she reluctantly concedes, but for the most part, she believes that meaningful success can be achieved independently. Critical to this success is the need for artists to understand the business themselves and work with their manager towards building a strong brand. Her belief is that the fan-artist relationship is stronger without label support, especially with streaming and social media causing a decentralizatio effect on content. But part of the hustle has to involve the artist promoting and having faith in their work.

Ayush Arora, who manages Sickflip, Prabh Deep and the India side of things for the great Anoushka Shankar echoed a similar experience. Ayush began his career in music as a DJ while simultaneously working his first job at Audio Aashram, a New Delhi-based indie label that dabbled primarily in alternative ambient music. The label did many things fairly new to India at the time – an online radio (in the vein of today’s BBC Radio), an online magazine, and even their own fest. They also produced the first EP of one of India’s pioneering electronic acts in Dualist Inquiry.

To an extent, he indicated that success for electronic-first artists came when they didn’t actively imitate the West. In other words, they were enjoyed in bigger numbers when they actively incorporated more Indian elements in their music. On similar lines, Nucleya’s solo act has far eclipsed the popularity enjoyed by the collective he was a part of in Bandish Projekt. He was the first desi electronic act to headline the main stage of a major Indian festival in Weekender. It was no coincidence that the change in his sound that followed the transition to his solo career was significant.

We see this also when we look at the sophomore album of one of India’s best known solo acts in Lifafa. His album Jaago (2019) is littered with disco and house influences, evoking the epic creative streak of Bappi Lahiri and Usha Uthup on one end, and Giorgio Moroder on the other. In fact, one of the tracks from the album, “Ek Nagma” has an extremely relevant comment when it comes to those influences.

It is impossible to talk about independent music in India without mentioning Bollywood. Ayush and Ritnika both framed their careers’ income at a time that was not only pre-streaming, but when the music scene in India was dominated by film music. The Bollywood industry has always had its own set of features that distinguished itself from the indie market. In the former, music is driven by the interests of production houses, and it matters how hot you are at a given time. Most significantly, though, musicians in Bollywood do not have their own artist brands. Ayush put it pretty simply:

“The 90s had Sonu Nigam, the 2000s belonged to Atif Aslam, and the 2010s were dominated by Arijit Singh — who continues to be evergreen even today. But for most other artists, their popularity only stayed for as long as their movies were popular. The lack of an artist brand for preceding generations of music dimmed the light on their non-film catalog, which was hardly as successful.”

That was an inherent characteristic of Bollywood musicians for as long as it has existed, driven by the flux of structures created by labels (such as T-Series) and producers. In the independent scene, the musician has to be the ultimate sell. There is a certain recall factor to yesteryear musicians like Prince or ABBA that was also shaped by how they presented themselves. In fact, if you were active on Instagram this year, you probably saw plenty of reels of one highly-talented Bollywood musician breaking out of that structure and making waves with her live shows across India. You saw a reel of her singing the Ben 10 theme song in Hindi. Did you know Sunidhi Chauhan sang that?

Before Spotify and Instagram, creating an artist brand from scratch was hard enough. Add to that the fact that established artists and musicians were signed to European labels, and the concept of a music manager was very new in India. Let alone 1000, building your first 10 fans was a grinding process of trial and error. Ritnika started her own company in 2007, right after returning from the UK, because she was seemingly overqualified for any role Indian agencies had for her. One of the artists she backed early on was duo Shadow & Light. “There were 3-4 people who came to every gig, shared everything they did for this small band”, she says. Their most recent work is a collaboration with Salim Merchant.

Interestingly, even though they have been performing for more than 8 years, Shadow & Light did a full-fledged US tour for their album Sabar before even hitting peak popularity in India. It reflects the idea that early indie musicians in India tried to create an export-based success in countries that would receive their genres well before attempting to replicate such success at scale in India. This is partly due to NRIs, and partly because in the West, listeners tend to be more open to listening to new and upcoming artists. Bollywood music is not necessarily a system of organic discovery, but rather a culture fed to us through the medium of its movies. Cracking independent music in India first meant cracking how people discovered new music.

This necessarily involved live music. Ayush was adamant about the fact that the best way for musicians to win is to put themselves out there on the main stage. “It’s a form of dependency to assume that someone will surely book you”, he says. Musicians should not rely solely on what Ayush calls “holy grail” venues. He recalls how Sickflip suffered in his live attractions until he started his own IP, Pineapples. Today, IPs by reputed DJs or even independent artists are far more ubiquitous than ever.

Such a viewpoint understandably arises from the historical precedence of volatility of live scenes in India, even with the emergence of numerous IPs across India today. The 2024 edition of NH7 Weekender unexpectedly got canceled due to unprecedented police intervention. Festival lineups are decided largely on Spotify playlist relevance – you could be a trend today and unimportant tomorrow. For a while – a practice that often continues to this day, promoters even expected musicians to play for free, for so-called “exposure”. Ayush and Ritnika represent a generation of managers who have gone through those challenges for their artists.

Live Hardcore

Successful music careers are defined by having massive scale. Being a musician usually embodies the mantra: go big or go home. Falling in the middle has been tough for many, with few artists breaking through. But ’going big’ is often tied into the complicated notion of “selling out”. The returns to such risks are outsized for a few lucky ones.

For independent artists, the questions of scale can be existential. On one hand, the artists’ creative freedom is reflective of non-conformity with trends and the pressure to chase virality, on the other hand, this privilege is often capped by an invisible ceiling defined by funds and reach. You can’t expand your fanbase if you don’t have money, and you can’t earn money if you don’t have a fanbase.

We interviewed indie singer-songwriter Raghav Meattle, best known for his hits “City Life” and “Woh Saat Din”. Raghav also runs an agency called first.wav, which positions itself as an incubator for upcoming musicians. “Most independent managers have not seen scale”, he says. To him, scale is the most important driver in the music business. He attributes this partly to a lack of education around the music business and publishing on the part of the manager. The semblance of a thriving ecosystem that churns out success repeatedly is yet to be realized. Raghav echoes Ritnika when he says that the still largely-fragmented nature of the industry in India is due to the lack of professionalization of the music manager. Importantly, Raghav’s beliefs about the formalization of the industry are shaped by his experiences working for larger corporate firms.

All of the managers we spoke to understand these realities all too well. “Audiences don’t get that this indie shit is so difficult”, Mithran laments. On top of that, managers have to figure out the sweet spots that lie between authenticity and chasing money. This means that some moral quandaries are sometimes tested. “If you’re working with a brand whose copywriter wrote the lyrics and just wants Prabh Deep to sing it, I will refuse. The brand should just give keywords but not involve themselves with writing the lyrics. I’ve never tried to convince him just because they’re offering tons of money”, says Ayush. Saqlen is also all too familiar with skirting around this line – one of the most famous memes in the desi hip-hop scene has Dhanji hurling the funniest abuses at the popular rap talent show, MTV Hustle, who had invited him to be a participant.

Despite the connotations of ‘selling out’ that labels bring with them, deals are not necessarily off the table for independent managers - simply because of how hard it is to achieve scale. “I’ll take a deal for Kinari if the price is right. I don’t want her to just be another spot on a larger roster”, Mithran is clear about the conditions under which he would accept a deal. Manvendra told us that labels are like trampolines, and being attached to a label helps bring a larger audience to your music. Even the contrarian in Saqlen shares similar thoughts, despite Dhanji’s roaring success. And while ownership around one’s masters has become a big discussion today, it is never a straightforward solution. As Ayush put it to us bluntly, “What will you do owning a master as a young indie musician if you are unable to promote it effectively? Owning masters makes sense when you have a substantial fanbase.”

But a few things have structurally changed about music over time, partly due to how the internet has shaped its production and consumption. One is the possibility that mass production no longer needs to be the chief paradigm of making music. It is possible to forge success through the creation of substantial niches. It’s about quality and not quantity. An artist’s corner of fans may be small, but if they are extremely loyal, they become the artist’s brand ambassadors. To evoke Ritnika’s question of “what is success in music anyway”, its definition has become quite flexible today. That’s also propelled by the rise of artist brands. Most importantly, none of these things are the effective monopoly of large labels.

“The only way an artist gets to 20K streams a day is by building an artist brand”, says Raghav. First.wav has supported indie artists scale their careers through socials - most notably they have worked with Gini, Divyam Sodhi and Sammad Khan, who have achieved successful niches on Instagram. Raghav’s thesis is that it took artist brands a long time to pick up because the business model of the industry was earlier contingent on the songs rather than the artist. “The idea is to milk those 3-4 popular songs because the artist won’t necessarily stay with you for a long time”, he says. This is also the reason why labels may fundamentally have little incentive to build artist brands. Or why labels prefer singles to albums, as Manvendra says.

Prabh Deep is an example of an artist who evokes a certain aura with his name. His commitment to experimentation within the boundaries of hip-hop (and forging new borders as a result) is clear with each full-length release. Prabh Deep is one of one — he’s an artist who defines the genre, and throughout each of his projects has remained committed to the idea of a creative authenticity — something that feels entirely genuine to who he is and how he is evolving as an artist. When he released Trap Praa, an album fairly different to what he had produced before — he received critical acclaim for his novelty because as Ayush puts it, “he had built credibility for his artistry. His scalability was a natural extension of the same”.

In an age of social media marketing, managers find themselves tackling a common misconception: the conflation of scale with virality. Virality can be an infectious, intimidating, and often unhealthy chase. Algorithms favoring a certain structure to content has caused a shift in the way music videos or shots, or even how hooks are written. But “in 6 months, virality always reverts to the mean”, says Manvendra. He believes that catalog artists are likely to have a stronger recall. Artists chasing virality are likely to only have stretches of their 15 minutes of fame. It is also difficult, and – in the long term – counter-productive to devise a formula that creates an ideal hook. “The magic only comes from innovating a hook. We’re not looking for familiar hooks, but great hooks”, says Raghav of his agency.

These are also indications of the possibility that despite having their own robust indie wings, big labels are prone to falling behind the innovation curve. “A&Rs keep forgetting the rules of business because they’re so prone to ideas of short-term success”, says Saqlen. All managers agree to an extent that labels are helpful for capital-intensive, risky projects – such as massive album rollouts that also involve music videos. But label deals are useful as long as they solve a problem. They’re as likely to fall victim to drawing out a planned playbook or a formula towards success. “You can’t scheme and plot virality”, says Manvendra.

One of the most important factors that determines the strength of an artist brand is their live music performance. For indie artists, it can often boil down to a chicken-egg problem - more streams get you bigger gigs and vice versa. But there is also a larger structural issue that is linked to negotiation with bars and venues. “The job of a restaurant is to be a restaurant. If you as an artist don’t double their income that night, they won’t call you back”, Ritnika is brutally honest about this barrier.

However, this differs across genres – electronic gigs are cheaper, and people are more likely to spend on food and drinks at such gigs. Venues are tougher to crack when your musician does rap. Often in these cases, the venue exacts a cover charge, which is more often than not passed onto the consumer – an automatic turn off for most. The over-reliance on a select few venues for alternative music gigs, especially without an ecosystem directly connecting venues with sources of music, also makes negotiations with these spaces more challenging.

But a chicken-egg problem neither necessitates that the issue has no solution, nor that it has only one answer. “Gini is going on a 12-city tour today, but that can’t happen without the records working. Live music is demand-based”, says Raghav. However, for Kinari and Dhanji, whose roots are underground, live music was an early obsession, viewed as something that needed disrupting in a sea of lukewarm hip-hop gigs in Delhi and elsewhere. Their cults were enlarged by filling the need for a killer live experience like none that has happened before. Small-scale live music doesn’t just have to be the goal. It can well play the role of being a stepping stone. On the other end, “opening for a bigger artist on a bigger stage is not necessarily always a scalable move”, says Ayush. It matters that the opener and headliner complement each other. It also matters that they see eye-to-eye on more moral and political things. Hanumankind’s showcase for Narendra Modi’s US entourage after the success of Big Dawgs was such an example, especially after some explicitly political lines in his earlier tracks.

The perception of scale also changes across genres. “Peter Cat Recording Co are big, but they aren’t Anuv Jain. They don’t even have to be. They’ve simply doubled down on their niche”, Ayush points out. Their success has not come from bucking popular trends, but rather crafting their own. It’s evident in all the Instagram stories people upload of happy nostalgic moments in their lives with a track like “Floated By”. Or taking photos of themselves in black-and-white and likening it to a PCRC album cover. In August of last year, PCRC embarked on their first highly-anticipated world tour, while still being nowhere as popular as Anuv Jain. PCRC are also extremely well-known for being excellent live performers.

Realising one’s greatest ambitions as a musician is a function of scale. “Both DRV and Boyblanck want to compose for Bollywood for sure”, says Manvendra. Both Kinari and Dhanji have completed their first India tours as of 2024, which has also coincided with a semblance of mainstream representation for them. Hanumankind has released a remix of Big Dawgs with the one and only A$AP Rocky. This generation of artists and managers understands that artistry, commodification and scale represent a trilemma that can sometimes be difficult to manage. But being successful and being true to yourself as a musician requires that balancing act that recognises the importance of all three, both absolutely and in relation to each other.

Have you seen Ratatouille?

It’s only one of the greatest animated movies ever made. It’s about Remy, a rat who has no business being in a human kitchen for obvious reasons. But his love for food is so powerful that he’s willing to risk ingesting rat poison or even falling into a rat-trap to experiment with dishes. His lack of formal training in the ways of the haughty French chefs did not stop him from changing the game. His devotion to the culture, irrespective of where he came from, was unmatched. 

We’re not saying that to be an indie manager is to be Remy. We are saying that the managers that we’ve spoken to are experimental and are redefining what it means to build a music career in today’s landscape. Innovation, taking chances, and a willingness to break the mold are key to the indie manager’s journey. These managers are proving that there’s no single formula for success. Much like Remy, they aren’t bound by tradition—they learn by doing, adapt quickly, and trust their instincts. 

They are both a cause and an effect of the transformation of the Indian live music scene and are actively shaping the future of how music is performed, experienced and consumed. They are proving that there are spaces for alternative narratives beyond the mainstream—ones that prioritize artistic integrity, niche audiences, and a redefinition of success. They’re navigating in and out of the constraints of traditional industry structures in their own ways while valuing creative freedom the most. This has allowed them to take risks, experiment with live performances, and build a new kind of music industry where artists are unique brands in their own right. 

In an era where virality is often mistaken for success or scale, They highlight the long game – sustained careers aren’t built overnight. They’re focused on creating strong fan communities, ensuring that live performances aren’t just gigs but also the seeds of a deeper connection between artists and audiences. 

These managers operate with one important principle: you have to love the music. Circumstances can often be unforgiving as an independent musician, which makes your emotional stake in the artist’s success all the more important. If you don’t feel for the artistry in your skin and bones, you’re not going to give it your all. This almost-delusional belief system takes managers through all kinds of ups and downs, be it a sponsor pulling out of a festival, or a venue not cutting you your hard-earned paycheck on time.

Honestly, we could have invoked any movie to make this analogy and avoid likening the protagonists of our story to a talking mouse. We chose Ratatouille because throughout this piece, one quote from the movie resonated more than anything else. It has grown truer and truer of music production in the last decade, and how dynamic it has become:

Anyone can cook.

Acknowledgments

We are so grateful to all the managers who made time to speak with us as we co-wrote this piece: In order of interviews: Saqlen Khan, Mithran Samuel, Raghav Meattle, Ayush Arora, Ritnika Nayan, and Manvendra Krishna. We’d also like to thank Kartik Sundar for helping us out with arranging these interviews. As avid music fans, witnessing and understanding the impact that these individuals have had on the scenes that we enjoy today — has been an immense privilege.

Lastly, thank you to our proofreaders who read numerous drafts of this article at various stages in the production phase, in particular Sunaina Bose.

This was Hot Chips x / Vibe Check and was a collaboration (plus friendship) forged over multiple food outings, plenty of calls across two timezones, and lots of procrastination and hardwork. And it may be the first of more collaborative pieces to come :)

I’ll get around to the lack of consistency on some other day — potentially a future piece that might, for the most part, explain it implicitly. That being said, this is a piece I’ve been working on for a long time because there were quite a few places where I was stuck. I’m drawing up a narrative about something relatively new in Indian trap.

I’m not sure how many other narratives about this exist, which obviously manifested in the form of a lack of research on this. There’s a possibility I’ll have missed some things / people / events in here, so please do let me know about the same!

But hopefully, I’ve succeeded in creating a whole journey that spans from Atlanta and Memphis to Pune, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. To aid you in that, I’ve created a playlist that should contain all the songs I mention! It’s a list of 40 bangers, so regardless of whether you’re new or old to trap music, I have a feeling you’ll enjoy the playlist :)

Happy reading!

Bigg Boss Season 16 was something else.

The morning wake-up call was replaced with the Bigg Boss Anthem. Two contestants were apparently punished because of their….overuse of English. One contestant walked out because their pet dog died. A St Bernard named “Mahim” was introduced on day 87. Farah Khan made a guest appearance. Rohit Shetty appeared sometime midway to announce the first contestant of the upcoming season of Khatron Ke Khiladi - who was among the names in the household. Maybe not so different after all, even within the realms of what the show can pull off.

However, what made this season so unique was a certain contestant. At first, everyone was shocked that this person entered his name into the, well, “competition” — especially those in the hip-hop community. Accusations of being a sucker for popularity and genre commodification followed. This (t)rapper had released 2 albums by then. He had more than one song make the rounds on Instagram reels. His debut is one of the finest albums the Indian hip-hop scene ever produced — inspired by the fact that he had to leave his hometown, Pune in order to escape a half-murder charge. The beats, the verses, all him, no feature artist involved.

Oh, he also won Bigg Boss. At that point, Altaf Sheikh / MC STAN had virtually arrived — and performed — on national television. Indian hip-hop took a cheer, it was the biggest stage the community had ever seen. But STAN has never had a smooth career. For the longest time, people would deride the kind of music he made. They felt he “mumbled”, that he had no real substance, called him caste-based slurs because of the way he fashioned himself.

But don’t mind the naysayers. Today, he is the foremost representation of Indian trap music, and this genre has only just begun.

American Made

Trap music has its roots in Atlanta and the crack cocaine epidemic in the city’s poorer neighborhoods. A trap house is where you bought and sold hard drugs. It was never a pretty sight. The houses looked old, rundown, and full of poor people high on the most potent stuff. Urban planning had an unintended role to play in this, as many of these houses were located on one-way streets. It was some of the most terrible damage that American institutions had brought on their own people, another blot on the country’s history of how it treated black people.

By this time, gangsta rap had become a force to reckon with. Politicians wanted parental control advisory stickers, rappers like Ice Cube and Dr Dre had become idols and enterprisers for an entire generation. This crossed over to the southern side of America, where certain artists had begun to get a name for themselves.

Most notable were legendary all-time duo Outkast, who had made a career for themselves not just rhyming their way through these issues, but also creating mass appeal on that way. But there were other artists in the scene who had grittier sounds, like Three 6 Mafia. They came up with a completely new subgenre of their own, now often called the Memphis sound. There was Lil Jon, who’s obviously now known for giving us crunk music. And that annoying (kinda fire though) ad-lib of his.

There was Dungeon Family — an incubator that gave rise to many of Atlanta’s finest, some of whom are very famous musicians today. Like Killer Mike, Janelle Monae, TLC, CeeLo Green, Outkast themselves, and more modern trap artists such as Future. The “dungeon” in question was the basement of Rico Wade, a producer. Wade is possibly the chief architect of Atlanta sound, and by virtue of that, modern trap. He died in April this year. May he rest in peace.

It is tough to pinpoint where trap really began. The biggest distinguishing feature of the trap sound is the complex use of hi-hats — for example: listen below to Where Ya At^[1] by Future. The beat is marked by a burst of light cymbal-like patters following the bass thump. Sometimes, there are cowbell sounds too, but that burst is the hallmark of trap music.

Of course, things like hi-hats and snares and bass kicks were not exactly a thing before rap. The story of how rap got invented starts with a Japanese music equipment manufacturer called Roland, and an unprofitable invention of theirs, called the TR-808. Roland intended for the machine to be picked up by electronic music producers, but electronic wasn’t as huge at the time they thought it would be. As a result of that, as well as being sold in the secondhand market, the price of the TR-808 dropped for people in black neighborhoods to be able to buy it. I do a deeper dive of this extremely superb story in this Twitter thread^[2].

Producers in the West Coast carried some knowledge spillover to the southside via gigs and parties and such. A DJ from New Orleans named Mannie Fresh was soaking all of this in and started experimenting with the 808. He started using the now-famous hi-hat burst and a unique bounce to define his sound. Producers in Atlanta picked this up and used Fresh as inspiration.

However, landmark events that might be assumed for “firsts” in the history of the genre certainly exist. In 2001, T.I released his debut album, titled “I’m Serious”. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like the market was too serious about his release. His label dropped him, after which he dropped mixtapes in the city. When some of them became popular enough, Atlantic Records signed him to a deal. Under whom T.I released Trap Muzik.

“This ain’t no album, this ain’t no game, this is trap”, goes the hook of the title track. It’s life for him, and it’s hard for him to change. He was 22 when he wrote the album. The album is not a glorification of poverty, T.I has zero interest in doing that. In fact, he’s explicit about this album being a slice-of-life work of art, that’s about a set of people and why they behave the way they do. A trapper is a hustler, much like anybody else who wants to make money. But they don’t have other avenues beyond dealing coke to make money.

"It's basically telling people who might look up to me, 'Don't be like me; be better than me.' Don't listen to my songs 'Dope Boys,' 'Trap Niggas,' and all that shit thinking that's what you got to do to be cool. That's what I did. You got your own thing for you to do."

Most importantly, T.I’s biggest claim to fame is that he invented trap music with this album. His claim is that before the release of Trap Muzik, no one combined the words “trap music”^[3] to describe the complex hi-hat bouncy sound. He may not be wrong, but that shouldn’t necessarily mean that the sound started with this album.

At around the same time, three more personalities made their indelible mark on the scene. One of them, an upstart in 2005, had a movie-like moment right before the release of his debut album, Trap House. A few gunmen broke into Gucci Mane’s home^[4], one of whom was shot and killed by Gucci. He turned himself to the police, only to bail himself out on time to enjoy the release of Trap House. This incident is one of many in Gucci Mane’s life. The man made music the way he lived life — dangerous.

One of the gunmen was a known associate of the other upstart, Young Jeezy, who was already a few years into the game ahead of Gucci. Now, no one likes to indulge in hearsay, but Young Jeezy didn’t have a hit song by that time. Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy hopped on a song called “So Icy”, which took over the streets of Atlanta when launched. Young Jeezy expected it to be on his album, but it went to Gucci’s debut instead. Right after, Young Jeezy told the upstart to “Stay Strapped”^[5]. This was the start of one of hip-hop’s most underrated, most dangerous beefs. Probably really only second to 2Pac / Biggie.

The third person was a producer whose name would be plastered all over the music of the 2000s and 2010s. Zaytoven was a barber who wanted to make music. He was introduced to Gucci while still at barber school, and both of them started their careers pretty much together. Together, they made a living selling their own mixtapes from the trunks of their cars. Not only did Zaytoven made the “So Icy” beat, he was the decisive factor in choosing who the song belonged to, because of his friendship and undying loyalty to Gucci. This one song changed everything not just for these three, but ushered in an exciting new era for all of Atlanta hip-hop.

Gucci Mane’s manager was a woman named Debra Antney, a music executive from Queens. She is also the mother of Jamea Malphurs, who wanted to embark on a trap career of his own. His cousin gave him the name “Waka”, after a catchphrase by one of the Muppets characters. In 2009, Waka signed to Gucci Mane’s label, 1017 Records. It was Gucci who christened him with his complete stage name: Waka Flocka Flame. He revolutionized the scene with his most epic hit, “Hard In Da Paint”.

(Gucci and Waka also had a long beef, so the trap scene was always tense. They lived life the way they wrote music.)

Meanwhile, Rico Wade had been training his cousin Nayvadius in the art of Atlanta hip-hop, so that Nayvadius kept off the streets. He performed with a collective called “Da Connect”, one of the members nicknamed Nayvadius as The Future. Over time, Nayvadius would Sean Parker (here’s what I mean by that) his name up and just go by Future. Future brought something new to the table that nobody else did before him: using AutoTune to convey a drugged state. The running joke about Future’s voice today is that the reason his voice has the texture it does is because of — besides AutoTune — how much lean (cough syrup + Sprite) he consumes.

Around the same time, Gucci Mane also signed Jeffrey Lamar Williams — who called himself Young Thug — in 2013, after hearing his first 3 mixtapes. Young Thug distinguished himself with a high-pitched AutoTune croon that was very different from that of someone like T-Pain. His first mixtape as part of Gucci’s label, 1017 Thug was lauded as one of the best mixtapes of 2013 by many music publications.

Future and Young Thug would effectively represent a new wave of Atlanta trap, one that replaced the old guard. Their style was characterized as mumble rap, a term often used in a derogatory fashion since so much of what they said didn’t seem to make sense. However, people came around to it, because what was important in their music wasn’t necessarily the lyrics, but the vibe that they created. A vibe where designer drugs (more advanced and laced than crack), lust, crime and pain formed a potent cocktail of their own. Instrumental to creating this vibe were producers like Zaytoven, Honourable C-Note, and possibly hip-hop’s biggest producer today, Metro Boomin’ — who has also been Future’s biggest and most frequent collaborator since the early days of both of their careers.

Future and Young Thug were truly influential in a way nobody before them had been. They set the template for everybody who came after them — Future brags^[6] about the fact that he laid the groundwork, and that he was the beginning. And he’s not wrong. Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, Gunna, Desiigner, Lil Durk, Lil Baby, 2 Chainz, all of them owe their now-thriving careers to Future and Young Thug.

To a large extent, it’s this version of trap music that has had such incredible appeal across other genres and regions. It spilled over to EDM, pop, mainstream hip-hop, and even regions — Latin trap is extremely popular. Artists like Beyonce and Lady Gaga began incorporating trap elements into their own music. When Atlanta trap reached immense commercial appeal with Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen, or Rae Sremmurd’s Swang, trap artists began to be held in the same regard as modern pop stars.

And this is where our story starts. A genre that has travelled all the way from rundown drug houses in Atlanta to the slums of Pune, high-rises of Noida and Mumbai, to the lanes of Delhi, Chandigarh and Kolkata, and even the hills of the North-East. All of them understanding the true essence of trap music but adapting them to tell their own stories.

+91-8080808080

When you watch the trailer video^[7] for Darcy’s second album, Full Moon, two things become clear. One, it’s Darcy’s scarily-blurry view of the world, visualized with the most jarring red-heavy video filter. Two, it evokes plenty of horror tropes — wolf sounds, screams, and, more laterally, Raat Akeli Hai.

And then you hear the bass drone kick in, hard, followed by the words:

“Launde mai atak gaya tha, bacchiiii”

Darcy is a hip-hop artist who originally hails from Mumbai, but has lived a substantial part of his life in Delhi. When you listen to him, you can hear the influences of the hip-hop scenes of both cities. And yet, it feels like he doesn’t need to embody either of them because of how unique his style is. He’s had two great full-length releases in the mixtape Hyper, and one of my favorite Indian EPs OR albums ever in Full Moon (which Darcy made at the dizzying speed of one month).

What struck out to me about Darcy the most in our conversation was how bold his thinking is. He refuses to bow down to convention. When I asked him about whether he was worried about accusations of appropriating black music, he had a simple answer: “Meri galti hai kya mere paas internet hai?” He compares us taking to trap to how toffees were expensive for Indians pre-independence. Motivated by the Swadeshi movement, a certain Mohanlal Chauhan went to Germany to learn how to make them, came back, and opened one of the greatest Indian companies in Parle.

“I lived that life. I failed in 11th grade, and my parents were struggling financially then. I was peddling in order to get a side income.” Darcy identified with the music of Future and Young Thug while trying to navigate community and family tensions as an adolescent. Moving from Mumbai to Delhi as a kid was also a massive culture shock. He loves Mumbai, finds its people extremely chill. People didn’t really care much if you were better than somebody — “tu behtar hai toh kya karu mai?” Delhi was hot-headed, violent, full of people who wanted to one-up each other constantly. It broke him from inside. “Garam khoon hai Delhi mai.”

This sentiment somewhat echoes in the music of AB17 — who I covered very briefly in my first Delhi hip-hop piece^[8]. He hails from a colony in Najafgarh, where the hot-headedness that Delhi is known for has manifested into criminal activity. He drowns himself in melodies that sound like they are audial representations of substance abuse. He wants to stay lowkey, avoid conflict, stay high, drunk, or have raw sex, and is absolutely unfiltered about all of these experiences. He provides a playbook to survive in Delhi-71, but he’s honest about what all of it really is:

“Samjho baawe hum rap ke zariye dukh baant'te”

A common theme in Darcy’s music is the weight of unrealized potential. Much of the content in his first album, Hyper, stems from failing 11th grade. One of the songs is even titled “SRCC”, referring to the premier undergraduate college that is part of Delhi University. The weight of unrealized potential is as much societally inflicted on you as it’s individualistic. Darcy is fed up with being in rat races that cause kids to be depressed if they fall merely a centimeter short of the outcome. He wants to dream beyond the structures that confine him. He asks simple questions that echo general middle-class frustrations of India.

Which is why trap is the most natural expression of his artistry. The drug stories are aplenty in his music. His imagery of a lost childhood is jarring when he narrates in Purani Jeans that in the age of eating Cadbury Perks, he and his friends were popping percocets (“perkys”) instead. But it’s not the drugs that embody the idea of trapping for him. Darcy spares no bars on telling you that the biggest trap of them all is the Indian education system. The drugs are just a symptom of the cause.

Education has been target numero uno for many Indian rappers. In India, lucrative careers only take a few paths — the IIT-JEE, the NEET, the Armed Forces exams, the entrance test for Delhi University, to name most of them. They’re intensely competitive exams with extremely low success rates. Being a rapper is (or was) an uncertain and unproven path, and it definitely doesn’t come with social status. But for Darcy (and maybe even in general, if you really think about it), trap music was as much of a gamble as education.

I ask internet music reviewer LOREM.wav — real name Arihant Arora — what he thinks of the social contexts that trap has adopted in India. “Indian rappers are mostly aspirational, and they want to be like the people [Western rappers] they’re listening to — even if they’re not selling or trapping”, he says. “So their early work tends to emulate that lifestyle a little, but they eventually infuse their own (usually generic) social contexts into it.”

LOREM’s introduction to Indian trap music was an artist called Doperman, who he has featured on the top 20 of his highly-anticipated “All-Time Top 100 Desi Hip-Hop Albums”^[9] list. Doperman studied in Atlanta and raps primarily in English. His songs harken back to a style of punk rap popularized by Playboi Carti, Ken Carson, and Yeat. Doperman enjoys his memes and anime, and his extremely-online aesthetic is heavily inspired by both of those things.

LOREM highlighted Indian rappers Loka as likely the first to infuse Indian social contexts into it, and both him and DRV as among the first to do trap in Hindi. Loka is one of the early innovators of Indian — specifically Mumbai — trap, having done it since 2019. He gained notoriety last year because he was jailed for 8 weeks on charges of supposedly importing 27.5 kilograms of weed. Right out of the gate, he took out Side A of his next release, Loka Kaha Hai. It was a heartfelt set of songs that covered his take on the Indian prison system, police, family finances, and his relationship with his mother. We had our own version of “Free Young Thug” with Loka, with many artists like Darcy and Delhi-based Darcy calling to “Free Loka”. “It wasn’t just an internet meme”, says Darcy, who also gives his respect to Loka as one of the pioneers of bringing an Indian sensibility to trap music.

However, there is also some evidence that trap in any Indian language might predate them as a whole. Punjabi rapper Sikander Kahlon, who is extremely prolific with his output (sometimes releasing 2 albums in a year), made an album in 2015 titled The Punjabi Trap with producer Kaka Sady. The production is very much in the style of the Gucci Mane / T.I-era of trap, with fairly conventional lyrics of flexing and luxury. The album is fairly cross-genre, not just restricting itself to trap, but extending to more new-wave sounds originated by the likes of Lil Wayne and Drake.

Poverty inevitably finds its way into Indian trap. Hip-hop in India had become a force to reckon with when DIVINE and Naezy introduced us to gully rap. But MC STAN’s music is jarring. Not only does he speak about the emotional and physical violence that poverty can inflict on you, the beats that he makes sound like that violence. STAN made every single beat for his scintillating debut album, Tadipaar. The title track has a section where the main beat switches into a frantic heartbeat, while STAN narrates that he was stabbed. You hear screams. Then the beat switches to a mellow, bass-heavy, ominous instrumental. where STAN says:

“TikTok ki kasam, I’m bad for your health
Nako baba wapis, Yerwada Jail”

And STAN isn’t fronting. He was exiled from Pune because he risked arrest on a murder charge. He was banned from his area, Tadiwala Road — hence the album title Tadipaar. He’s seen friends get murdered, his parents cry because of what their son was getting into, and been a victim of police brutality and casteism. He saw himself in the lyrics of 2Pac, NWA, Future. Tadipaar may not have been the first Indian trap album, but it has since been deemed one of Indian hip-hop’s most genre-defying works. It also made Marathi rap — a subgenre that thrives well today — truly mainstream.'

The criticisms of the trap sound that Future and Young Thug are known for has translated to Indian contexts but with an additional layer of social harm. With modern American trap, the complaint was that it wasn’t “real rap”. With India, specifically someone like MC STAN, his socio-economic background and his caste are often brought up derogatorily when it comes to the way he looks. He’s often called a “chhapri”, because he poses to be in a certain way. This is a label that STAN unfortunately has not been able to shake off even with becoming financially successful.

Here is breakout rapper Emiway Bantai’s song, “Classy Chapri”, from his 2023 album King of the Streets. He challenges the ones who said he would never amount to anything because he’s a “chhapri”, and that he’s already built a brand at the national level for himself. The song title also stresses that caste plays into the perceptions of Emiway Bantai more than socio-economic class. Emiway Bantai is one of the industry’s most successful musicians who also runs his own label. Money is not an issue for him. This Reddit post somewhat digs into the issue deeper, identifying this as significantly pronounced for alternative hip-hop in Mumbai and Pune.

I ask Darcy about this, and he evokes a rule of hip-hop that has existed ever since the genre was born — “free speech”. While he may himself not condone using such slurs any longer, it’s impossible to stop a rapper from saying something. Free speech has been an absolute rule for the genre that allows for advocating screwing the authorities in the same vein as treating women like playthings. Words are all a rapper has. If you’re stopping them from saying something, you’re stealing their words.

Rappers of all kinds, including those belonging to minorities, operate under this closed logic loop. That naturally leads to questions like what it means to own the slurs that mark your own identity, the way Emiway does. It raises questions about all-too-common homophobic bars, and what that means for who hip-hop can include. Today, hip-hop undoubtedly involves more rappers who belong to minorities more than it ever did, and that’s a great sign of progress. But it’s difficult to upend a framework that has been stacked against them since the start of the genre.

In India, money doesn’t play God. A million gods and goddesses do, and they always have, even with the rise of money’s role in India’s recent history. Even with all the rules of free speech that hip-hop / trap holds dear, few artists will dare to spark communal sentiment. Two of the biggest names in Indian hip-hop, DIVINE and KR$NA squashed their beef a day after the latter invoked a jibe at DIVINE’s Christian beliefs. Even if it happens in our polarized society today, it will be met with backlash of how it’s a grand new low for Indian hip-hop.

But religion has also been a source of spirituality for some rappers. One of MC STAN’s most popular tracks is “Astaghfirullah”, where he asks Allah to forgive him of all his sins that he’s committed. He talks about how he often doesn’t get entry into a mosque anymore because of his fashion style. Darcy’s Full Moon is replete with religious imagery, right down to the album cover. “I’ve deeply questioned myself whether God is real or just a myth that has always been fed to us”. But Darcy, a patron of Amar Chitra Kathas and some of the epics, receives a lot of his power from believing in a higher power. He credits his grandfather with this influence.

I speak to DRV — real name Dhruv Rajpal — who is hot off a string of single releases this year. His last solo album was titled Nakshatra, which he quotes as a spiritual journey. The album cover depicts one man with 4 hands facing the mountains, where the 4 hands are supposed to depict godly energies. However, he doesn’t necessarily believe in blind faith. “Religion is a gift that keeps on giving, but I have unanswered questions about big stuff”, he says. Nakshatra is a source of spirituality for him, but anything beyond that is still up for debate.

The title (and opening) track also ends with an homage to his grandfather, with a voice note from him narrating how hard he had to work post-Partition to feed himself. DRV has familial ties with erstwhile-Multan, which is a part of his identity that he’s never shied away from expressing. That sort of hunger for the best probably passed onto DRV himself, when he rapped a ferocious set of bars:

“Jai Shiv, Shankar
Kabhi na mitey ye hunger
800 crore log apke darshak hun mai manch par”

While a genre can often reflect the semblance of the city it comes from — the way Delhi rap can be hot-headed — trap has picked up not just in Delhi and Mumbai. It has crossed that confinement. Below is “Shoishob”, by rapper Archiesman Kundu (aka Archies) and producer Rawhit. Kundu talks about his very-Bengali childhood, saying that his “shoishob hoye rob” (my childhood was robbed), that he was bad at math, that he learnt rap to escape where he came from raps fully in his mother tongue. Archies hails from the Medinipur district in West Bengal, and moved to Kolkata for pursuing a creative career. He raps about quintessential Bengali survival kit items, like having fish fry, egg rolls, and naps.

Or take MC Insane, who doesn’t hail from either of the major cities. He takes significant inspiration from emo rap, in the vein of XXXTentacion, Lil Peep, Juice WRLD and Lil Uzi Vert. Much like his Western predecessors, he’s extremely vulnerable about his pain — especially when it comes to love and relationships. He uses AutoTune to an extreme degree to vocalize the pain of not being understood, and also has the word “Emo” tattooed below his left eye. All extremely reminiscent of the SoundCloud rappers who birthed this style. Much like his predecessors, he has explicit lines about wanting to be in the infamous 27 Club. His song “Forgive Me” has amassed nearly 6 million views on YouTube.

Trap has certainly acquired a form of its own in India. Even if not everyone uses it in the context it was originally intended, it has become a legitimate expression of their struggles, pain and ambitions. In no way do they intend to designate themselves as copycats of the original sound. They are dedicated to pushing not just the idea of Indian trap, but also diffuse that idea into more mainstream Indian hip-hop and popular Indian sounds.

No Rules

It’s late afternoon at Deer Park. I’m waiting to meet one of two artists behind one of my favorite Indian hip-hop songs to-date, titled “Court Kacheri”. It’s a simple, catchy hook that sounds like something you’d expect from someone who hails from Delhi-NCR (it helps that the other artist, DRV, was once a lawyer):

“Court kacheri karaiyo na matter sultane ka mauka ko de
Aaj se pehle nahi pata tha mujrim bhi jake wahan law padte”

Lawyers trapping in the streets of Hauz Khas sounds like a fever dream to me, and it probably even did to rapper Boyblanck, who arrives wearing shades to hide his bloodshot eyes. He’s accompanied by his indie manager, Manvendra Krishna. After enjoying some activity that people with bloodshot eyes generally do, I take them both to my favorite spot in Humayunpur, Lea Izakaya. True to myself, I wanted my interviewees to eat some of the best Asian food in Delhi while they answered my questions.

Born Raghav Bhatia, Boyblanck’s biggest claim to fame to-date is that he provided an original composition for Anurag Kashyap on his most recent film, Kennedy. “He treated me like I’m an extremely gullible 20-something who is easily influenced by herd activity”, he says. But Anurag Kashyap was also very receptive of the potential of Indian trap, and he was convinced by the coincidence that in his earliest days of rapping, Boyblanck had made a song called Mr Kennedy.

Boyblanck confirms something to me that LOREM had said earlier about Indian trap artists. “I copied Future, Young Thug, A$AP Rocky. Even though I wrote in English, it didn’t feel like my words, and took me a while to find my original voice.” Purely in terms of vocalization style, Boyblanck is as close as one may get to having an Indian Young Thug. He credits DRV with making Hindi trap sound cool to him. Today, Boyblanck’s Slim Shady-esque alias is Vicky Donor. In his words, he’s the dad of everybody that matters in the rap game:

“Jaise mai Vicky Donor yahan pe bacche saare mere
Baje saade chhe the launde thane mai the”

The funniest coincidence in this regard is that apparently, he discovered that Anurag Kashyap’s apartment building also houses the actual Vicky Donor himself, Ayushman Khurana.

I ask Boyblanck what it means to rep Noida in a sea of people that proudly wear Delhi on their sleeves. He wanted to change the bad reputation that Noida keep receiving as a fairly real-life representation of an Indian version of Grand Theft Auto. Many of his bars are about the randomness of the city. It’s unpredictable, the kids there are weird, the roads are wild, and for some reason people are often in jail. But it’s his city. He wants to make a visual and audio identity for it, the way it was done for Compton or Harlem. And along with some of his other artist friends, namely — J1SIX, Scoolboypax, and Yoosh — Boyblanck has begun a collective named G16 (in honour of UP-16) to create that identity.

From all that I’ve read and heard about the desi hip-hop scene, what is undeniable is that Kanye West’s influence on this relatively-new wave of Indian hip-hop has been greater than the next two artists combined. While he might be busy with his usual shenanigans to see this, Kanye introduced the idea of a melody to hip-hop. For once, you could add synths, electric guitars, things that rockstars use. In many ways, Kanye was the first rockstar of hip-hop, too. He wanted his music to fill every crevice of a stadium. As he delved deeper into more melancholic, melodious hip-hop, he may have set the stage for a crossover with what came out of Atlanta. “When I listen to him objectively, I can only wonder how he even came up with this song structure and harmony”, says Boyblanck.

To an extent, this also holds true for A$AP Rocky. And it goes beyond having that one song of his play in Gully Boy. A$AP is a perpetual experimenter — if there’s one thing he doesn’t lack, it’s the ability to stretch the possibility of what his sound can do. “I didn’t understand A$AP for a year but I loved it”, says Darcy. Many credit Rocky with pushing the envelope of psychedelic rap, fusing Pink Floyd-ian harmonies with rap verses.

Originally a guitarist who took from rock and progressive metal, DRV didn’t really know that the new genre he’d picked up while still in law college was called “trap”. From just knowing the guitar to producing entire 808-infused beats on his own, DRV name-dropped three people (who are close collaborators) that the new wave of hip-hop loves to invoke: Kanye West, Mike Dean, Jeff Bhasker — the latter of which DRV has personally met and played his work. “Kanye does both trap drums and the drums he gets from samples in the same song — you can’t just have the one”, he says. The pure rock influences still exist, too — DRV samples the great opening riff of RHCP’s “Californication” on his track “Chadhai”.

Indian trap is nothing without its producers. Some common names you’re likely to find include $ohunnid, hype, AAKASH, Vamp, and Atlanta-based babywxve — who has worked with globally famous Lil Durk. Part of the deal that Indian artists got with globalization and the rise of SoundCloud is not just our exposure to Western music, but also collaboration with Western producers (and sometimes, artists).

In fact, while speaking to $ohunnid, what surprised me was his casual mention of the fact that he didn’t listen to music until he was 18. When he started to do so, the popular names of hip-hop didn’t appeal to him. “I didn’t like the mainstream stuff like J Cole and Lil Baby too much, I wanted to get into underground shit”. Now 21, $ohunnid cites Yeat and Ken Carson as initial influences, but now quotes what he listens to as stuff that may be too unconventional even for a comfortable enjoyer of trap music. Having said that, however, he’s trying to find creative ways to make conventional trap music sound palatable to Indian audiences. That involves including Indian percussion as well as samples of Indian music.

Or take the producer Rawhit, who produced the Bengali hip-hop track Shoishob. Rohit Dey is a 22 year-old from Guwahati who didn’t listen to music too much either until he discovered the Kendricks and Savages of the world. He has played an important role in shaping the sounds of some of Kolkata’s rappers, most notably his frequent collaborator Archisman Kundu / Archies. He believes that Bengali hip-hop today is at the kind of juncture that Bombay hip-hop was at in its earliest days — people aren’t ready for it yet, but it’s positioned in a great way to age well. Globalization and the internet have enabled him to work with trap producers and sound engineers based out of Atlanta, and he’s never met them except through the Discord screen. Rawhit’s long-term vision is simple, one that, given recent events, will make lots of sense:

“I want a Hanumankind-like event for Bengali hip-hop.”

No discussion of trap music is complete without a full-blown deconstruction of flex bars, and we certainly bring very Indian sensibilities to that game. Boyblanck’s Vicky Donor bar is one such bar, but if you’re a rapper whose first name is Uday, your first instinct undoubtedly has to be titling a track after the famous “Control Uday” quote by Nana Patekar on Welcome. Indeed, we have such a song by Chandigarh-based Uday Bakshi, who has been in the scene for more than a few years. Uday Bakshi has quite the cult following behind him, and is well recognized by many of the stalwarts of the Delhi scene who started along with him, including Seedhe Maut, DRV and Full Power.

How about being, well, anti-drugs? Xanax, or xannies as they’re informally and infamously known, have been a staple especially for the emo rap wave of rappers. But Qaab’s biggest flex is that he doesn’t need drugs or alcohol to give you dope. Or how about taking down the entire map of Ghaziabad as an 11th grader? This is something that native Vasudev made a cult hit out of in the track named after the city.

Boyblanck has a fully-loaded arsenal of flex bars. From boasting how he went to a party where someone played his own unreleased material, to comparing his talent to the magic bat from cult hit “Chain Khuli Ki Main Khuli”, to — invoking his alias — holding a baby shower (“godh bharai”), BB’s range of similes and metaphors transitions smoothly into an ability to create outlandish (and very funny) punchlines that are characteristic of hip-hop. “I love being challenged, making lyrics fun”, he says.

Naturally, the biggest section of flex bars is devoted to the good ol’ love for money. This is a descriptive list of the things our rappers have said: rejecting PayTM for cold hard cash, wanting 10 Peti, name-dropping Mukesh Ambani right after narrating an encounter with the police, comparing contracts to a maths book because one never reads either properly, throwing shade at South Delhi high fashion because they couldn’t land themselves better drip. Rappers love being materialistic, and they loving flexing how much their shows net them. For some of them, a successful music career upgraded entire lifestyles.

But what’s changed is not just that these are artists making money by creating a new genre out of thin air. These are artists who are as independent as they come. They don’t necessarily associate with huge, mainstream labels in terms of long-term contracts. MC STAN continues to release his music under his own Hindi Records. DRV, Darcy and Boyblanck operate primarily independently, with the odd high-profile release (like a music video) under a music marketing agency. That adds weight to how they earn money. In an era where independent music and indie labels are gaining a larger share in the music market pie, this holds a lot of significance — especially in a country like India where the ways in which you can do so have been fairly limited for a long time.

Much like Kanye and A$AP, both Boyblanck and Darcy believe in the power of audio-visual experiences. “I wanted people to imagine a movie when they’re listening to HYP3R”, says Darcy. In an interesting contrast to Boyblanck’s body of work, Darcy has more loyalty to Indian director Sriram Raghavan (who I wrote on earlier this year) than his contemporary Anurag Kashyap. He has a love for noir, which he believes Raghavan is a master of. He also quotes Gaspar Noe as a major influence on his artistry. But he’s at his most insightful when he’s talking about Kal Ho Na Ho — “Every sequence is naturally connected to the next song, and vice versa. Karan Johar ne crazy kar diya bro.”

But making music videos comes with constraints for indie artists. It comes with requirements for budgets, and it’s much easier to pull off a music video with a label deal. The dreams, however, are not small. “I want to build a musical identity for Noida the same way Drake, PARTYNEXTDOOR and The Weeknd did for Toronto”, says Boyblanck. He has more than a few music videos, some of which are backed by a label called Artiste First. The label has a wide roster that doesn’t just restrict itself to hip-hop, and claims 100+ million views from all of its videos.

Boyblanck is brutally honest about the supposed Delhi-Mumbai divide. “Bombay is more street / grittier than Delhi, bro. Who are we lying to when we say we’re ‘harder’?” He understands the socio-economic contexts within which trap emerged, so despite what his eyes seemed to say at the time, he found it duplicitous to advocate for something he didn’t practice or find the need to do. Darcy echoes the same concerns, especially since he was driven to dealing by virtue of being left with little choice. There’s a fairly thin line between expression and appropriation, which trap artists in India all too well. Someone like MC STAN speaks from a set of lived experiences that may be all too true for many in India.

Yet, there’s an optimistic view of the same that DRV holds, especially having worked extensively with artists in both cities. “Everyone is living their own reality, and I think all perceptions about the Delhi-Mumbai stuff should be detached”. His belief likely comes from the fact that it is still very early days for everyone involved in creating a subculture out of Indian trap, whichever part of India they may be from. DRV embodies the same belief that the mythical Chef Gusteau from Pixar classic Ratatouille always endorsed / advertised:

“Anyone can cook.”

Bolly-woo Type Shit

Some 40 minutes into only the second episode of Prime Video’s biggest debut for India, Farzi, you see Shahid Kapoor’s character printing buckets of fake money. It’s a stylish montage with paper cutting, a running washing machine (to clean the notes), scored to a really fun song composed by the great duo of Sachin-Jigar, titled Fark Nahi Padta. Farzi was far and away 2023’s biggest OTT release. But what few people must have known was that the song was a showcase for an up-and-coming artist based out of Delhi. The extremely-catchy hook of the track was sung by DRV.

“Sachin and Jigar wanted to get a new-school trap voice in the song”, says DRV. He had no idea when he was initially contacted that they were the ones reaching out to him, and that he was going to play a part in a Shahid Kapoor / Vijay Sethupathi-led project. But he was asked to deliver the hook in his most natural style. DRV didn’t have a role in composing the song — the hook was written by Jigar Saraiya’s wife, Pia^[10]. The duo heard DRV and Darcy’s “Coco”, which inspired them to get DRV’s raspy voice onboard.

It’s a huge moment for the prospect of an Indian trap subculture. It’s a signal that the who’s who of mainstream Hindi music are tuned into more underground sounds, and see plenty of merit in enmeshing those sounds into conventional Bollywood music. The YouTube comments to the song are filled with a recognition of DRV’s role.

The Hindi music industry (and Bollywood, since those two have differences) has given a fair bit of love to the idea of Indian hip-hop. The most notable event that spurred this development was the rise of Mafia Mundeer and their eventual split. Honey Singh, Raftaar, Badshah and Ikka have experienced solid success in their move to more mainstream careers. In fact, the use of AutoTune by all of them may have some kind of precedent when it comes to recognizing its role of making one’s voice a whole instrument in trap music.

Let alone Honey Singh — there may be solid evidence that one of the first instances of trap was most likely actually truly mainstream. The beat for Imran Khan’s legendary hit from 2013, Satisfya, is alarmingly close to emulating all the elements needed to qualify as a trap beat. It sounds like a song that Ludacris might have made.

But this comes with a caveat. In his initial days, Honey Singh had to make his music more palatable to Indian sensibilities in order to be known as a hip-hop star. That involved making a move to Punjabi music for a while. In many ways, he took less after the Ludacris’ and Jeezys of the world, but more after Jason Derulo and Pitbull. Which makes the acceptance of the new-school sound all the more interesting — it’s an entirely new template that isn’t as colored by the need to sound conventional.

The adoption of this “new-school” trap music in the mainstream could not be an isolated incident. Sachin-Jigar have also partnered with MC STAN to provide the title track for the 2023 film Farrey. STAN has received an overwhelming amount of fanfare not just for a trap artist, but for an indie one. From getting a “P-TOWN REPRESENT” shoutout from actor Ranveer Singh^[11], to winning Bigg Boss, STAN has always wanted to reach the stratosphere.

However, it’s fair to note that Sachin and Jigar are a bit of an outlier when it comes to how innovative they are in the grand scheme of Bollywood composition. They break boundaries regularly, but they have also earned that privilege with their share of hits. And it is certainly a privilege to break boundaries in conventional Hindi music because it’s much easier to play it safe. Why try something new when you could revive a retro song for the new century for the umpteenth time?

When you keep that in mind, it also makes sense for why a maverick like Boyblanck was adopted by one of the biggest offbeat names of conventional Hindi film-making. Last year, BB saw his work at the Cannes Film Festival because of Anurag Kashyap’s Kennedy. The story of how this partnership even happened is a matter of chance — a friend of BB’s who was interning under Kashyap just accidentally played a song of his (titled “Mr Kennedy”) loud enough for the director to hear. True to himself, Kashyap gave him full creative freedom, only retaining the final yes/no. A track with Kashmiri rapper Ahmer was rejected in the process.

But this is just Bollywood. The Indian music industry is composed of majors like Universal, Warner, Sony, JioSaavn as well as more new-age Indian startups like Azadi Records, OML, DIVINE’s Gully Gang, Raftaar’s Kalamkaar Records and so on. The non-Bollywood music landscape has grown in the last 10 years, with labels looking to tap into new sources of revenue in the form of groundbreaking artists. Some of those artists who enjoyed early success under a major have gone on to open their own agencies.

Manvendra, the manager for both DRV and Boyblanck, has worked under and liaised with some of the majors in India. He condenses where these labels lie in the adoption curve for Indian trap in a simple sentence — “Labels are not yet fully willing to risk finance behind trap music”. To them, MC STAN (and Loka) was an outlier that set a huge precedent but may not have necessarily indicated a trend of moving towards the genre. Without his success, it would be very hard for anyone to make a bet on any idea of Indian trap music. This compounds against them in the deals room where they may be included, but not necessarily heard.

This can be said for any new genre on the rise. It took some time for Indian hip-hop to break out of its underground roots — it was only in 2014 when DIVINE was noticed by Sony Music, and only in 2015-16 where Sez on the Beat broke out. Now, Indian hip-hop is extremely close to becoming a global export, with Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs cracking the Billboard Top 100 in the US. Hip-hop has successfully become a thriving market in India, with dizzying variety across genres.

Which leads us to the natural question: where does Indian trap lie in the broader context of Indian hip-hop? Conventional rappers are increasingly choosing to rap on instrumentals heavily influenced by trap. One of 2021’s biggest Indian rap songs was Seedhe Maut’s Nanchaku, which had a highly-lauded feature by MC STAN. With 29M views on YouTube, it’s arguably Seedhe Maut’s biggest song. But those views pale in comparison to an average MC STAN original. In all likelihood — and with due respect to both artists — it was the feature artist who gave the song a majority chunk of viewership than the main artist.

Of course, this is an outlier. But the collaborations with trap artists and the active choice to rap on trap beats are increasing. One of 2023’s most-lauded songs was a collaboration between two artists who are not only NOT known for their trap music to begin with but would also normally NOT be associated with each other. Yet, Raftaar and Prabh Deep are pioneers of Delhi hip-hop in their own right, going back-to-back on the catchy “Trap Praa”.

In India, trap music isn’t necessarily an offshoot of hip-hop. Some of these artists have been around for only a little less longer than the most popular rappers of India, unlike in the West where trap was a trailing function of classic rap. Indian hip-hop is also seeing itself transform into a bit of a global export this year. Ahmedabad-based Dhanji is working with the official Indian account of the Premier League to make a song for them. Seedhe Maut and desi producer Hisab worked on a song with renowned American rapper Mick Jenkins, who made one of my favorite songs in “Vibe”. Of course, both of them are predated by DIVINE working with Nas, as well as with Pusha-T and Vince Staples for the movie adaptation of The White Tiger.

The optimism for the adoption of trap and mumble rap in India, therefore, is not without reason. It comes with some precedent not just for hip-hop, but also for itself. The genre itself has its own merits that is making well-known producers notice its potential in raising their own game. India’s new music markets are expanding, and will someday be among the biggest in the world. This is happening simultaneously as other, more popular markets are being exhausted.

“In India, people without numbers are treated like shit. I want to make music on my own terms, fame and money are (important) by-products”, says Darcy. There is certainly a wish to be accepted as one is, without having to resort to marketing gimmicks. That authenticity has always been a staple of trap. When Young Thug released one of his most celebrated albums in Jeffrey, it broke the internet with the very album cover, and defied hip-hop norms. It showed Young Thug in an androgynous dress. It’s that kind of expression that this generation of artists wants to vie and be accepted for, especially in an age where artists realize that community-building on the internet is an extremely important function. “We will have biopics made on all of us”, Darcy says, indicating tremendous confidence in the potential of Indian trap.

There’s nothing more fulfilling than seeing the stank faces of those who think they’ve heard something ground-breaking for the first time. “They need to have that “I fuck with that” expression”, Boyblanck puts it bluntly. A proud moment for him and Manvendra was when they found out that Infamous Snippets had placed right beside Drake’s Views on Apple Music’s global hip-hop charts. Being right beside someone whose music may have inspired you in many ways is an unbeatable feeling. It’s moments like these that affirm that taste-making is a powerful activity, that you are doing something that probably no one else in India might be.

The trappers of India want to make their own rules of the game. They don’t want audiences to dictate their creativity. They do not want to fall victim to the musician analogy of people constantly making song requests to DJs. They want to be known as creators and innovators who started something new, who struck gold where no one else thought to look.

“The perception of trap music is an exercise in futility because subcultures can’t be planned”, says DRV. It’s an extremely potent sentiment (and one that I agree with), because the planning of sub-cultures is less magical than them occurring spontaneously, accidentally, coincidentally. There needs to be a confluence of factors for something to succeed, and more often than not, you can’t predict that. There’s an element of “right place, right time” that needs to take shape.

But that’s what makes it special. It indicates a belief that what he and artists like him are creating will certainly get people to believe in magic. And there’s no time like the present to do so.

Thanks section!

• LOREM.wav / Arihant Arora — one of the best documenters of Indian hip-hop, he is our version of Anthony Fantano. Doesn’t hold back his opinions, loves heaping praises on lesser-known artists that he finds awesome, and understands the A to Z of music reviewing. His Instagram page is a gem and deserves at least double the followers he currently has.

• Darcy — for being extremely receptive to a cold Instagram DM. Full Moon is one of the best projects I’ve heard in Indian music (and by that I mean in all of Indian music), and Darcy is coming off a lot more. He’d make an excellent podcast guest if you’re reading this — we went from Gaspar Noe to Green Day to Vile Parle to cultural appropriation. His latest releases, RED and FIFA are out now.

• $ohunnid — for a really scintillating interview on what goes into his music. He has produced for both Darcy and Boyblanck, and some of that work is in the playlist. His latest work, a collaboration with rapper ABDUL, titled emotions is out now!

• DRV / Dhruv Rajpal — since he’s spent a fair amount of time in the scene, DRV is a bit of a historian on the subject. He’s been on a streak of releases this year. His latest is a collaborative album with Qaab, titled “Trapanese” — out on all streaming platforms now!

• Rawhit / Rohit Dey — Bengali hip-hop is not supposed to fit bhadralok sensibilities, which is exactly why I love it. And Rawhit is at the forefront of this movement. His latest work is with his most frequent collaborator, Archies, and is titled Northern Ties.

• Manvendra Krishna — for being extremely helpful for liaising with my interviews of Boyblanck and DRV, and providing me with a lot of context. A&R professionals who are a) in their early 20s, b) have a strong worldview, and c) truly love the artists they back are amazing to speak to.

• Boyblanck / Raghav Bhatia — when artists tell you that there are songs of theirs where they probably got outrapped by someone else, that’s when you know you’re in a special conversation. He is also on a streak of his own, with two knockout full-length releases this year in Infamous Snippets Vol 1 and In Surveillance of Angels. Two of my favorite tracks of the year come from him — in Invisible (produced by $ohunnid) and Heroine (featuring Darcy and a killer SEGA sample).

Usual suspects for proofreading: Sunaina Bose, Kushan Patel, , , for checking this out, helping with edits, as always!

This piece is long, so I’m going to cut to the chase. The playlist for this is very unstructured, but it’s music from artists and scenes that I’ve mentioned here. It’s also mostly propaganda for drum-n-bass and The Weeknd. Sorry but I really like indulgent.

I’m really happy with how this piece has turned out. I’m not an expert on economics, but I like to think I understand media business. Being exposed to so much great art around the world just naturally caused me to ask how it’s generated, and what we (as India) can learn from those ecosystems. Turns out, there’s a lot we can learn, not just from their efforts and mistakes, but from our own. I hope you enjoy reading this, I certainly enjoyed writing this, despite it being my least structured piece in a while.

The cover image is from Bristol’s drum-and-bass bike event. Yep, that is a perfectly normal event for their people. And yep, that’s how much we’re lagging behind them.

I often wonder about Parasite being the success it became.

Parasite is that rare combination of being not just critically acclaimed, but also effectively blockbuster-material in terms of how much money it made. The 22nd highest-grossing film in its home country, the first film in 15 years to have crossed 1M moviegoers in Japan, Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. And the success of Parasite spawned a regeneration of interest in Bong Joon-Ho’s body of work as a whole.

Parasite is, however, globally one of the most popular of a slew of excellent movies that one country has been producing for a couple of decades. South Korea and provocative film-making are now synonymous with each other. The country has been experiencing an enviable prolonged renaissance in that space.

But more notable is the story that kickstarted this period. There was a time when South Korean film exports were overshadowed by its Hollywood imports, and an authoritarian state (as East Asian economic successes have been characterized) held a huge hand over media censorship. And then the switch flipped. The country constantly innovates in new ways of making crazy film and even television, which has become huge in its own right. K-Pop brought about its own revolution in music. This also coincides with the period when South Korea was experiencing high levels of economic growth. Their media industry is now on automatic mode.

I could very well juxtapose this to other countries and their successful exports. Why have Sweden and Netherlands in particular given us so many legendary EDM artists — Avicii, Swedish House Mafia, Martin Garrix, Afrojack? Why is Hong Kong cinema such a thing? Isn’t it crazy that Wizkid, Rema and Burna Boy, who are now globally renowned, all hail from Nigeria? Could you ever imagine Australia being a country that gave us Tame Impala and a whole wave of psychedelic rock artists?

And I also intend to apply the converse forms of the above questions to outline what you’re about to read: why has India not broken out of the overwhelming statism of Bollywood? Why are American blockbuster studios like Warner Bros declining in relevance (and valuation)?

National media exports are often perceived (and designed) as showcases of soft power. However, many of these instances have truly outgrown that need, and are products of ecosystems / foundations that evolve and find new ways to make good art. They innovate constantly, and foster the birth of new, groundbreaking artists. Largely successful economies have found bottom-up approaches to creating cooler, more innovative art, as opposed to top-down.

This piece attempts to answer some of those questions I've posited. I’m not sure if they will be entirely satisfactory, but I think they’re important to start conversations about how we could foster better arts and better entertainment.

Bottoms Up

I’ve always wanted to visit Toronto. Not because my favorite basketball player made one of the greatest clutch shots in the sport for that city, and certainly not because of its large NRI population.

But it spawned a very specific sub-genre of music that people today call the “Toronto sound”, or “dark R&B”. Why did such a specific sub-genre come out of this city, that’s not particularly known as a capital for the foremost human sins that are so characteristic of the genre: lust and addiction (and sometimes greed)? More importantly, why did this particular subgenre spawn two of the world’s most successful artists of all time?

Like any other city, Toronto is known for a few things. It’s one of the world’s most ethnically diverse metropolises — nearly half the population is composed of immigrants. Mexicans, Hungarians, South Asians, East Asians and Africans. It’s known for its chilly, pitch-black winters. It has a globally famous film festival. It lives and breathes sports. And most importantly, it’s got The Weeknd.

Abel Tesfaye is the son of Makkonen and Samra Tesfaye. His father was a well-educated Ethiopian immigrant who left his wife and children early on in Abel’s childhood. He was raised by a single mother who worked to make his ends meet, and he left home on a weekend when he was 17. We all know this story. We know that he crashed with friends while homeless, uploaded a lot of music on YouTube, shoplifted, did a ton of drugs, all the glitz that informed his music. This is his first-ever gig in the historic (and now sadly shut) Mod Club. Ever hear that kind of crowd for a rookie?

The origin of the city’s hiphop soundscape came from pioneers like Kardinal Offishall, who actually started using dancehall influences in hiphop way before Drake. But the sound took on a new form after The Weeknd. It’s slow, has a hard low end / bassline (bordering on distortionary), like other hip-hop parallels takes inspiration from the numerous ethnicities that reside in the city (and American R&B), and is cool but intensely emotional^[0]. The Weeknd explicitly cites Ethiopian love ballads as an influence on his music.

He released his first mixtape, House of Balloons, in 2011, and it was a sleeper internet hit. Nobody knew who he was, and he wasn’t signed to a label per se either. That was followed by Thursday and Echoes of Silence. It caught everybody’s attention, especially Drake. But this is less interesting than the base that set him up for global appeal. To raise funds to repackage his first three mixtapes into one Trilogy^[1], he applied for one of Canada’s foremost media grants, FACTOR.

FACTOR is a public-private partnership that provides a no-strings attached amount of money. For both Trilogy and his debut album Kiss Land, The Weeknd secured a total of $200K in multiple payments. Later, he secured some more through Canada’s other foremost media grant system, Radio Starmaker. Both grants, essentially government projects, were done not just for “the arts”. The underlying principle was that these grants could be economic multipliers if used well, bringing in money for Canada through a variety of ways in the future.

This has largely been a successful idea for Canada. The list of artists that owe their careers to one of these grants includes: Arcade Fire, Carly Rae Jepsen, Grimes, US Girls, and further back, Alanis Morrissette and Nickelback. Canada has its own music fund that collects 1.5% off the top of all radio station revenue. FACTOR is a branch of the same. However, this funding doesn’t just exist for artists, but also entrepreneurs and indie labels looking to provide innovative solutions in the industry.

FACTOR is not perfect. It wants to see some traction for an artist before it can decide whether they’re worth it. If there is no traction, then a jury gets to decide whether their music is worth giving them a grant. The Weeknd wasn’t decided by the latter, but if he were — do you think “got the walls kicking like it’s 6 months pregnant” would fly with judges? They’re not great at scouting, it’s not what they have the ability or capacity to do.

But FACTOR and Radio Starmaker have been fundamental in shaping a market out of music as if it were another consumer industry being kickstarted by subsidies. They’re trying to foster the creation of various actors such as scouts, marketers, videographers, live venues. Music professional (and later CEO of Abel’s own XO Records) Amir Esmailian (who is Iranian) helped procure funding for him under the XO head. Before that, he and Wassim Slaiby (Lebanese) — the founder of Capital Prophet Records — scouted rapper Belly (Palestinian) and turned him into gold in the music charts.

What these government grants try to achieve is rooted in some important assumptions about the music industry:

• Musicians are entrepreneurs. This implies that their sources of money are, unlike a salary (and like profits), unpredictable. They will fluctuate, and after a while it becomes much harder for a musician to scale / reinvest in themselves because big things like renting studios and doing live shows take time and money. Their best bet then becomes to resort to a job.

• This also means that music can easily become a winner-takes-all market. Without some sort of cushion, it will be really hard for someone to eke a decent living out of making music. You’re either a superstar or you’re not. That being said, you need various kinds of musicians for such a market to evolve sustainably.

• Music doesn’t just need musicians; it needs operators who understand the commerce of art. The industry needs people who get distribution, sources of monetization, and scaling like it were another company. You don’t make a song without someone who can market it well.

Here’s Australian sensation Courtney Barnett in her own words talking about what it means to get a risk-free grant:

“Government grants gave me creative independence when I was starting out, because it meant I was worrying less about impressing for label and publishing advances, and I was less reliant on taking some big-company sponsorship to fund a tour.”

Courtney Barnett worked as a pizza delivery driver while she tried to make it big in music. Her first EP was released under her own entity, Milk Records, which she had started by borrowing money just to produce the EP. It’s hard enough for someone starting out in music to build a network of relationships with labels and publishers. It’s harder still to do it while not being inclined towards the business side of things as much — a problem one may sympathize with.

Barnett is, then, clearly a success story in the Australian music fund understanding those 3 concepts behind being a musician. A government grant eases the need to be purely entrepreneurial, and lets you focus on just the production side of things. Since such a grant subsidizes the immediate need for a strong network to succeed, you may thrive on your own right. Plus, you can get a grant not just for being a musician, but also someone who aids the process of music production, distribution, or monetization.

The governments of Australia, Canada and Sweden are all examples of what I’d like to call bottom-up innovation. They allow anybody in their country to try and make it big, upset the established order. The Weeknd is a textbook example of completely changing the so-called “game” — which in this case is Canadian (and eventually global) pop and R&B. You could test your talent on the open market by merely being good at one instrument and some vocal prowess. A grant may not take care of everything, but it opens a lot of doors.

But state policy is never assurance of consistent bottom-up innovation. In fact, one country that has become a 21st-century powerhouse in global pop music has, for the most part, a very explicit top-down approach to creating hits that started all the way from how its government shaped the music market.

Fuel To Fire

The Hallyu wave was a response to a devastating financial crisis that saw foreign direct investment retract heavily from the South Korean economy. It spurred the country into forming complete self-reliance in terms of value generation through K-Pop. Countries like ours^[2] desperately want Korean popstars to headline music festivals here.

Funding is only a part of the story that unlocked South Korean music exports. In the 1990s and early 2000s, piracy laws were extremely loose in the country. There was immense pressure from Western nations on South Korea to tighten copyright law. By the 2010s, the situation was completely the opposite, with South Korea enacting some tough patents on music.

While it’s unclear if the timing of enacting these laws was deliberate, a paper by Stockholm School of Economics alum Johan Williams^[3] Jolin argues that such ‘looseness’ around copyright law was a big factor in improving the competitiveness of the South Korean music industry. The lax attitude in the 90s allowed natives to access music for next to nothing, often to the detriment^[4] of the country’s own musicians. But a unique model of copyright that was enacted later led to the rise of some of the country’s biggest stars of all time.

And South Koreans love the internet — the country ranks very highly in indexes that capture internet access. Of course, it’s the medium that enabled piracy for them on such a large scale. South Korean music agencies used this to their benefit by conducting their business not with consumers, but with other businesses like retailers, labels, and most importantly, social media platforms. This allowed South Korea’s internet-savvy audience to consume all this music virtually for free, only in lieu of taking in ads as well.

South Korean pop music is highly institution-driven, and homegrown music labels like HYBE, YG, JYP and SM Entertainment — the Big 4 — are huge firms that drive how the industry works. While not a product of government picking winners (as they existed before favorable economic policy), these labels were certainly the biggest beneficiaries of state policy. They own the entire supply chain of music production in their local context, including scouting, developing, and investing in talent. They end up taking the risks of production, acting effectively like venture capital firms. In fact, SM Entertainment has its own venture capital firm.

The problem? It’s an oligopoly. The Big 4 labels operate in very similar procedures. They decide what runs and what doesn’t. Much of that is based on their manipulation of Korean cultural values. Labels run cram schools in the name of scouting talent. When they sign somebody, they exert overwhelming levels of control on their careers as their contracts stipulate restrictions on sex, affairs, and alcohol. These future stars are subject to exhausting routines of vocalization and dance, and most infamously, makeup. South Koreans have a disgustingly brutal beauty standard, and the labels play no part in alleviating that problem with how much they demand their popstars look conventionally attractive. It’s almost exactly as if the music industry operated like a factory.

This is an example of top-down innovation, and it’s the most culturally dominant form of music production in the country. It follows a set process that, in the short term, seems very hard to deviate from, and leaves little room for future attempts at an incumbent upsetting the entire industry.

There’s also evidence why this form of innovation, while less risky than the type followed in Canada (because the outcomes are fairly in control), is not good business in the longer run. There is significant industry chatter^[5] that the market has become highly saturated, and the growth of the industry was very dependent on groups like BTS. The factory model of production that K-Pop follows is turning out to be as much their undoing as their supposed initial cause of success. The stock prices of the Big 4 labels in South Korea have been showing a declining trend^[6] fairly consistently this year, even as they’re still able to enjoy success abroad, or what is left of it.

Moreover, many of K-Pop’s biggest names are now opening their own labels^[7] to gain artistic freedom from the Big 4. Artist-led labels are futuristic and do much better work than traditional music labels — be it a Drake opening OVO Sound (I’ve struck-through a chord here, and it’s major), or a Weeknd opening XO Records. However, this end could not have had more different means when you compare either country.

That being said, non-label affiliated Korean entertainment venture capital does exist, and they fund risky startups trying to crack media technology as well as production. This was ALSO part of a state policy push^[8], where the plan was to use VC money to back new music and new films. Smaller film producers loved this idea because it was difficult to get a loan for a movie that lacked the backing of major distribution. And the risk in these investments is shared between private venture funds and the state media fund called Motae. The excerpt below from a paper explaining this public-private synthesis, reclaiming some big director names, explains the beautiful outcomes that this model can produce^[9]:

Without supporting small film production and new directors, a fund manager points out, “the country would lose the next Bong Joon Ho (the director of Parasite) or Park Chan Wook (the director of Old Boy)” whose names guarantee a box-office hit. It is interesting to find that Bong’s previous film projects The Host (2006), Mother (2009) and Snowpiercer (2013) received investments from Motae-backed VC funds.

If you were wondering how significant the impact of this model is, this statistic might help: in 2017, one-third of all venture capital went into South Korea’s entertainment industry.

State policy can also end up being extremely stifling, creating weird, perverse incentives for people to invest in media. It so happens that one doesn’t have to look too further away from home to see that. Bollywood has been historically financed under immense constraints, not least because it really only gained the status of an “industry” in 2000. Film studios and producers were largely at the behest of moneylenders who would quote exorbitant interest rates. Transparency in film financing was a huge issue until the Ministry of Finance lay guidelines at the turn of this century regarding the same. Only after 2000 were producers able to secure loans from commercial banks, and eventually equity interest from private companies. For a long time, there was no organized market for financing Bollywood effectively.

In fact, the first ever film that was insured^[10] in India was Subhash Ghai’s 1998 flick, “Taal”. And when its underwriter, United India Insurance wanted to re-insure it with a foreign firm, they flatout refused, citing the complete lack of accountability^[11] in Indian film production. It’s also not far-fetched to say that it is this lack of state recognition and care that may have forced the hand of producers to resort to dugouts that Hades might enjoy. The underworld connection with Bollywood was partly an outcome of producers wanting cheaper capital, creating a trail of black money and unaccounted receipts that no cast or crew member would have wanted to make public. Because of this, Ram Gopal Varma was quoted to have said:

“Bollywood at the moment is not ready for institutional finance.”

However, I would be quite amiss if I did not talk about the Indian government’s attempts to rectify the problems themselves. After all, the government didn’t completely hate film, they just had their own idea of it — which was to be educational and social (or propaganda, if you wish), not masaledaar. The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) was founded in 1975, with a view to undertake public financing of films. It has a pretty solid resume, being the primary producer of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Salaam Bombay, as well as a co-producer on Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. Like many of India’s PSUs pre-1991, the NFDC has historically been marred by financial viability due to a lack of concern on profit. But instead of outright privatizing it, the Indian government placed IRS officer Nina Lath Gupta to turn the place around.

Gupta took hard but necessary calls. She let go of more than half the workforce and shut down 3 of the enterprise’s branches. But the philosophy of funding excellent films not influenced by Bollywood convention probably didn’t excel more than it did under her. She revived the corporation with the help of SBI Capital Markets, and an equity investment^[12] that included 3CR from the government of India. Gupta’s track record includes the following films: The Lunchbox, Court, Ship of Theseus and one of my favorite Indian films ever in Titli (Noida represent baby). At its peak^[13] in 2017, the NFDC generated more than 100 crores in revenue annually, was profitable with 93 employees, and was still a public sector institution unthreatened by private concerns.

So naturally it appeared as a complete shock to many in the film industry as Nina Lath Gupta was sacked^[14] the next year. Reports allege that she took decisions that went against certain rules and regulations, but if you ask me, it could very well be a case of a certain party favoring having someone else. Gupta is currently running her own venture, and has a wonderful newsletter of her own, which is called:.

Tejaswini Ganti, a professor of anthropology at NYU outlines state attitudes towards film. There is a significant shift between how the Indian government thought of film post-liberalization, where the focus went from being educational to being an economic force to bring India much-needed prosperity. Obviously, films started to portray wealth a lot more. With a line of movies that have pandered not just to NRIs in the West, but also the Chinese, the box office success Bollywood enjoyed abroad worked well for the country’s international relations.

But Bollywood is not inherently an entrepreneurial space to be in. The inertia of change it has to go through is really slow. It continues to be ruled by few production houses, some of which had unleashed their own wave of creative destruction years ago. Whatever one may think of him, Karan Johar was a category creator who took over his father’s production house at a bad time. Like many others in India, Dharma is a family business. In KJo’s words^[15]:

“This is not an industry bound by contract or legalities or modalities, as much as it is bound by relationships. He always said that it’s so important to nurture relationships even outside of the films you are making—you never know when you need someone, or when someone needs you. This was, of course, before the industry became exceptionally corporate—but I think sticking to this philosophy has worked well for us.”

Which also explains the slowness of some of India’s legacy film producers. It’s taken a while for a production house like Dharma to expand beyond a particular kind of movie. It’s this relationship mindset which explains how stars in India — many of whom are children of yesteryear superstars — are often launched. Moreover, a popular argument for Bollywood’s recent decline is the idea that there was no one who took over the mantle after the Khans. It took a Pathaan or a Jawan, which had Shah Rukh Khan in it, to revive faith in the industry.

This isn’t to discredit many mavericks who tried to challenge this structure. Be it making grand films like Gangs of Wasseypur on extremely tight budgets (and high as fuck cinematographers and actors), or a wacky, funny, foul-mouthed zombie movie helmed by a Khan in Go Goa Gone, or a Rashomon-styled thriller inspired by one of India’s most appalling and still-unsolved murder cases in Talvar.

But none of this was very permanent, and we always seem to revert back to the mean. In a way, this is reflective of what kinds of films in India have the best chances of being financed. If it doesn’t scream blockbuster, an investor will not expect huge returns. This is changing now, because it has become much easier to distribute any type of movie today. A massive cost overhead to movies is generally (worldwide) marketing. It would have been arguable that there’s little point in marketing a new face by spending so much money on billboards. But it will take a while for Indian financiers to understand this wave.

Ain’t No Stress On Me, Lord

Markets are made from scratch, made to mature, and sometimes just die. With media, what constitutes the prolonging robustness of market activity needs a lot more explanation than just state policy. The easiest answer to this is innovation. But how do you innovate? How do you prolong the onset of stagnation? Companies eventually die, and so is true for forms of artistry, at least in the commercial sense.

This was a question that the film industry of Kerala had to reckon with after CoVID hit. Theatres had to be shut and ongoing production had to be stalled. However, this was only a worsening of a long financial slump, where only a handful of the numerous films Malayalis produced in a year were really profitable. In 2012, one-third^[16] of all theatres in the state had to be closed. Revenue-sharing between film producers and single-screen owners — both of which have their own unions — has been a contentious issue^[17] for a long time. And Keralites were very decisive about switching over to OTT as opposed to single-screens, whose owners invested heavily^[18] in upgrading their halls but to little avail. With all of this gets included a lack of success in theatre distribution^[19] outside of Kerala. 15 out of 220 films in 2023 barely broke even. Only 4 were profitable.

But it’s the Malayalam film industry, man. If OTT statistics are anything to go by, we love that shit. What runs the industry is a balancing act^[20] between theatre owners, multiplexes, film producers, crew members and actors. And despite the “Kerala model” having become a moniker, state intervention in this industry is not all that huge. The risk of film production is very real here, and losses are not subsidized at all. And yet, this industry couldn’t be more thriving and innovative. As of Q1 2024^[21], films from the state earned over 500 CR in revenue, blowing out any notions of disenchantment.

It helps that no one production house in Kerala bears a majority of the risk, and there’s plenty of private players. Some of them are actor-led, such as those of Faahad Faasil and Mammootty. It’s this nimble, fast-moving, risk-taking culture that has allowed the industry to evolve quickly from stagnant situations. The Kerala film industry has been going through a new wave since the early 2010s, which is in stark contrast to the superstar-led culture that was so pervasive before. These are gritty movies embedded in realism, stylish technique, and smaller budgets. It’s this new wave that took over OTT consumption in the pandemic.

The Kerala film industry doesn’t collapse because any one entity went bankrupt overnight. And innovation / creative destruction can come from anybody, anywhere, probably anytime. In fact, the first 3D film in India was My Dear Kuttichan^[22] in 1980. India’s first smartphone-shot film, first 8K resolution-shot film, and first purely digital-format film are also credited to Kerala. Kerala’s film industry has become very non-reliant on any sort of external or even public subsidy to keep afloat.

What develops a culture of robustness depends on certain market factors — ease of investment, ease of distribution / search costs, availability of talent, and how quickly you can adapt to change, to name a few. Kerala doesn’t have to worry much about the latter two. However, investment isn’t always easy. Kerala doesn’t do a lot of blockbusters, and while one may associate that with more down-to-earth films, they don’t inherently believe in a “small is better” philosophy. Some of their highest-grossing films have heavy production budgets. Aadujeevitham was co-produced with 2 small American film companies. And if your backer is a Gulf businessman, you’re all the more in luck. Their distribution vis-a-vis other films in India (and a likely barrier in language when it comes to marketing) is hindering their true potential. Add to that a history of holdouts with multiplexes like PVR.

One of my favorite stories of market resilience in this context comes from my newfound hobby-bordering-on-profession of turntabling. Something I’ve lately been surprised whenever I watch a drum-and-bass set is how the audience — clearly very British — knows all the lyrics to all the songs. If there are no lyrics, they do an onomatope sing-along that’s loud enough to blow the roof off. Bristol, the home of DnB, has a Night Time Economy Advisor named Carly Heath, who was a rager herself. Notably, Bristol has gone through a powerful underground music scene where hip-hop, reggae, funk, and trip-hop flourished. Another scene where, like Toronto, immigrants drove the scene. Massive Attack are a product of Bristol sound, and their sole active member, 3D had this^[23] to say about the city’s influence on the music:

“It’s like a town masquerading as a city, and what it’s always been good at is the underground scene, in both art and music. Bands would flourish locally before they reached a national level and because there was never a big media or music industry here, people were doing it for their own gratification. Creativity here never grew in a contrived way, people were just teaching themselves and beating off the competition to become a big fish in a small pond.”

Back to DnB. The city meets all of the criteria outlined above for market resilience: funding, talent, distribution, adaptability. Bristol’s clubs are mouthpieces for the genre — Motion is one of the UK’s best clubs. These venues have seen themselves through plenty of economic turmoil. Talent is not a problem at all, especially when you count other DJs from British cities. Artists like Bou, Hedex, Nia Archives, Chase & Status are likely regulars here. Bristol has labels for all kinds of genres, many of them run by A&R executives who have worked with some of the biggest British artists ever. On top of that, it has jungle and DnB-focused labels like Ruffneck Ting and Sofa Sound. Besides label funding, both universities with music programs and the city council provide music grants. Bristol City Council is also building a Grassroots Music Fund^[24] through ticket levies. All of this shows in the outcomes: watch a part of Hedex’s brilliant show below. This is a regular thing for the Brits.

Market adaptability becomes pretty hard when faced with shocks. Bristol has been going through a rough cost-of-living crisis, not least because rents skyrocketed in the city after the pandemic^[25]. This boxed in the city’s music industry in two devastating ways: a) musicians (and music students) had to end up paying a large chunk of what little they get already for rent, and b) the music venues that musicians relied on for touring themselves began to struggle. It didn’t help that essential commodities had also become a little expensive, even if just in the short-term. On the other hand, arena business is more than booming, likely because it can make use of economies of scale and bigger artists often undertake concerts on their own dime. The Grassroots Music Fund and potential ticket levies on arena shows are, in a way, responses to this issue.

Distribution has evolved in insane ways over the years. Kerala’s film industry aren’t just savvy with their movie techniques, but they’re smart about using the Internet to their advantage. Media marketing entrepreneurs like Sangeetha Janachandran^[26] and Seetha Lakshmi^[27] outline how hard it was to initially convince film producers why promotion of films was important. Now, the equation has been flipped, with agencies receiving inbound requests. Mollywood has eschewed huge billboards in favor of going aggressive on social media and making use of local influencers. For the legal drama Vaashi, the producers held a discussion in Ernakulam’s Government Law College. And marketers understand all too well that the objective of these promos has to be to convince people to watch the film on the big screen, not the television.

It has never been easier to upload your own music than today, thanks to Spotify, Bandcamp, SoundCloud, YouTube, and the like. But musicians who begin their careers find it hard to mass-market their creations, stand out from other songs. Which is why community-building has taken such importance for musicians. Be it a Discord server, or Reddit AMAs, community is increasingly becoming the marketing unit for music. You can get this fanbase to pay for anything you do — buy merch, pay for meet-and-greets, get access to hidden gigs. This is the approach that Indian hip-hop duo Seedhe Maut took to establishing themselves. They earned themselves a niche fanbase first. Only after that did they undertake their most commercial album in Lunch Break, which has some of their most reel-worthy songs. Many startups are also trying to crack community-building coupled with monetization.

The 4 pillars of funding, talent, distribution and adaptability naturally affect each other, and the mix of these 4 pillars also defines the form the market eventually takes. Multiple sources of funding create a market for interest rates, and market power and risk get fairly evenly distributed for someone who needs to raise capital. Talent requires strong educational institutions that create a seemingly never-ending feedback loop for the market — think of the inseparability and interdependency between Stanford University and Silicon Valley^[28], which was by no means a story written in stone. Distribution depends on the market, but with the advent of the internet, it has grown less dependent on money with time.

Bottle Episode

Media industries are like any other. Incumbents will be subject to competition, innovation, and even problems of their own undoing. The latter will usually be expected in bigger, bureaucratic firms with large market share.

So it’s funny that I choose a firm in a country prolific with their media output to showcase this. Basketball, rock-n-roll, hip-hop, Hollywood, is there anything the US hasn’t done? It’s helped solidify their status as a “leader of the free world”, even if that status needs constant questioning (especially these days). From Michael Jordan to the Looney Tunes — and both of them together — it’s undeniable that the cycle of innovation in US media (as with other industries, I’m sure) is enviable.

But it just so happens that the Looney Tunes had a pretty wild time in the last 2 years. Ever since Warner Bros-Discovery hired executive David Zaslav to take charge of the legacy firm, he’s done nothing but run it down to the ground. He’s written off multiple nearly-finished movies — including one Looney Tunes flick — for tax write-offs. He’s gutting HBO Max by removing shows that people love, including a prospective Batgirl series. He cut much of Turner Classic Movies, that is the film preservation division of the company. All for an estimated cost reduction of $3B.

Instead, in response to these moves, WB stock dropped by $20B^[29] in 2022. It reached an all-time low as of last week. Can you imagine a legacy company like Warner Bros not existing anymore? Or being acquired by somebody? They are the pioneers of synchronized sound in movies. They made landmark films. These guys have the most famous water tanker in movie fucking history! There’s a rot in the biggest media firms of the US today, and this is notwithstanding the way they handled the WGA strike of last year. They are failing to innovate anymore.

Disney is another case. Much of the House of Mouse’s growth in the past few years has been driven by parks and sports. When it comes to the studio itself, the company has been struggling with a string of flops critical and/or commercial. CEO Bob Iger plans to release one — only one — MCU movie next year, and that’s Deadpool v Wolverine. The MCU has been a disaster under Kevin Feige in the last 4 years, failing to have any movie notch over $1B in gross revenue since Avengers: Endgame, except one, which is the one superhero technically owned by Sony. The new Indiana Jones movie bombed. The most recent Pixar movie, Elemental did the lowest gross box office for a Pixar flick since Toy Story.

As for Paramount, I’ll let The Motley Fool^[30] do the talking:

“This isn't a stock. It's a trash compactor.”

American legacy movie companies are in an existential crisis. It’s not uncommon for companies to have peaks and troughs, but much of this time feels like self-harm. And it’s not that streaming seems to be dead, as everyone (including me) declared^[31]. Netflix has marked a killer comeback in the past year, posting a subscriber growth globally, and increases in both earnings and market cap. It feels as if the biggest movie studios in the US completely lost the plot on what makes for killer entertainment. And resorting to the same-old intellectual property that usually earns them free, passive income isn’t a strategy that’s working for them anymore. Like, do you honestly want another Star Wars TV show?

How does the private sector of US media bounce back from this crisis? In many ways, this moment feels like new blood replacing the old guard. Streamers like Netflix have had to pay humongous amounts of money to the major media firms as licensing fees for some of their prized property — like $100M for Friends back in 2019. However, the tables seem to have turned now that Netflix and Amazon are capable of creating their own, long-lasting IP. Big media has tried to open their own streaming platforms, and if that didn’t work out, they bought available solutions in the market. But these companies were effectively entering a different business with this move. Couple that with unprecedented pivots into an industry like gaming.

Paramount has been awfully struggling to make a comeback under Shari Redstone, the daughter of media magnate Sumner Redstone. Dad and daughter did not get together. Shari once told her son that Sumner told her — in true Logan Roy fashion (or reverse, since Sumner was part inspiration for the Succession character) — that she will “be chair over his dead body.” He was mostly right, but it’s not like parent company Viacom didn’t have its problems. In a way, this seems to be a family business like any other. No wonder Logan didn’t think highly of his kids.

Fresh blood is ready to take over this industry. The good thing about the US is its full of fast-moving companies ready to change the game. The popularity of Telugu hit “RRR” owes itself partly to its distribution by Variance Films, that specializes in bringing foreign films to American distributors. Or take James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment. I doubt that deep sea filmmaking is an inherently profitable venture, but at least Cameron is willing to fuel money into innovative filming techniques. The Avatar sequel made a whopping $2.2B globally, too. And A24 is proof that you can make billions of dollars by making the most inventive, genre-bending movies in recent memory.

This piece^[32] from an employee of Innosight — a consulting firm founded by the great Clayton Christensen — highlights how big media is facing extinction at all three junctures of film-making: distribution, marketing, and film-making techniques. It doesn’t help that major media companies reduced production of smaller-budget movies in favor of profit at scale, and indie producers filled the void that’s left. The result is that new-age companies like A24 moved up the value chain much faster. The bureaucracy of large firms is evident in their protectionist measures, be it charging $100M for IP or attempting to cannibalize theater revenue in favor of^[33] premium VOD. It’s a story as old as time.

It’s hard to think of American entertainment beyond the usual suspects, and it’s obviously hard to imagine a world without them. These are generational companies that started out by inventing processes or technologies that defined the next few decades for them. There’s little doubt that their names will eventually survive via acquisition, because we’re so attached to legacy by name.

But the sun is setting on the mountain of big media. And this time, there may not be any stars that surround them anymore.

In 1966, publishing house McClelland and Stewart released a book titled Beautiful Losers. When the author finished the draft, he proclaimed that he had written the Bhagwan Gita of that era. But book sales said otherwise. It was a bit too provocative for the time, but most criticism was directed at how incoherent it was. The failure made the author — who was running fairly short financially already — ponder alternative careers. So he decided to make folk music as an “economic solution to the problem of making a living as a writer”.

After some hardship in New York trying to crack a music career, the author was able to meet a manager named Judy Collins. She persuaded him to record a poem he had written, titled “Suzanne”. Based on this success, this now-musician met with a man named John Hammond^[34], who was instrumental in launching another poet who went by the name Robert Zimmerman till he changed it to Bob Dylan. Much like with Dylan, Hammond’s label, Columbia Records initially chastised him for signing a 40 year-old poet to a music deal. But when a middle-aged Leonard Cohen eventually did make it to Columbia’s studio, Hammond reportedly said,

“Watch out, Dylan!”

To me, movies and music are expressions of trial and error. You may make them for yourself first and foremost, but there’s little denying that you want the chance to have something you make change the world. And naturally earn a living in that process. The amount of uncertainty you bear in enlightening the world with something absolutely bonkers is both personal and socio-economic. It’s this kind of uncertainty that made mechanical assembler Bill Withers a seemingly overnight sensation with “Ain’t No Sunshine”. So many rappers say that music saved their life and gave them a shot at life that did not involve a cycle of violence. It’s the kind of uncertainty that made trained doctor George Miller one of the greatest action film directors of all time — with one of his creations releasing soon.

It’s the kind of uncertainty that gets Skrillex to say that The Netherlands and legendary Dutch group Noisia changed the world of music forever, and Noisia are his dads. That's Skrillex, the face of American dubstep and now cross-genre maverick, talking about a long-disbanded, niche electronic trio from a far country that had a dedicated economic strategy towards making partying in their land more successful.

If we want more, better music and movies, it’s crucial to understand all the uncertainties that underlie the creative process, how we can soothe them, and how we deal with the failures more than the successes. How we can create better markets for anyone regardless of what they earn or where they come from to enter, how we allow people to make a living making music, and how the strategies behind pursuing these goals will keep differing from region to region.

Special thanks to the following people for proofreading: Tanmay Mehra, Sunaina Bose, Molina Singh, Paridhi Puri, Rishabh Singh, Sarojini Sapru (who I’ll be co-writing something very fun with soon, and on music), Ritwik Tripathy for seeing a very early version of this, and Krishna Priya from the Delhi Writes group (that Molina and Paridhi run)!

As you may have noticed, Hot Chips has become a little more inconsistent over time. Some interesting life events have happened that are taking me into a really fun trajectory. This might involve being a little lax on the newsletter front, but it gives me a lot more time to create ambitious pieces like these. I was always afraid of writing a piece like this because it’s trend-analyzing at a huge scale, and I need to justify the patterns that I think I see.

So hopefully, you get to see more of it in the near future, I have 2 of my next pieces planned, and they’re both on music in India :)

And yes, in case you’re wondering about my newfound trajectory, it ALSO involves music in India :)) Toodles!

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My first piece of the year is one that warrants a playlist, thankfully. Like you might need it as a reference point. I’ve been told by a friend who proofread it that this piece would have been a great video essay, which is interesting because I’ve been toying with the idea of making them under the Hot Chips banner. Unfortunately, I am yet to learn video editing. And it would not be easy to edit the kind of video that this piece would entail.

However, more than the playlist, I would like you to check out the audio file in the end credits of this piece. Instead of video editing (which I should be doing), I have found myself learning how to be a disco jockey. And inevitably, my newsletter and my DJ skills have found a symbiotic relationship where they influence one another.

ALSO — no more hyperlinks! I am now using superscript to indicate that you can check out a certain link or page, so that you’re not hounded by yellow text. I should have done this a while ago, but better late than never.

I hope you have a great time reading this :)

I love In The Hall of the Mountain King.

The song evokes the spooky-scaries. It was originally written to accompany a scene in the Norwegian play Peer Gynt, which had gnomes and goblins and other freakish creations of nature. The song has since found itself in a Sonic game, one of the Forza games, a Mad Men episode, and my personal favorite — a boat race between Harvard and Hollandia Raceclub^[1]. The world may have been a better place if the central characters of said race actually pursued a career in the sport^{[1 p2]}, as opposed to being Bitcoin shills.

So I was overjoyed to hear the piece again in a movie of this year that I, and many others, really liked. It’s called Merry Christmas, and it surprised me. Not in a “oh my god what a twist ending” way, that’s so yesteryear. But Merry Christmas’ twists are reliant on the idea that fundamentally, it is a work of affection and not mystery. And it represents one culmination (I’m sure there will be more) of the long career of a man who started by making PSA films for the Indian Space Research Organization. A man not really known to make romantic movies.

Sriram Raghavan has proven to be a director who has stretched the boundaries of what is possible in Bollywood, and Indian cinema as a whole. It’s clear from his filmography that he loves making crime capers and pot-boiling edge-of-your-seat thrillers. Everyone will remember him as the man who made a “blind” pianist witness a murder. Or the man who gave Neil Nitin Mukesh a debut break for the ages (that he’s probably never been able to replicate). Or the guy who made Varun Dhawan look good enough to be on Inception.

What really sets him apart, though, is understanding the dynamics of music in film. Raghavan has consistently deviated from the structure of conventional Bollywood movie and music-making. His films are tied by thematic threads underscored by spine-tingling tunes. You may still associate his movies with hit songs / albums from time to time. But when you watch them, you feel like asking yourself if the movie even contains all of the songs in its album release (the answer is no).

That is a deliberation on the part of someone who’s well-versed in the history of murder, music, and murder music. Spoiler alert for the following movies: Badlapur, Johnny Gaddaar, Andhadhun, Agent Vinod.

Retro-bution

Revenge is a dish best served with the “Winter” section of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

I’m not sure if someone did Sriram Raghavan wrong in a past life, but revenge is a factor in so many of his movies. Merry Christmas uses “Winter” in its wonderful final climax, bringing to conclusion the eventual result of a vengeful action. The final scene itself isn’t an act of revenge, but few tracks signal climaxes like “Winter”. There’s a lot of back-and-forth happening between the hunter and the hunted in the scene, where the latter is doing everything in their power to avoid being caught. Except, it’s not really doing, but speaking. The entire scene is an exercise in one side lying by omission, and the other trying to figure out the gap in the story.

The most memorable use of “Winter” that I know of was in a movie I should not have watched when I was 14. Oldboy is a revenge movie through and through. It uses “Winter” in an absolutely brutal scene where protagonist Oh Dae-Su is using the wrong end of a hammer to wring out the tooth of one of his captors. The scene has a back-and-forth as well, but there is an obvious imbalance in the power dynamic between the two parties. The track switches into a heightened section right when you start seeing blood oozing from the captor’s incisors. An absolutely bonkers scene, that takes place right before the greatest hallway fight sequence of all time^[2]. South Koreans, man.

Merry Christmas is confounding when you consider the tonality of Sriram Raghavan’s preceding work. They’re not very romantic, even though 4 of them have a romantic encounter that is truly central to the plot. And the romance is very likely to take a dark turn — especially with Badlapur, Ek Hasina Thi. With Merry Christmas, it’s a cycle. It opens with sweet songs in Dil Ki Mez, Nazar Teri Toofan, Raat Akeli Thi, all effectively romantic songs. It gives you the perception that this is a man looking to restart his life in a new city and is not opposed to finding love in a corner too. And then you have the violins playing at minor scales and dizzying metronomes, telling you without words that something is amiss in what seems to be all nice and sweet.

With Raghavan, the music is narrative-driven. Varun Grover even quoted^[3] this as one reason he took up the job of writing lyrics for the songs. And the lyrics with any Raghavan flick in general, as later examples will also show, say a lot about the movie. However, what I find more impressive is when he achieves the same thing without lyrics. Each of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has sonnets attached — not really sung with, but offered to audiences witnessing the opera as program notes. The sonnet for “Winter” is as follows:

To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold

Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors...
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.

I don’t know whether Raghavan or his music team knew about this sonnet. But considering the setting (and title) of the movie, one would agree that much of the last section of the poem emulates the second half of the script. We see Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif essentially treading tender glaciers slowly, for fear of cracking. And of course they slip. especially when each discovers the other’s tell. But much like the aforementioned winter, the end brought its own delight for both of them. The metaphorical rain in this movie pours inside the house in which a lot takes place.

In contrast, Badlapur doesn’t have a lot of score. It’s a great movie by any means, but it’s not extremely subtle. Its songs are narrative-driven, but more obvious. Jeena is about someone trying to find reasons to live after a tragic event. Jee Karda is the opposite of Jeena — a beckoning to have oneself ripped to shreds because they have no purpose beyond the people that inhabited their life and are now no more. The song is also about someone trying to replace a legitimate reason to live with the need to avenge. Judaai is heartbreaking, and may function as a good post-breakup song, despite its context being different.

Interestingly enough, none of these songs are overtly about revenge. They do not directly allude to a human perpetrator, but a vague cause that is related to a loved one. The interpretation of a movie could also be less in the fashion of the predator-prey cycle, and more in that of someone who is unable to deal with loss. Notably, the movie also doesn’t end with an act of revenge. Varun Dhawan never actually kills Nawazuddin Siddiqui, as so much of the film’s marketing seemed to indicate would happen. In fact, it’s Siddiqui’s character who gives Dhawan a second chance at finding a purpose in life by turning himself in.

Raghavan knows how to fit standard Bollywood frameworks of making music into his eclectic visions of moviemaking, both through the movie’s own music and that of older Bollywood movies. It’s no secret that Raghavan is extremely nostalgic about the movies of yesteryear. There are always multiple allusions to older Bollywood movies in each of his movies, and Badlapur is no different. In that context, the “15 Years Later” segue of Badlapur is a masterclass that deserves its own dissection.

After Liak (played by Siddiqui) fails to escape, we see his prison inmates mocking him by invoking Charles Sobhraj who apparently escaped jail 14 times. The camera then moves to an older Liak, with the same inmates singing Kaun Kisiko Bandh Saka from Kaalia, where they’re singing about an eccentric hunter and the hunted trying to break free. Of course, the original song was also sung in the context of being jailed^[4].

And yet, it’s when he uses non-Bollywood conventions of making music that really kills. The prison scene switches to Varun Dhawan walking in the rain towards his new, smaller house. Next to his place, there’s a small temple. A music trainer is sitting with her young trainees and singing a Marathi folk song calling on the rain to drench oneself (that I've heard before but couldn't place where / find a viable reference online to it). But, of course, it’s a metaphor for a soul-cleanse, the kind Varun Dhawan’s character needs:

Wash over me and cleanse my mind
Come over and drench me, o rain!
How long can I hold back?
The flute yearns to sing

Raghavan says that the “15 Years Later” sequence is actually inspired by what Sergio Leone pulled off in Once Upon A Time in America^[5]. De Niro is escaping New York after enraging lots of people, and we see him at the Coney Island Railway Station. And then you find yourself seeing the same location, but a much older De Niro who is back in NY after exile. In the midst of all of this, a depressingly beautiful cover of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” is playing. There are no spoilers in this scene, so I think you should watch it for the cover alone^[6].

Even the song Sone Ka Paani from the album is not overtly about any of the running themes of Badlapur. The track plays when Raghav (Varun Dhawan) meets Jhimli (Huma Qureshi), who is a sex worker^{[6 p1]}. He is there to extract information about Liak, who she grew up with and loved for a while. Quite obviously, the song’s sounds like it was solely made to seduce. But the lyrics tell her story. She was forced to grow up too soon because of her social circumstance, and now the world wants her body:

Sone ka paani chadhake piya hui gori jawaani
Resham se mere badan ki piya saari duniya deewani
O meri khata kya hai bata piya
Meri khata kya hai bata piya
Baali umar mein joh ho gayi sayani^{[translation here]}

Ek Hasina Thi is an exercise in the restraint of use of music. Only 2 songs play in it — one at the very beginning, and one well into the second half. For the life of me I can’t find them on YouTube. There’s plenty of background score, which is mostly a generic use of chilling synth sounds and subtle drums. It was also Raghavan’s mainstream debut, so one could assume that it wouldn’t have a huge music budget. The title track is a dark dance-y track with a killer bassline — a rarity in Bollywood music for a long time. The other track, Neend Na Aaye, was sung by Pandit Jasraj.

(Of course, we all know that Ek Hasina Thi was followed by a remake of Karz where Himesh Reshammiya takes on Kishore Kumar to sing an iconic song of the same name^{[6 p2]}. And the casting of Urmila Matondkar was no coincidence.)

Old music, references to old movies, and revenge / violence are Sriram Raghavan’s premier cocktail mix. But more than revenge, it’s dark comedy where that cocktail of his is most potent.

Capos and Capers

Johnny Gaddaar is one of my favorite Bollywood films ever.

Not least because it’s Russian roulette in cinematic form, but also because within the first 20 minutes, you see Neil Nitin Mukesh dancing to the hit Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (+ Hard Kaur) track, Move Your Body.

What’s insane is a party banger like that would, by conventional Bollywood standards, be replete with a dance sequence and probably some exquisite flirtations by the male and female leads. Instead, it’s Neil Nitin Mukesh — whose debut it was — testing his music system, dancing alone. No club scene, no lip-to-lip action. He was like me dancing in my room alone, swinging to the sounds of my boombox. When was the last time Bollywood let a fresh face have some fun like that?

The fun doesn’t stop there at all. A few minutes prior, we see Dharmendra, the head of a 5-member gang (of which Mukesh’s character Vikram is a part) playing a tape where his dead wife supposedly sings an old Gulzar-penned tune called Mora Gora Ang Lei Le^[7]. The context of the track is the woman (sung by Lata Mangeshkar) is trying to meet her beloved secretly. She asks the night to color her as dark as the lord Krishna, so that she can hide in its blackness.

The movie this was originally a part of — Bandini, while brutal, had a feel-good ending to it. Which makes its use hilarious in Johnny Gaddaar, a movie that, like Reservoir Dogs, ends with no holds barred. Vikram wants to elope with Mini, the unhappy wife of his gang-mate Shardul. It’s this illicit romance that kickstarts the ruckus that ensues because Vikram / Johnny G wanted a way out by stealing some heavy money that the gang was planning to move for a deal. Everything you need for pitch black comedy. Moreover, Dharmendra senses that the two are in love, but does not spill the beans to Shardul. He confronts Vikram, who he clearly shares a close master-protege relationship with.

And THEN there’s the chloroform sequence^{[7 p2]}. Sriram Raghavan’s longtime collaborator is Daniel B George, who’s written the score for most of his films. Vikram is hatching his mega-plan, and he subjects himself to just the right amount of chloroform to see what is enough to not kill someone. You’re just watching the sequence trying to figure out what he’s doing, going “HE’S GOING TO DIE”. He puts his napkin to the nose, and that’s where a sick grunge beat kicks in.

Naturally, Johnny Gaddaar takes a page from the crime jazz of older Hollywood murder mysteries. You know, noir movies in dingy streets where the local precinct has to investigate a disgustingly violent feat, one where the victim was likely a woman. Probably involves a smokey jazz club with tons of gambling. L.A Confidential, Sweet Smell of Success, Chinatown, books by James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler, and video game L.A Noire are good reference points for this vibe. Much of Vikram’s planning sequence is scored to George fusing crime jazz and classic 70s Bollywood sounds.

In that vein, the piece of score from the movie titled Confidence plays when Prakash is gambling big and ends up losing 10 lakh. And of course, historically in media, any such gamble either leads to something devious or something insane, or both. Between its harmonium, trumpets, the saxophone, and the piano, the song closes with 4 bars of wavy 808s that conventionally differ from any of the aforementioned instruments. This is no isolated incident — Johnny Gaddaar has plenty of electronic influence. Move Your Body has a guitar riff with a sub-bass and 808s, and the same song has an overt DJ remix present in the album. Johnny Breakbeat Mera Naam sounds like a lighter version of something The Prodigy would make, with vocoder-aided vocals. The beat in the chloroform scene as well.

To me, the electronic elements on the movie are most reminiscent of the soundtracks of two movies from the year 1999. One was about Edward Norton being mentally ill, and the other was about Keanu Reeves figuring out that he’s not mentally ill. Hear Stealing Fat^[8] from the Fight Club soundtrack, composed by The Dust Brothers. They’ve notably worked with someone who was an early pioneer of using electronic elements in non-electronic music — Beck. Then there’s Prime Audio Soup^[9] by Meat Beat Manifesto. Recall some bullet dodging and eclectic MMA as you listen to this? This was on The Matrix, which also has Mindfields by The Prodigy^[10].

Most importantly, Sriram Raghavan is a huge fan of the John Carpenter flick Assault on Precinct 13. It is well known for having one of the most superb electronic scores^[11] any film has ever used. Synth bass, modular synth, drones, hi-hats, snares, heavy use of flangers and phaser effects. Carpenter himself reportedly did the score in 3 days.

Andhadhun is about a “blind” pianist, so music needs to be in its DNA anyway. Naina Da Kya Kasoor is its most famous song, a delightful track by Amit Trivedi. It’s quite joyful sounding, and it underscores a scene where the pianist Akash (Ayushman Khurana) is romancing Sophie (Radhika Apte). But its first few lyrics pre-hook are essentially a foretelling of what he is about to witness:

Arey abhi abhi pyara sa chehra dikha hai
Jaane kya kahun uspe kya likha hai
Gehra samandar dil dooba jismein
Ghayal hua main uss pal se isme^{[translation here]}

Interestingly, the soundtrack also features Delhi’s own Raftaar for the title track. It follows the template that a song in a Sriram Raghavan film follows: either provide a character study or do some foreshadowing. Aap Se Milkar is the one song that doesn’t feature in the film. It’s peppy and jolly and romantic, so it’s supposed to provide context to Akash’s romance with Sophie, and how it turned his life all over. However, it could be well construed to mean his meeting (or lack thereof) with Simi. It goes without saying that vision metaphors galore throughout the album.

Naina Da Kya Kasoor is also a creative reinvention of RD Burman’s composition O Mere Sona Re^[12] from Teesri Manzil, something I did not know / realize until I researched this. Raghavan also based the film on the idea that many old Bollywood films made heavy use of piano in their music albums. His streak of integrating some amount of his love for old Hindi cinema remains unbroken. And he does it in such a fun way that you can’t help but be impressed.

In the scene where he goes to Simi’s (Tabu) house and eventually sees the dead body of her actor husband, Akash plays a piano cover of another old song that’s titled Teri Galliyon Mai Na Rakhenge Kadam Aaj Ke Baad^[13], from the movie Hawas (1974). The song originally seems to be about heartbreak and becoming forlorn. The male lead tells the female lead that he’ll never cross paths with her again, that she should consider any memory of them meeting a dream and assume he doesn’t exist. That’s coincidentally also really good advice for when you pretend to be blind but happen to witness the dead body of your client, courtesy his wife. And the client — a yesteryear Bollywood actor — is played by Anil Dhawan, an actual yesteryear actor, who also happens to be the lead of Hawas.

And it doesn’t stop there. The next scene shows the flashback of how the client, Pramod dies. He returns early from a trip, wanting to surprise Simi. This is underscored by a beautiful cover of Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai^[14] from the movie Kati Patang. In the original, Rajesh Khanna is drinking like a sponge while proclaiming how he has no intention of falling in love with anyone no matter what. And Pramod finds that Simi is cheating on him. You know the rest.

Most notable are the original piano compositions of the film, played by Mumbai-based pianist Jarvis Menezes. The first theme^[15] plays when Simi is cleaning up the mess of the murder, just after Yeh Jo Mohabbat Hai. And it’s too happy-go-lucky-sounding for what it’s truly giving voice to. Almost as if it’s a scene from the Looney Tunes, where a ton of bricks has fallen on the Tazmanian Devil — an incident that would kill anyone in the real world. Or the scene where Simi goes to the restaurant where Akash plays. I couldn’t find whether this composition was a cover or not, but I could see myself hearing this on an episode of Tom & Jerry. A coda worthy of a predator chasing her prey.

You know what really blows my mind? It’s that the endings of both Andhadhun and Merry Christmas, while considerably different, share one commonality: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons! Andhadhun uses “Summer”. Sadly, the sonnet for “Summer” doesn’t say too much about the climax, but could Raghavan going for a crazy 4-movie run based on Four Seasons? Who’s not signing up for it?

(Apparently, a Redditor^[16] also found striking similarities between the opening score of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the score where Akash removes his lenses to see Sophie leaving. They’re not direct copies of each other, at least on listening closely. But crazy resemblance nonetheless.)

It is well-known that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony plays when Simi drops one of her annoying neighbors to her death because she saw her muse enter her house. The composition is supposed to be a tonal representation of Fate knocking on one’s door. And Fate is that annoying cheese-eating rat that every caper like Andhadhun or Johnny Gaddaar has to deal with eventually. Oh, and consequently even Ek Hasina Thi, if you know how the movie ends :)

By the time the Fifth was written, Beethoven was deaf. Maybe what they say about having heightened awareness the moment you don’t have ears or eyes might be true. Within Raghavan’s filmography, Andhadhun is only one instance of that. The other is from what is considered his weakest movie (that I actually quite enjoyed). An exquisite one-take shootout from Agent Vinod, scored to a piano version of the hit track Raabta. The blind pianist in that movie served partly as an inspiration for Andhadhun.

Action Item Number 1

Agent Vinod is the most controversial movie Raghavan has ever made. There was notable studio executive intervention in the filmmaking process because they thought that the kind of movie he originally envisioned wouldn’t be a hit in the theatres. The result is a weird, incoherent mish-mash that is fun in many places.

But the set pieces, man. I’m a huge fan of the club action sequence that takes place in the first 30 minutes, scored by the Pritam banger I’ll Do The Talking Tonight. For once, Pritam’s template of copying well-known elements of well-known songs worked in his favor. The track mostly takes from Boney M’s Rasputin, but some of the male vocals feel like Pritam generated an Indian clone of Enrique Iglesias and had him do a variation of “Tonight I’m Lovin’ (slash-Fuckin’) You” in F-minor. Of course, this is notwithstanding the titles of both songs. And throw in some Jennifer Lopez’ On The Floor for good measure. In fact, the metronomes of all 3 songs are similar, and the instrumentals are too close for comfort.

The club action sequence is a stealer in every movie it exists in, provided it’s done right. I still remember the first time I saw John Wick, and decided I wanted more of Keanu Reeves playing IRL Call of Duty in nightclubs. But that’s not as subtle as another personal favorite of mine from Collateral^[17]. Tom Cruise’s villainous nihilist, Max enters the club, not caring about the techno playing behind him, snapping legs and busting groins. He’s trying to be quiet, and you see people dancing around him, with only few people hearing the commotion he’s causing, until there’s a gunshot (which he doesn’t fire). Gotta love an assassin who doesn’t want his job to come in the way of the dancing crowd.

The song that plays in the Collateral scene is a track called Ready Steady Go by Paul Oakenfold. It’s a banger that, interestingly, also provides context to a police chase from the first part of a trilogy Sriram Raghavan has quoted as an inspiration for Agent Vinod. About a man often named second to Jesus Christ^[18].

(Also, the Paul Oakenfold song sounds so in tune with the Himesh cover of Ek Hasina Thi. You can literally sing along the lyrics to Ready Steady Go. Holy shit.)

In a lot of ways, the Agent Vinod club sequence takes from Collateral and, in true espionage fashion, Casino Royale with a classy poker scene. Everything — from the initial meeting that Vinod has with an arms dealer, to the final confrontation — is scored to the Pritam song. People are dancing, paying little attention to the ruckus Vinod is causing. There’s some creative torture, too. Imagine making someone’s ears bleed by binding them to headphones and playing screeching high frequencies.

I have not even begun talking about the famous one-take shootout. Often hailed by many as the only redeeming factor of the movie, it was also new for Bollywood to be seeing that. As with many things about Sriram Raghavan, the inspiration for it was Vijay Anand. His 1973 movie Blackmail has a scene where the song Mile Do Badan^[19] plays while Dharmendra and Rakhee are romancing each other while trying to fight bad guys. While not a one-take, the setting is the same for Raabta. Another non-Indian inspiration for Raghavan was king of Hong Kong action (and the director of the worst Mission Impossible flick) John Woo. His hit, Hard Boiled, has an iconic one-take hospital shootout^[20].

And now that we speak of hospital shootouts, here’s a killer domino effect^[21]. Agent Vinod was the 2nd movie under the banner of Saif’s now shut production house, Illuminati Films. The studio made 6 films as a whole. One of them is a zombie movie with Saif playing a Russian assassin that turned out to be a cult classic. The two men that directed it have since created one of the most important revolutions in Indian OTT — making the action set piece mainstream. Business failures have great spillover effects. Like this hospital shootout (and other Raj & DK shenanigans):

Despite being marketed as a blockbuster movie unlike his 2 prior ventures, Raghavan wanted to make particular musical decisions. Arguably the biggest song from the album, the Mika Singh banger Pungi does not feature in the movie until the end credits. It does not play any role in providing context, and it just underscores Saif Ali Khan doing the funniest dance moves to seemingly random enemy spycams. However, Pyaar Ki Pungi broke one convention of item numbers, especially according to the very writer of the song, Amitabh Bhattacharya^[22]:

“It's difficult to explain the phrase. Usually any song that stands out in a movie or a song where a female protagonist performs in a different manner is called an item number. I feel a song that attracts viewers' attention towards a movie and rises on the popularity chart is called an item number.”

The first song released from the Agent Vinod album for promotion was Dil Mera Muft Ka. The music video was Kareena Kapoor and Maryam Zakaria in mujra mode — a hit in its own right, and a true outlier in terms of being a conventional item number in Raghavan’s filmography. And Pungi blew it away in the charts, notching yet another hit in Mika Singh’s long and illustrious career.

But more than its hit songs, it’s the proliferate use of guitar riffs in the movie that’s confounding. I’m not aware of too many espionage movies that resort to electric to provide background music. And when the guitar is needed in a spy movie, it’s usually bass — think the Mission Impossible theme (the Lalo Schifrin version, not Henry Mancini) or the James Bond themes. The former uses the bass, while the latter has the famous series of notes that is now synonymous with the Scottish spy^{[22 p1]}. But Agent Vinod opens with a doozy rock cover of Govind Bolo Gopal Bolo.

And what would Agent Vinod be without some throwback, with O Meri Jaan from the 1970 murder mystery The Train underscoring an airport break-in by the villains? And its innumerable yesteryear easter eggs: a Charlie Chaplin clip^[23], an homage to lead of the original 1970 Agent Vinod (Mahendra Sandhu), Saif’s druggily quoting Antony Gonsalves, and the use of Ennio Morricone — complete with a close-up shot characteristic of the Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western^[24]! Agent Vinod may have zilch to do with The Good The Bad and the Ugly, but I suppose Raghavan could not resist using the iconic motif of the movie just once.

Raghavan claimed that Agent Vinod was an attempt to make a realistic spy movie, in the vein of Jason Bourne. The Bourne Ultimatum also happens to be my favorite espionage movie of all time, and Raghavan was so inspired by Bourne’s back-and-forth in Tangiers^[25][26] that he decided to have much of his own film take place in Morocco. Much of the camera movement in the fight scenes seems inspired by Bourne’s shakycam. It’s a shame that Agent Vinod was instead perceived (for good reason) more in line with a poor Austin Powers.

It’s hilarious that on reviewing this piece before publication, I realized that I dedicated an entire space of this newsletter to what is obviously Sriram Raghavan’s weakest outing.

It’s likely because the great scenes of the movie exist in disharmony with its tonal inconsistency, that it became hard for me to make sense of it as a whole. And regardless of the end product, much like the masterpieces Sriram Raghavan has made, it’s a love letter not just to old Bollywood, but to all the media that has inspired him.

As with the rest of the 5 movies he has done, there are beautiful common threads that weave them. Be it the brutal nature of Indian police and prisons, or the lust (or love) for the making of money, or how common (often underprivileged) people are pushed to the brink, or the absolutely blinding desire for revenge.

OR, on the more fun side of things — the Russian Roulette nature of the plots (and all the gambling references), the craft of the murders and crimes, the red herrings (rabbits in the case of Andhadhun and rats in Ek Hasina Thi), the very strong female leads, the backstabbing and the spicy affairs, and lastly — the storytelling hidden in his films’ songs, and the excellent cross-genre experimentation in film score.

With Sriram Raghavan, you can expect certain plot devices and pop culture references in every venture. He works with a recurring cast of people and crew that bolster those expectations. But it’s the man who aces a few things 10000 times who’s better, not the one who’s tried 10000 things once each. And Raghavan understands mystery and suspense better than most others in the industry. Why use too many device when few device do trick?

Sriram Raghavan, Daniel George, and all the famous composers they have worked with know this only too well. They understand that life may not have a film score, but life events have meaning. It’s why Sergio Leone went as far as to play music on set^[27]. Because he wants the actor to get into a vibe. I don’t know if Raghavan does the same, but he understands the effect it produces better than anyone in Bollywood.

The result is almost always an unmistakable sensory vibe that delivers on what you’re about to experience. And for that odd attempt that puts the “almost” in “almost always”, you will, at the very least, find it amusing.

Until next time :)

Special thanks to: Sunaina Bose, Molina Singh, Ritwik Tripathy for the proofreading and the wonderful notes they’ve provided me from their knowledge of film!

While writing this piece, I tweeted incessantly about my findings. You search “Pranav Manie” and “Sriram Raghavan” on Twitter and you’ll find me be annoying about this entire thing. Luckily, one tweet became a mini-hit, and was noticed by Varun Grover and Hemanth Rao, who have both worked with Raghavan (on Merry Christmas and Andhadhun respectively). So I knew that I was PROBABLY doing something right. Thanks to them :)

Hi, Hot Chips gang.

When I started this newsletter 2 years ago, all I knew was writing on the internet was insanely cool and very powerful. I had experienced a good bit of it myself, and obviously, since I’m on Twitter all the time, I see it every other day.

I didn’t start off writing with having any particular goals — and I still don’t. At least not quantitative ones. If I get a sponsor or a grant or whatever, nothing like it. But my primary goal right now is to raise the bar higher with every piece. Be more ambitious. Get that high-profile music interview (if you know, you know). Or do that absolutely bonkers idea that I have that I know will probably kill me, but it’ll be worth it.

This is a thank-you note for entertaining those ambitions every month. It’s heartening to know that there are people who say that something I wrote answered questions that they had for a while, or questions they didn’t know they should be having. For any writer, making the reader ponder, think, or just feel wow-ed is the ultimate joy. And I am glad that with every piece I did this year, there was at least one person who felt this way.

The year was obviously not without its challenges. Existential crisis, dengue, general feeling of purposelessness, all things that happen to people. All things that I always hope that people get a chance to break through in their own ways. I can’t and won’t lie that the non-physical aspects of well-being do get in the way of writing. But while they create a cold-start problem — in the sense that getting up to write is a challenge — once I successfully got up and said “fuck it”, all I wanted to do was write. In a way, it saved my ass. I remember pushing The Museum of Subtle Arts while bedridden because a mosquito bit me in the metro. Not that I recommend or endorse doing this, but it’s a great adrenaline rush. I will personally pay you all that I have if you eradicate all of these stupid bugs from this world.

Running the newsletter itself had a few hoops I needed to jump through. Figuring out marketing was the biggest one. I had to give up trying to crack Instagram because I hated how much time I was spending on it due to this. I reluctantly accepted that I had to do more on my LinkedIn, not only because its damn effective, but also because I could not rely on Twitter anymore. I would experiment with doing small posts, particularly on media business, to try and get more leads on LinkedIn for Hot Chips. And I found out the hard way that unless I do it regularly, the LinkedIn feed will kill me and have me restart from zero.

Adapt or die, I suppose. But I think it’s become less of a problem now. (M)ad City did really well because of LinkedIn — probably, for the first time, better than any piece of mine did on Twitter. I guess that’s a good sign that I’ve made decent advances with that annoying (and disgustingly effective) platform.

The best part of thank-you notes: I started the year with writing Return To Home Bass 2 and ended it with (M)ad City. In between, there’s been a TON of people who have helped me, either with helping me connect with an expert, or with lending me their thoughts. Some of them have been friends for long, some of them are friends I’ve made specifically through Hot Chips. From top to bottom, the people that have been a part, by piece:

Return To Home Bass (1 & 2 + BTS): Rijul Seth, Ishartek Pabla, Meher Sachdeva, Dhruv Trehan, Aditi Singh, Tanya Singh, Abhiroop Dey, Nicaia D'Souza, Jayant Bakshi, Manik Dua, Chhavi Bahmba, every member of J-Block, Saar Punch, Tarun Kukreja, Bharg Kale, Karun, Viraj Gulati / idek, Gabriel Dattatreyan, Ritika Varshney, Taran Kaur, Sumit Roy

Sound Logic: Chinmay Bhogle, Aaron Barboza, Supraja Srinivasan, Roochay Shukla, Devarsh Thaker, Rafael Pereira, Owen Roncon

The Museum of Subtle Arts of Selling Ferraris: Debasmita Bhowmik, Sukhada Choudhary, Nithya V, Radhika Marwah, Mansi Dhanraj Shetty, Shephali Bhatt

(M)ad City: Gurjot Singh, Niharika Ghoshal, Ishtaarth Dalmia, Tanmay Mehra

And lastly, Kushan Patel, Sunaina Bose, Molina Singh, Jayesha Koushik, Paridhi Puri, for all the edits and proofreads I’ve hounded them with.

I also did 3 of pieces that I went solo with in terms of research. Primarily because these were ideas that probably didn’t require interviews, and also because I wanted to see if I could express original (or at least as original as it gets) thought coherently. I was really happy doing those pieces.

Especially the Succession one. I know I hit the jackpot with that piece.

(Half) jokes aside, I think the one thing I’d have 100% repaired was missing the 4 months of writing that I did this year. I’ve published 8 pieces in all of 2023, 9 if I include this. Not that I’m disappointed, but at this point the lags feel annoying. On that note, hopefully 2024 is more writing for sure.

I’m also toying with doing one other thing alongside the newsletters. I do a fair number of interviews with people who know a lot about some particular subject. I have a feeling that those could make effective podcasts audio conversations to accompany the piece. I would need some audio editing skills and a good mic to boot with it for this. I’ve had enough people ask me why I’m not doing a podcast yet. It’s because I myself don’t listen to any regularly. But it might be much easier for me to record such conversations and have transcripts of them in public, should anyone want to check them out specifically.

I will also be exploring advertisements — affiliates, sponsors, the like. Honestly, there is nothing better than finding a sponsor that I can integrate smoothly into something I’m writing. For example, JJ Redick does it on his podcast The Old Man and the 3, where he’s talking about the strongest contenders in the NBA, and then effortlessly switches to advertising betting on said contenders on behalf of DraftKings. But I think I’m still a long way away from doing said integration. For now, it’s nothing more than an exploratory exercise.

Maybe I do have one podcast that I’m devoted to, after all.

I will see you guys in February, I think I will give in to some much-needed procrastination and laziness (and maybe reading). I hope you and your loved ones have a happy 2024 :)

Before that, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite introductions to any movie. This is how I feel writing this piece. There are no spoilers here — not like Dazed and Confused is a movie that can be spoiled anyway. If you haven’t watched it yet, you’re missing out the most laidback, adolescent, carefree movie ever.

Most importantly, the signature quote of the film says everything that I feel about how Hot Chips is going. Something about being alright, alright, alright :)

So long story short, this story was supposed to make it to you last month. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of approaching advertising professionals right when festive season had begun. And I had quite the hard time trying to tackle this narrative from a secondary research angle. That being said, I loved writing this.

I will be apologizing to any readers based out of Mumbai for chimping off of DIVINE for a backing track for a piece on a city that’s not Mumbai, but couldn’t be more relevant to the piece. Happy reading!

Gurgaon will take you to the extremes of loving and hating.

The city is a concrete jungle, but unlike New York, it doesn’t have a massive park in the middle. It is possibly the most divisive city I’ve ever visited, or lived in, or will probably ever see.

Divisive, because it’s full of consultants serving their clients at 2 am in the night. Gurgaon was always meant to serve as a corporate hub, which is why it’s not uncommon to notice that loneliness is a common theme among its inhabitants. There is little to expect in terms of natural greenery, except for the inseams of its posh neighborhoods. The weather here knows no balance. At any given time of the year in Gurgaon, you’ll either need a heater or an AC, and spring only lasts for a month. Sector 42 is 6 km away from Sector 43, and rainy season exposes the glaring lack of a good drainage system. The city is not kind to its poor, and it’s as if its slums were wiped. Car accidents are accepted as a norm of living here.

If you feel like you’ve read this before, you’re not wrong. These happen to be the first words of Alcoholics Autonomous. In a lot of ways, I’ve realized that embarking to write a piece on Gurgaon will entail certain acceptances beforehand, especially as a tale of being a consumerist city. This one doesn’t happen to be all that different.

Sorry, I did forget the air pollution.

Pity On A Whim

When you enter Gurgaon, you are bound to have a chicken-or-egg question of your own. What came first, the ads or the buildings?

Most people enter the city through its famous 6-way lane that is a part of NH-8. And the moment you enter the city, you encounter a mall. And a hotel right adjacent to it. Ambience Mall and The Leela, more specifically. And a massive billboard.

Gurgaon is constantly expanding. There is no way to tell where its borders lie, or if it has any. It’s quite telling of a city that did not have organic origins and is primarily a result of private developers buying rural land for cheap — primarily a firm named Delhi Land & Finance (DLF), that’s plastered all over the city today.

While the actual answer to the chicken-egg question is neither, it’s still an important question. Gurgaon was built with a purpose to become a hub for industry. In 1982, Maruti and Suzuki had a joint venture that resulted in a car plant in the proposed new city. Later, another set of Indian and Japanese companies — Hero and Honda — set up their factory here. In the 1990s, right after liberalization, Gurgaon became a hub for IT and BPO work. Multinationals such as American Express (that has two huge setups near Sector 43), and General Electric set up shop here.

Lots of SEZs and business parks were created, all by the hand of DLF leasing space to them. Most MNCs had little to do with acquiring land because private developers had done that job for them — they still pay massive rent to whatever private developer owns their buildings. Even though the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon exists, there seemingly has been little role that the state has played in this market. This, from a paper on the development of the city, only confirms that:

“On paper, once HUDA or private developers build roads, public infrastructure, drainage systems, and so on, they need to hand these developments over to the MCG for maintenance. However, there is neither any timeframe nor any agreement between the two bodies on how to account for the civil works undertaken so far and the extent of the tasks still pending. It is still unclear where the responsibility lies for maintenance of public utilities and infrastructure in Gurgaon.”

The MCG does play the role of collector. It generates upwards of 16000 crores worth of tax revenue. In 2015, that was nearly half of all of Haryana’s receipts, an impressive testament to the growth the city has seen since its inception. But the cost of it was borne in other ways. Gurgaon has never had a master plan for sewage treatment. Residents mostly blame the MCG, but it’s hard to put them entirely on the stand when the demarcation between what constituted private and public was always unclear.

Electricity is a constant issue. It’s split between what a public organization (such as the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam) provides, and how private players make up for the shortfall by the public firm. Commercial parks account for a large chunk of the consumption. Water supply, fire emergency and security services are similarly lopsided. There’s nearly no presence of public transport.

And it’s a city marked by inequality. It may not be by deliberate design, but it might certainly be because of the sheer lack of it. You can see fascinating oval buildings and luxury properties crowding out rundown housing developments and slum areas. As with any other urban area, Gurgaon is facing a supply shortage of residences. It is also a city where, as this paper notes, the under-utilization of owned properties exists right alongside high demand for more moderate-income housing. Nowhere better is the phenomenon of treating land as a source of wealth portrayed than here.

There are no actual Gurgaon natives, it’s all migrants who come here to try and make a better life. Many of them struggle to make a living here, and the city (often its people) doesn’t do them any favors. If the last few months were any indication, it goes beyond making a living wage for migrant colonies.

What’s perplexing that these were all choices. Many of these problems that Gurgaon faces today could have been its strengths. Instead, we’re now between a rock and a hard place, where things don’t seem to get much better rather than cheap booze. To quote ex-Genpact executive Pramod Bhasin,

“There was a chance to build world class infrastructure and it wasn’t that difficult either. We could have built Singapore. But we didn’t.”

Fine Print

Gurgaon barely has any parallel roads. The stretch of tarmac entering Gurgaon through the expressway winds down and around with no U-turn in sight. While it leads into the core city, it feels like it was built to circle Gurgaon’s premier business hub, CyberCity.

Call it deliberate or call it a happy accident, but the path that goes through CyberCity is also some of its prime virtual estate.

I speak to Gurjot Singh, an ex-Executive VP at Dentsu Webchutney with years of helming large-scale executions of media planning. He alerts me to this insight about Gurgaon’s lack of parallel roads simultaneously making it valuable for brands. This also ensures that traffic is always an issue at 10AM and 6PM. There is high demand by companies for what are naturally limited hoardings on this road.

You could be earning 5LPA or 5 crores every year, but it’s very likely that your work route is the same. What this implies is that you could be looking at a vast variety of brands advertising themselves along the same route. A product worth 100 rupees might be right next to a premium German automaker with a slick tagline. More importantly, the clogging of traffic has also led brands to create longer taglines and messages on their ads. You’ll be stuck in your vehicle moving at a snail’s pace while glaring that one ad.

Gurjot says that this is also proliferated by blurry demarcations between where different demographics live. For example, DLF Camellias, a massive luxury enclosure with 2 golf courses, doesn’t really have a separate road of its own that leads to it. It remains mish-mashed with other properties and rentals that aren’t as high-end. In Mumbai, or even Delhi, there is still a much clearer line, crossing which one can say that they’re in the Upper East Side equivalent of the city. There is no South Gurgaon that way. It’s entirely possible to have a luxury enclave right next to more median-income housing.

“The probability of someone living in societies being exposed to ads is much higher than in co-op housing or independent establishments”, says Niharika Ghoshal, Strategy Lead at Havas Media. Apps like MyGate and NoBroker have also allowed brands to advertise themselves on their interfaces. Niharika points me to the parking lots of high-rises and the cars they contain, which also parallels what Gurjot says in a way. Such a lot can possibly have both a relic like the Hyundai Santro and the Audi R8. Even though their spending powers are different, some things are common, like going to a Decathlon store for sporting goods. Some are not, like eating at a high-flying restaurant such as threesixtyone.

“This is the sequence of ads from the beginning of Gurgaon at Ambience Mall: Trident bedsheets and towels, Vistara direct to Bali, Spinny with Sachin, Spotify, and Apple”, Gurjot tells me as of the 3rd week of November. It’s the sheer diversity of brands that amazes — from lavish tech product that high-income earners buy a new variant of every year, to a platform selling used cars that could very well be someone’s first vehicle. It’s also the various industries in reflection at any given time. Unlike smartphones, both the Apple and the Vivo types, Spotify doesn’t do ads all year round. Tickets to Bali or Vietnam — as are the new vacation hubs for upper-class Indians — don’t make sense to be advertised in the off-season.

Since Gurgaon was designed as with CyberCity in the focus, it made sense to also have all the post-work entertainment for white collars there. Behold CyberHub —Gurgaon’s premier open-air space that consists of innumerable offices, restaurants, fashion stores, and some of the city’s most happening party places. The center of the center, inspired by Singapore’s Clarke Quay area.

It’s also by far the best place to advertise your goods. “It’s our Bermuda Triangle”, quips Gurjot. It has the ability to suck anybody and everybody into its vortex. And CyberHub doesn’t just do billboards. Below is the inside of India’s first Google Chromebook townhouse in CyberHub. . It’s a beautiful, petite setup. Hyundai once had a 3D anamorphic activation for its model, the Venue. Companies like JBL and Yes Bank have stalls of their own in CyberHub. Similarly, Galleria is a huge footfall area. It is replete with cafes and restaurants, and a pretty large hoarding smack dab in the center.

“10 years ago, all that CyberHub had was just a Modern Bazaar, Chumbak, Dayal Opticals and Archies”, says Niharika. Only 2 of those establishments remain (Dayal Opticals has a slick pop-up now). But CyberHub has multiple multinational coffee brands, Indian chains, East Asian exports, a massive 2-floor Nike store, a Social, multiple cafes, and a huge Uniqlo store.

Brand Equity

As a brand, the boldest message that you can give to a city is to literally set up shop in that city.

Nestle’s India head office is located in Phase 2, and they have an entire, elaborate building all to themselves that they call Nestle House. Which probably means that they own the establishment, and probably even had DLF specifically build it for them. Even though DSLRs are not as popular any longer (primarily because unlike phones, the cost of making a DSLR hasn’t gone down over time), Canon continues to have an office in Phase 2 as well. Of course, both Zomato and Blinkit have their head offices in the city.

The most popular brands in Gurgaon today seem to be tech. Apple loves the city, both because it has lots of Android-to-iOS switchers, and people who want the next iPhone. Samsung’s Galaxy Flip can be seen in multiple spots in the city at the moment. More budget phones like Vivo and Oppo are plastered all over the city. And this has seen an evolution over time. When Gurgaon was still developing, cars and residential properties were pretty much the most dominant ads.

When it comes to billboards, brands of different statures, ahem, flex differently. “Apple never takes digital signage, it’s always a plaster on an entire building wall”, says Niharika. Similarly, Nike doesn’t either. Their solution to billboards is sticking the Swoosh logo with a very poignant quote (their videos do better). A Spinny or a Manyavar will resort to programmatic billboards, where they’re not the exclusive offering. They may also do advertisements behind autos. The game is a little different with digital-first brands, though. A Myntra will primarily resort to geotargeting — using a person’s latitude-longitude coordinates for brand messaging on their devices. It’s also much cheaper.

But speaking of actual brand messaging, advertising in Gurgaon can often be costly for brands, especially since the OOH market is controlled by few players. Advisably, brands do not occupy billboards for months at a time, since they’re charged highly enough for just 2 weeks. This has made brands a lot more careful about what and how much they say. Programmatic OOH is more efficient and dynamic that way. If it rains, Chaayos advertises pakodas for you. If it doesn’t, it’s papdi chaat day. AQI high? Get a Dyson! And as mentioned earlier, brands love traffic.

The idea of convenience is in-built in the high-income residents of this city, and brands understand this. Niharika tells me of how she was trying to settle the age-old debate of “iPhone or Android”, where her friends were advocating for the former. What she tells me that when she eventually purchased an iPhone, she did not make a conscious choice at all. She didn’t think it through when she went to a physical store to buy one and didn’t even carry a card to make the payment. “The fact that luxury residents buy Jimmy Choo with no prior thought to whether they need the purchase only points to how accustomed they are to this”, she continues.

Gurgaon has an evident lack of street food stalls, like the kind that exist in Delhi, or Singapore. This is not unrelated to the fact that the only kind of food stalls here are branded ones. This was pointed out to me by Niharika. “Even something like the galauti kebab — that you can find in many local spots in Delhi — has to be branded in Gurgaon under a franchise.”

And she’s not wrong. Al Kauser and Al Bake, two popular chains in Delhi-NCR that serve Mughlai, have their instalments here as well. Many Gurgaon residents are people who originally hail from Delhi but moved here because of work and comparatively cheaper real estate. If you’ve stayed in Delhi for a while, chances are you’ve been to the original Al Kauser at RK Puram. It’s nearly as if you’re being served a slice of your hometown in Gurgaon, which probably adds to the high levels of convenience that residents in Gurgaon’s high-rises aspire to. One branch of Al Kauser is literally in the middle of multiple apartment complexes located in DLF Phase 4. I mean, we don’t have chai tapris here, it’s all Chai Point and Chaayos.

All of this is significantly different from a naturally occurring tier-1 city like Delhi or Mumbai. While much like Gurgaon, people are constantly on the go in these regions, local availability is very high in the former 2. You always have local substitutes, be it Sarojini Market for clothing, or Chandni Chowk for jewelry and food. There are very few flea markets in Gurgaon for non-branded, inexpensive consumables, like Sadar Bazar (not the Delhi one) and Banjara Market.

Discovery Channel

In Gurgaon, advertising is one heck of an expensive business.

13 years ago, hoardings in Gurgaon were haphazardly arranged, with no formal market mechanism underlying it. And then the erstwhile government of Haryana decided to institute the Haryana Municipalities’ Outdoor Advertising Policy. Today, the OOH market is regulated by the MCG. They collected a whopping 6.5CR in tax on installations in September this year. They earned 27CR in the 6 months leading up to September — which is the total of the 2022 fiscal year. It maintains a fairly tight leash on illegal unipole construction, cracking down often on media in malls and the few metro stations Gurgaon has.

Supply of OOH billboards is very limited. While the regulations are not the strictest when it comes to the supply of unipoles, only a few major players control the market. Limited supply and high demand means high prices, and higher for areas with incredible footfall. For example, CyberHub would probably command 3-4 lakhs for a static billboard for a period of 2 weeks.

“CoVID and high fees shut down many OOH installations in Gurgaon and washed away the smaller players”, says Gurjot. Notable players include NS Publicity, Adgrowth, Havas Media, Selvel and Pioneer. CoVID also forced them to not only adapt to digital ads, but also make them a core part of their business.

A city like Gurgaon is constantly trying to build more housing — trying, because it meets tons of roadblocks. Demand is far outstripping supply at the moment. But where there is a streamline of new residences, there is bound to be more out-of-home advertising. The irony of out-of-home advertising being called so is that more often than not, OOH tends to want to be much closer to one’s place of residence. Even elevators in apartment complexes are used as advertising spaces.

A lot of new housing is being built by players in the real estate market, such as Vatika Collections, Ashiana Builders, and M3M. They’re looking to make an entry in the newer, expanded version of Gurgaon, that covers Golf Course Extension Road, Sohna Road, and the Dwarka Expressway. And they’ve hit the jackpot, with the government now building highways next to land they own.

Below is the under-construction M3M Capital Walk in Sector 113, next to the Dwarka Expressway. It intends to be a next-gen residential-cum-commercial space. This is one of many properties that M3M has under construction in a spot that’s stipulated to be called “Smart City Delhi Airport”. Similarly, Vatika is building high-rises and independent floors in the area that lies after the toll plaza that crosses from Gurgaon into Manesar. Much of this area falls under the title of “New Gurgaon”. The government of Haryana also announced the Gurgaon-Sohna Master Plan, and realty players ranging from local ones to giants like Godrej and Tata have begun their land grabs.

All of this new construction might help ease the market for brands looking to capture new audiences. Part of why out-of-home billboards are this expensive is also because of the real estate builder whose turf they use to advertise their own stuff. For CyberHub, media planners have to pay up rental and electricity costs to DLF. High footfall in the area means that DLF can control what they can charge.

While you may not get to see this anymore, the Rapid Metro in Gurgaon used to auction its stations off to corporate bidders to pay the bills. Until 2019, the naming rights to the station next to DLF’s famous Belvedere Towers belonged to Vodafone. Why Vodafone — and companies in general — likely backed off from this is because the Rapid Metro hardly encompasses even half of Gurgaon, which is also why the usage of the metro by the citizens is very low. Of course, we continue to see sponsored metro stations in Delhi.

A fun exercise in YouTube is to search “Gurgaon” and see the videos that turn up.

Foreigners who come here and have a certain perception of India are awe-inspired by blue-tinted structures at CyberCity. They go to CyberHub and try sushi, coffee, boba tea, and try pronouncing Guru Dronacharya hilariously. They call it the side of India they’ve never seen before. Maybe, they have a point. Gurgaon has India’s third-highest per capita income among cities and has become a major driver of development for the state of Haryana.

But there’s a funny feeling to it all. “You don’t have needs in Gurgaon. You buy things you don’t need”, says Niharika. An advertising professional by living who is upfront about sounding like Tyler Durden. And you’re buying things in a city that’s trying to stay its course longer only by getting more land under its name. A Greater/New Gurgaon, much like a Greater Noida, or a Navi Mumbai. Much of what remains of the original cityscape seems to be crumbling under the dire lack of basic necessities. It’s a little insane that you’re watching an entire infrastructure struggle from the convenience of your posh residence. Almost like the end of Fight Club, where the narrator and Marla just look at the buildings that his alter ego destroyed.

I distinctly remember a Zomato ad on milk (that made a tagline out of an active conflict zone in India) that made the rounds. I realized that the unipole the ad was on is in Gurgaon’s Sector 43, that sees a lot of traffic and has a number of residences surrounding it. Gurgaon really only comes to the fore in social media for any one of these four things: the discovery of cheap alcohol, the road rage incidents, the brashness of its people, and an ad that riled up controversy.

Between chickens and eggs trying to come first here, it’ll likely always be brands.

Special thanks to: Ishtaarth Saxena, Tanmay Mehra for helping me connect with the two interviewees in this piece!

Gurjot Singh and Niharika Ghoshal for being lovely interviewees.

Sunaina Bose, Molina Singh for helping with the proofread, as always :)

I will be ending this year with one small note that I will be sending out later!

If you know someone who would like to read this piece, please feel free to share it!

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I have achieved what I always wanted to: one piece on Succession under my belt. To quote Kendall Roy, this is the day we make it happen. It’s not just a dissection of the show, but rather what it says about something real world. That being said: this piece has A FEW SPOILERS, so please exercise caution. Unless you do not care about spoilers affecting your watching experience and all that, in which case, please feel free to read this.

My job as a music selector for my pieces has never been easier than this time. I just entered “Succession” on Spotify’s search bar, checked out the playlist, and chose an appropriate banger that plays in the show. Honestly, the non-background score tracks that feature in the show are pretty damn fire. And they’re always commenting on the show, always.

Happy reading, and happy Sunday (or Saturday, if you’re on the other side of the world)!

It’s been a few months since the final season of Succession ended, and end it did with a — to quote Tom Wambsgans — “bang! Shanghai-ed into an open borders free fuck trade deal”. I’d say it was a great trade: we got to see a bunch of yuppie siblings quarrel over their father’s empire in hilariously disconcerting fashion. Sometimes, it gave us heart attacks. Sometimes, it gave us more laughs that we could bear. Sometimes, it teared us up to no end.

I’ve tweeted non-stop about how much I love the show since when I saw the first 2 seasons in the first pandemic wave. The brilliant acting, the ingenious curses, the anxiety and thrill in some standout episodes, the music. But for the purposes of this piece: there is so much the show gets right about the media/entertainment business. 2023 has been an eventful year on that front, and rewatching parts of the show in light of that fact feels like a rewind of real life.

One of my favorite pieces I read this year was Evan Armstrong’s (of Napkin Math) treatise on his love for media businesses — a sentiment I share. At the same time, he didn’t shy away from calling it a moment akin to a funeral for the industry. He lists 7 very compelling reasons why media business is so rotten, that you wonder whether this is a problem inherent to its economics. He has a wonderful summary for his piece:

“The TL;DR is this: Consumers don’t want to pay you, Facebook is better at advertising, and unique distribution is necessary for long-term survival but almost impossible to get.”

And it was just really good timing that Succession ended around the time this piece came out. The show ends with a conclusion that was seemingly inevitable, and I don’t mean in terms of what happened to the siblings. The finale marked the replacement of old money with new money, a process of the creative destruction of a (fictional) legacy company happening right before our eyes.

And it got me thinking: Succession really knew how messy media business can get. The industry is not just a backdrop for what it's trying to say, but a definitive part of how the plot advances. It dissects media companies of different sizes and dynamics to craft an incredible story. This piece is an exploration of how the show does that.

Hear, Here

Essentially, Succession represents media business at 3 major levels. Obviously, the first (and biggest) one I’m going to cover is Waystar Royco.

It’s no secret that Waystar’s biggest inspiration seems to be Fox Corporation and the Roys after the Murdoch family. Now with Rupert Murdoch ceding the Fox throne to his eldest son, the Kendall Roy fan club seems to have reason to rejoice (please don’t).

The FOX money labyrinth is interesting. They make money in two ways:

• affiliate fees: subscriptions and fees paid by other television stations to market content owned by Fox

• advertising.

It’s primary profit driver happens to be what it calls “Cable Network Programming” — essentially their news and sports content disseminated to the public through television stations not associated with FOX itself. However, it is not their primary revenue driver — which happens to be their own television network: producing, acquiring, marketing and distributing their own content. It just costs them a lot to acquire rights to sports content, which is why FOX Television’s own profits pale in comparison to its cable programming. Within this, the split of revenue types is different. While affiliate fees rule in cable programming, it’s advertising that drives much of Fox’s own network.

Throughout Succession, we’re told that ATN is the center of the circle. News is how they make much of their money. If this website is anything to go by, ATN seems to be the most popular news channel in the US. Affiliate fees must be skyrocketing for them. And advertising — a tool they know well enough to use to grotesquely manipulate and maneuver American democracy — must be incredible business especially in election years. They may also have their own content, produced or acquired, that they license to other networks.

An interesting deviation from Fox is the fact that Waystar does not seem to do sports at all. In 2021, the NFL signed 11-year contracts with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon for a collective value of $110B. Sports is absolutely insane business. Assuming the contract values are split evenly, Fox will need to make at least $2B through sports viewing alone to break even. In the Indian context, the war for IPL rights says enough. Mukesh Ambani paid a whopping $2.7B for the exclusive streaming rights to the league.

Anyway, what could be the reasons that Waystar is declining? The reasons aren’t explicitly clear in the show and whatever we assume is by proxy of their position in the NYSE. Except for one: their tardiness in adopting digital. It is the primary basis of their potential acquisition. Seeing as how traditional newspapers, not just in the US but also in India, have been running out of fashion, being late to the party that was the internet could mean disaster. It is also cheaper to run ads on the internet that on print.

Here are other possible reasons I fathom might have caused Waystar operational issues:

• Movies are high-risk business. Profits aren’t the easiest when worldwide marketing takes up so much of it. If we know anything about Waystar Studios, it’s that Roman Roy was once heading it. It was a stint that everyone alludes to as an example of Rome’s narcissism destroying his name. We really don’t get a sense of Waystar having any well-known franchises under its belt, but we are told that Rome absolutely tanked a couple of movies as a producer.

• Waystar has theme parks, that Tom was once the head of. Disney’s (and Marvel’s) model is to make movies every year that bring people to spend more on theme parks, their most profitable division. Last month, it doubled its investment to $60B in the same. But if you don’t have a movie business that can’t advertise well enough for your theme parks, you’re likely bound to see a decline. It also costs a lot to run theme parks, which are naturally capital-intensive.

• Was Waystar late to adapting to digital advertising? That’s an attitude that could result from a belief that the paper, the tabloid, and cable TV will stand the test of time. I can truly imagine Logan scoffing at the World Wide Web, much like many people did when it was first launched. Especially since he’s always wielded so much power (not just economic) through the paper and ATN News. “The internet? Sounds like a fucking genie pissing its own pants.”

I also believe that Waystar doesn’t benefit from Logan Roy being the alpha wolf for so long. Sure, he’s headstrong and all that, but to paraphrase what Kendall once said, this is a man who’s been in contention for so long just because he fucked multiple US heads of state. Even if he didn’t literally do that, it’s evidence enough that where Logan makes up for being superb at negotiating and arm-twisting, he lacks in foresight. I mean, look at all the yes men he surrounds himself with. And he’s only realized this too late.

Aside from being clubbed under “entertainment”, rollercoasters and cable TV are not necessarily compatible. Both businesses require different types of operational expertise. When Bob Iger first stepped down at Disney, he handed over the reins to Bob Chapek, who had led Disney’s theme parks business. One of the theses of this piece by CNBC is that Chapek understood theme parks better than anyone, but not, say, the innards of ESPN, ABC, or Pixar. That, alongside some other incredible mishaps, led to Chapek being replaced by the very man that gave him the reins to begin with.

It’s not like ATN’s rival, Pierce, seems to be any better. Their pride in being a news organization significantly more liberal than ATN only extends till when they’re making money. In season 2, we can see Nan Pierce being quite willing to listen to Logan’s offer — and accepting one on paper after the first round of negotiations at the Pierce estate. Nan Pierce, the matriarch of the family, is modeled much after Katherine Graham, a past owner of the Washington Post. Pierce News feels a lot more akin to CNN that way. Yet, owing to the political climate in the country, Pierce finds itself continually struggling financially throughout the show, even fielding an offer from the Roy siblings.

Someone close to me once told me a story about a regional publication well-known in its area, whose founder was planning his post-retirement succession to one of his children. The same founder also said to a close circle that he knew if he did that instead of giving it to someone smarter and more capable, the publication would be run down to the ground. While also admitting that he was too attached to not give it to his eldest child. I wonder if that’s what Logan often felt like.

In season 4, Lukas Matsson pitches buying ATN alongwith the rest of Waystar, hopefully moving it away from its conservative leanings. “IKEA’d to fuck”, “Bloomberg grey”-ed, offending no one, being “neutral”. It’s not that he truly understands the reasons why ATN is this popular. Until, of course, the candidate that ATN has no trouble voicing support for, Republican Jeryd Mencken, wins. At that point, Matsson is more than happy to set up a lobby with the office of the new POTUS.

Which really reminded me of a quote that Stewy once said for himself that also applies to Matsson: he was really just “spiritually and ethically and emotionally and morally behind whoever wins”.

(Mid)as Touch

The second kind of media organization that Succession expertly dissects is the kind that Vaulter is modeled after. Hot growth-stage startup propelled by venture capital funding; Vaulter was founded by Lawrence Yee. Waystar seems to have become a major stakeholder in Vaulter because of the deal Kendall struck in season 1.

Vaulter’s inspiration seems to come from Gawker, VICE, BuzzFeed, Jezebel, and the like. Maybe throw in a little TMZ into the mix. These companies are propped up by advertising money and content licensing revenue. The biggest challenge that these companies face, on the revenue front, is why any brand would choose to buy ads through them instead of AdSense or Meta. The valuation for companies like these is primarily decided by their growth. And the profit comes later.

I kid you not that the following screenshot is an actual headline from VICE. And you may do well to read the piece, just to see the headlines that Succession came up with. They’re hilarious, and so close to what Vaulter’s real-life counterparts come up with. “Meet the World’s Richest People Trafficker (He’s a Surprisingly Nice Guy)”.

In 2023, you’d probably lose fingers if you tried to count the publications that cut costs with layoffs. VICE was the biggest victim — they scaled back their audio team, their long-form video team, and stopped their flagship program “Vice News Tonight”. The company filed for bankruptcy, primarily with the intention to sell to a willing buyer. And no, it wasn’t without controversy at all — VICE executives that got to stay got paid million-dollar retention bonuses while much of their laid-off staff were yet to receive their severance checks.

VICE was valued at $5.7B in 2017. In the lead-up to that valuation, they were cut checks by Disney and Fox. They had a lot going on: film studio, ad agency, record label, London bar, an absolutely insane YouTube channel, basically things that they expected to make them money. Co-founder Shane Smith once said of his darling media group, “We are a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde and we are going to take all your money”. And he was extremely confident that VICE would be worth $50B by the end of the 2010s. Only to be valued at a mere $350M — a 16x drawdown — this year on filing for bankruptcy.

BuzzFeed stopped its famous News vertical earlier this year. I’d say that the bigger red flag was when it went public in 2021 through a SPAC deal. Many employees who were lured in with ESOPs (as a lieu for a lower salary) seemed to not be able to sell their shares on the day of the SPAC. There was also a walkout by News employees as the day of the SPAC deal got closer, fighting for better pay and working conditions. And on D-Day, BuzzFeed’s price tanked hard. It was a litmus for other similar companies, and it failed. We also are significantly smarter about why SPAC deals are very likely scams.

Vaulter was modeled precisely at this juncture, except that it was not independent anymore, owing to Waystar taking over control. The company is failing and Logan is looking to shape it up in whatever way. Roman finds out that Vaulter is unionizing, and Kendall tries to tell Lawrence to convince his employees otherwise, and “have some faith”. It ends horribly: Kendall goes the next day to fire everybody in Vaulter, White Waystar keeps just the intellectual property and name. And when Lawrence angrily asks why, Kendall infamously says this:

There is an inherent conflict in the perception of what digital media is and what the writers expect it should be. VICE was known for being edgy: “punk-rock” was the word most associated with it. I suppose the Bonnie & Clyde quote was some indication of that adjective. But to quote an ex-brand executive from the company:

“How do you scale the essence of a punk-rock magazine into a multi-billion dollar media company? There is no real answer. At some point, what got you there isn’t what you are.”

It is probably why after a while, you really only saw one kind of kitschy content from the likes of VICE and BuzzFeed. The quizzes, the wild articles about sex, the extremely click-baity titles, the lack of real news. If you were a writer, you’d hope to write about things you found interesting, meaningful. You’d want clicks but not at the expense of quality. BuzzFeed News reporter named Ema O’Connor once put it succintly:

“If they want digital media to be modeled on BuzzFeed then they have to do better. The traffic discipline — all of these things are the horror show version of what people think that digital media is and so we need to convince them ... that is just not acceptable.”

At some point, you wonder if the only way media firms can survive is if they have an extremely loaded backer with no direct ties to the industry, who probably just wants to own a huge mouthpiece. Say, Washington Post with Jeff Bezos.

We see Lawrence at the beginning of the show, in the first episode, where he’s in a boardroom with Kendall trying to coax him. He tells Lawrence that he will stuff so much money in his mouth, he will “shit gold figurines”. Lawrence rebuffed him, and said that he will bring Waystar down. That he “will not let Neanderthals in to r*pe my company.” Which sounds like a very overconfident man with no real way to make money. Like Shane Smith, who really thought he could sell hard and get away with it.

But El Dorado doesn’t exist. And in a cruel instance of foreshadowing, the Neanderthals won.

Reverse Viking

At last, we have the big daddy, GoJo. Founded by Norwegian Lukas Matsson. Somewhat of a merge between Elon Musk and Spotify’s Daniel Ek (at least by regional identity and industry, if not personality). A crossover between Netflix and DraftKings, an upstart but digitally savvy, and growing like a monster. Clearly, it understands that there is lots of money to be made in sports and betting, so it does that alongside. It doesn’t do news, it doesn’t have the biggest content catalog, but it’s a storm.

Or at least it was made to seem like one.

Before some market capitalization voodoo magic that flipped the equation, Waystar was primed to buy GoJo. Why not? Post the inception of the streaming model, legacy media players like Comcast, Disney, Warner Bros, all cashed in. They announced that they won’t be renewing licenses for their IP to Netflix, in favour of launching all of it on their own newly-built app. When Disney+ launched, its stock went from $100 to $150. Waystar wanted a piece of this promised land.

User growth, not profit, has been the primary driver of the valuation of streaming models. In the beginning, it seemed revolutionary: making lots of content accessible at a monthly price seemed like a great bargain. Except for when streaming decided to splurge on a lot of content: like Prime Video spending $250M for the rights to a Lord of the Rings TV show. Art was reduced to content driven by algorithms. How much could you consume / binge in one sitting?

Aswath Damodaran did a killer breakdown of all the ways in which streaming upended the movie and broadcasting business. And he shows two wild charts that bring much into question about the sustainability of the subscriber video-on demand model. The story is this: SVOD’s operating margins are much lower than that of cable, movies and TV. But the industry’s market cap is rapidly increasing. I’m not sure if that screams “sustainable” to me.

Most notorious has been Netflix’s extreme hesitation to show numbers, which the show also spins into a point of contention in season 4. Kendall and Roman draw in Matsson’s head of comms, Ebba, to deal in trade secrets about GoJo. Ebba is pretty disgruntled with Matsson because he turned out to be unhinged and creepy. She reveals some number-fudging (Matsson calls it a metric error) in the India business on his part that would not have made sense even “if there were two Indias”. Of course, Shiv confronts Matsson about this, seeing as how she was backing him to get herself to ruling Waystar. When she asks him why he doesn’t address the issue already, his response is one that borrows straight from Elon Musk’s mouthpiece:

The fact that he doesn't want more people betting against him in the market in one of the few instances where his insecurity really comes through. And he says that this number-fudging will eventually get lost in the shuffle when he buys Waystar. Matsson is unbelievably pushy about buying out ATN throughout the season likely for this reason. Even when Ken and Roman tried to self-sabotage the deal when they realized they didn't want to give their baby up, Matsson offered a price so incredulous that the board and shareholders would have no choice but to accept. At some point, you have to wonder if Matsson was self-aware that he was running something resembling a Ponzi scheme. I also wonder if there was a large short already running against GoJo.

Succession ended in May, which is also around the time the Writers’ Guild of America started their strike. Among their demands from the AMPTP was that of revealing audience data for how many people watched a show they wrote, so that they could have more bargaining power for future deals. More than fair: it’s what happened with cable TV, that also granted them residuals based on Nielsen ratings. To quote the CEO of a talent agency, “If one group is staring at a set of figures and they’re negotiating with another group who doesn’t have any numbers, it makes it a very one-sided conversation.” The WGA recently fully ratified their new contract details and concluded their picket, but SAG-AFTRA is still on the line for their own.

You also have to wonder why the writers chose to use India in that piece of dialogue. Netflix India has been trying to crack profitability for an endless amount of time, launching extremely cheap plans that won’t be found in most other countries. Disney is planning to either exit or significantly dilute its stake in its India business, and we’ve already started to see its effects: HBO and IPL are both properties of JioCinema now. Foreign players have been desperately trying to sell their services for as cheap as they can, only to realize that we either can’t or won’t buy.

(Which is also a harkening back to a piece where I wrote something similar from a vastly different angle earlier this year.)

While I was writing this, Bandcamp laid off much of their staff. For many of us tuned into music and musicians being able to make a career off of music, it was heartbreaking to see an operation that paid out so well to artists for their music cut back on the people that made it. The company has gone through two different acquisitions: first sold to Epic Games last year (in a cost-cutting process of their own), who sold it to Songtradr this year. It raises serious questions about how Bandcamp is being managed.

The video streaming question certainly also applies to music streaming. It’s great that music has become more accessible to people through Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. But per stream payouts to artists are not great, at least for Spotify — despite paying 70% of every dollar they receive as revenue to the music industry. The good part is that music streaming is and has been a growing business for some time. But, if India is any indication, Spotify is a little desperate with its pricing, too.

Epic Games itself went through a layoff late-September: reports suggest that it’s majorly Fortnite (itself declining in player-base) keeping them afloat. Their Games Store expects to be gross-profitable only by 2027. Their revenue and profit projections for the entire company have gone down.

It’s been some year for the arts, and the business of it.

We saw a finale season for the ages, crafted by incredible artists at the top of their game. But on looking back, Succession has probably always been as much a commentary about family and capitalism as it has been about the artists that made the show. It was never about the writing feeling prescient. These are issues that are only reaching their head now, where we feel like a decision of some sort has to be made on the future of the industry and the people it employs. And maybe it was just eerily perfect timing that a show that always knew what it was talking about got way too close to real-life than it expected.

And this is counting the players that have historically done well anyway: be it A24 being a beacon of profitably making amazing movies, or Valve being a behemoth (with a ridiculously good per-employee revenue), or The New York Times making money (though often with suspect journalism and questionable headlines). These feel like exceptions in an industry where things feel fundamentally broken.

This applies to music, movies, news and print, and probably even gaming. We’re exploring new media formats all the time, expecting that, hey, maybe podcasts could be the next big thing. Maybe VR kits, the metaverse. Maybe a Bandersnatch-like project could be the next wave of entertainment that everybody will line up for. Maybe enacting a real-life fun Squid Game (why) for YouTube could be cool.

All that Succession has to say is, “Let’s just take all of these assumptions we’ve made about the state of the industry and take them to what we feel is their most likely conclusion.” If we know anything about the show, it’s always been about the inevitability of things already set in motion.

Thanks to Paridhi Puri / , Sunaina Bose, Shruti Gupta, Ritwik Tripathy, and for proofreading and edits (and giving instances of more Succession business lore that I had missed)!

As usual, will be back next month! I still don’t know which piece I’m writing (one of two ideas), so I should get cracking on researching both :)

Sometime in April, I had tweeted X’d (henceforth I will be referring to it as Twitter only) out whether anyone might find my learnings from building Hot Chips useful. Apparently, quite a few said yes. I’ve had quite a few people ask me this before, which is where I realized that it might be useful to just dump all that I know in one spot. Things that I might have picked up from other newsletters, how I go about research, and social media feeds — why they make your visibility hell, and how I try and stay not too chuffed about it.

If I’m being honest, I really only wrote this piece for the last 2 sections. Researching and interviewing are always items that people can develop their own styles on over time, and who am I to tell you how to write a “thriving” newsletter?

But, I realized that more than insights about newsletter business (which I don’t really have), I have a lot to say about what it means to me to be writing online. Because it constitutes writing and being online, that can either be two separate activities, or a blend of both. In the former, there’s a chance you hate being online and all that comes with it — unfortunately, newsletter growth is very dependent on your social media numbers.

I don’t know if I truly hate being online — Twitter has borne witness to enough of my stream of consciousness. But I’ve certainly had a tough time marketing myself everywhere, and I’ve sometimes felt that it’s not as important as the very act of writing. This essay is pretty much a vehicle for how I’ve dealt with that. Most other information is secondary — but hopefully useful to anyone who wants to create a stock of their own writing.

Till then: I’ve been checking out some new music, and I discovered Naomi Sharon through the OVO playlist. Drake might be doing something right with his life, signing such gems to his label. This is a lovely song, should be just fine for this piece :)

And yes, the thumbnail picture is very relevant. I can’t stress enough that you should be watching The Bear. It says so much about the joy of being good at something.

Scribbles

To me, research for a piece is usually the easiest part of writing. There’s honestly no voodoo — I end up going through haystacks of Google pages for needles, ask chatGPT for financial (and otherwise) figures, and if possible, see if some unhinged soul on Reddit has something to say.

I do follow a process when I’m researching. I divide my work into secondary research and interviews. I know that reaching out to potential interviewees will take up most of my time — I should probably have added this caveat to the first sentence of this section. I figure I want to read up all that I can online about the subject while I try and see if I know someone who knows someone, or throw cold DMs on Twitter and LinkedIn to see who would like to be on a hot seat.

It certainly becomes tricky when there’s little conventional secondary research to course through. This was the issue with Alcoholics Autonomous — although I did write it because I couldn’t quench my thirst about Gurgaon’s alcohol industry online, so really it was the egg that came first, not the chicken. However, for once I also had to ask myself what it is I was looking for. I took it for granted that reading up online about something would be easy. I went from “It couldn’t possibly be true that I can retrieve nothing from the internet that won’t help me on this” to “I clearly am looking at it all wrong”.

For example, I thought that a crossing of a history of Gurgaon and a history of its alcohol industry would be enough to write the piece. But then, because I initially couldn’t find much on prices of bottles across years, I thought it would be useful to take a step back. And eventually, I discovered state-wise liquor price lists online. Similarly, I found government documents on tax breakdowns of liquor bottles, although, of course, they weren’t available for every state.

Sometimes, there really is no additional secondary research that I can do. If you try and look up information around Abdu Rozik and Hasbulla, you’ll likely find very little about their lives prior to the memes that made them famous. I wanted to write about them because I adored their personalities, but it wasn’t like I could interview them at the time (which I’d have loved to do, obviously). Unfortunately, I don’t have the same pull as Barstool Sports.

However, that spurred me to look for new angles to the story. Making their antics part of a bigger trend. Who do I speak to about those trends? How do I reach out to them? I decided to speak to people involved in influencer marketing in India, because many of their insights would be universally applicable. I weaved a story starting from those two, to internet brands, to Dubai as an influencer haven, to influencers and MMA.

I allow my storylines to evolve flexibly. While I love it, one side effect of this is that structuring becomes a little complicated. As a result, I might have to play backfoot when it comes to editing. It’s a process that I’ve now grown comfortable with, although I will admit that it has given me enough headaches. I would essentially be playing Tetris with my paragraphs, shifting them up and down the piece just to see where else a certain block can fit, if not here.

What helps here is that I draw my storyline into blocks on a piece of paper, and prepare a list of fundamental questions that if answered will mean I have enough to write the piece. I visualize the flow of the piece, and try and write while sticking to those blocks. Sure, sometimes I find new information I hadn’t accounted for (which happens all the time) and I’m forced to change the overall flow. I go back to the drawing board and shift the blocks around.

Talking Heads

Easily the hardest, most frustrating part of any piece is reaching out to potential interviewees. It’s a ton of cold mailing, cold dm-ing, asking friends if they know someone, expecting a response, not getting one for days, following up, scheduling a chat for a time way too close to my intended release date, never getting a response, and sometimes, pure procrastination on my end. At the beginning, I truly underestimated how hard it is to do things on one’s own without an external disciplinary force acting on me.

My initial hypothesis is often a little open-ended. And since I’m not really an expert on the thing I want to write about, I certainly want to talk to one. I draw up the kind of person an expert in this subject would be: for the business of live gigs in India, ideally someone in large-scale event management, or music marketing, or the like. I’ll look out for people in particular companies I can reach out to. In this respect, I’ve benefited a lot from people who read Hot Chips — they’re always willing to help connect me to someone. If you’re reading this, thank you, I’m super grateful :)

I have a bunch of general questions I ask each person, and then some specific questions for each person depending on the situation. I’m trying to be a better interviewer by covering all that I can within 45 minutes, but as I’ve realized: that is so difficult. I’ve always overshot the time I’ve told someone I’ll be taking to chat with them, and of course my interviewees are nice enough to lend me their ears for a little longer. It could be because I realize I’ve framed the question incorrectly in order to get a piece of information, or because I have endless follow-ups. Sometimes, it’s because the chat gets way too interesting. Immense respect for professional podcasters out there who understand the art of the interview.

I’ve had the pleasure of having some interviewees turn into future Hot Chips readers, which is as good of a signal that I’ve done a good job. The better my questions, the more the chances that they’ll be willing to entertain me for longer than necessary. I guess it’s just that when you ask people about work that they’re passionate about, they will leave no stone unturned in enthusiastically explaining all the nitty-gritties of what they do. Even better if you come prepared with a basic understanding of those nitty-gritties. Hot Chips is not much without the people I’ve interviewed.

Long and Short

A question that I deal with really often — and I assume other people do — is, “Who’s going to read this anyway?”

There are really only a few ways to become a sizeable newsletter in a short amount of time — and by “sizeable”, I mean at least having a few thousand subscribers:

• You have a track record of doing some stellar writing for publications, like and (closer home) Small Scenes’ Rega Jha. They’re both people who rose up the ranks at different regions of BuzzFeed, and were fairly well-known before they became independent. This also enables them to earn really good money through subscriptions.

• You’re an established expert in your field / you make yourself known for being the apex writer in your subject.write incredible longforms about tech and startups in India. You can tell they’ve thrown themselves into the deep end when they’re looking into a particular company, almost as if Hans Christian Andresen wrote investment memos. Or there’s , who has written her way on the internet, pop culture, and feminism through a book deal.

• You’re regular. You’re churning out pieces every week (or two), nonstop. Jack Raines has been writing Young Money for 2 years. But his rate of putting out stuff is truly insane — it has landed him 40000+ subscribers in 2 years. Of course, it goes without saying that you can’t be speaking about everything under the sun when you’re at 2-3 short pieces/week.

• You’ve been making banger posts on social media left, right and center, and that has led to a lot of people following you. You decide to open a newsletter and cash in on some of that following because you want to express something more than a shitpost. It’s a genius strategy, and if I had the ability to be witty / smart every other day, I wouldn’t let it pass me. Someone I’m truly envious of in this regard (though it comes so naturally to her) is, tweets like this one are bread-butter for her. Then there’s this monstrous thread from that deservedly got a lot of love.

• You’re savvy with social media algorithms. You know what’s a good time to be marketing your newsletter, and you’re very deliberate about it. You know how to craft the right taglines. You’re aware that links get downgraded, posts with photos are upgraded, threads are valuable, retweets are incredible boosts, a good reel really works, Instagram carousels work really well, and you never skimp on your social media strategy.

• Some combination of these factors above.

Which leads me to the question — what if…I don’t fit in any of these places? What if I want to write about some topics close to me and I certainly want lots of people to read them, but I’m not sure I can keep up with constantly churning content for greater visibility? What if the honorable emotion of the simple joy of writing conflicts with a superfluous need of mine to be constantly visible that exhausts me the moment I think about it?

I can’t say I have real research backing me on this belief, but I fear that this is an issue that leads to a lot of people quitting the process of writing a newsletter. “What’s the point? Somebody’s already probably written about this, and even if they haven’t, how many people are going to read 3000 words of what this tiny Twitter/IG/LinkedIn account has to say?” It’s some mixture of “not having a unique idea” and “worrying about visibility” that I often hear from people who didn’t go the whole mile.

I have struggled with this, so I do have 2 cents’ worth to share about this feeling. It’s likely that you feel very strongly about an idea because you think it will provide fresh perspective. Or because you can spin a different story out of it. Or most importantly, there’s a personal reason as to why you’re telling this story. If uniqueness of ideas were a problem, we wouldn’t have so many Batman movies by different directors. And most of them range from being pretty good to genre-defining.

I believe everyone has a unique writing voice, and they should probably explore it in the language of their choice. There’s some natural hesitation in the fact that “is my idea truly original” or “will anyone read this at all”. I don’t think the originality of the idea is as important as how you convey the idea. More than anything, what matters is your personal stake with the idea. Do you have one? If you do, how deep is your connection with it?

Or it’s the worry that you’re just writing about meandering feelings and thoughts, and there’s already a lot of people doing that. I would legitimately like to find out how many newsletter titles have the words “random” and “musings” (or some synonyms of them). But jokes aside, I don’t think random musings are boring by themselves. In fact, they allow more flexibility and vulnerability than any other type of newsletter.

What makes a random musings newsletter tick, in my opinion, is how the writing evolves with every piece. As if you can peek into how someone’s brain — however messy, however entangled — really works. If a reader can understand why it is natural for you, the writer, to be talking about your love affair with coffee liqueur one day, and why crying in the metro is so universal (and therapeutic to you) the next, your random musings newsletter is working excellently. Someone whose work I really enjoy in this exact regard is ’s Heart-Wired!

A really solid piece that I read about this pressure to write was this one by . Why do we write? Is it because we love it, or is it because we want to sound smarter to other people? Is there ever a way those two questions can ever come to a middle ground, or are they forever meant to be conflicting?

None of these questions have straightforward answers, Kaavyya concludes that she’s not going to try to be someone she isn’t, and that it’s okay to write for the sake of it. We should all be following this advice. The freedom to write and express is more important than the need to write something groundbreaking and thoughtful every time. The latter is not a pressure worth succumbing.

Hot Chips started off as a place for me to ramble about my thoughts. My archives are cute that way, if not embarrassing. One day, I’d write about the inherent tension between famous duos across various fields — sport, music, business. The next, I’d write a long-ass summary of my supposed “emotional evolution” in my final year of college.

I do chuckle a little when I look back at my archives, but it felt relieving to write in that meandering way. I felt like I had power to spew anything on the internet-verse. But it didn’t feel whole. I never really started off with a focus in hand, but I felt like I had lots to talk about like every other 21 y/o. Facts, non-facts, solitude, goodness, skepticism, shock and awe, personal, third-party. I like to think that I still touch upon all of these in the deep dives I do now, but it took me a while to get to blending all of them in the way I do now. And I love it.

I think the best writers understand three things:

• the art of connecting something micro, or even a personal incident, to something larger. There’s nothing like the sort of revelation that makes you go “oh wow that’s connected to this”. More so if you invoke strong, universal emotions in your personal writing

• the need to establish to people why they’re the one of the best people to write on whatever they write about — especially if they’re not pre-ordained experts on those ideas by virtue of working in those spaces

• the balance between that joy of writing and putting themselves out there. I can’t say I’ve mastered it (far from it), but these writers don’t worry too much about having a consistent content calendar. Writing online becomes intuitive to them. For the times when their Spidey-sense has weakened, they may even wrestle with a writer’s block. But they’re not afraid of the death pit.

Terminally Online

You might accept that on some level, you would be expected to be regular with your writing if you want to put the word out there that a new wordsmith is in town. You might even be compelled to be on social media more than you’d like, even though you have a long history of deactivating your online discourse cesspit accounts.

What helps me sometimes with the “social media” of it all is to look at it as a game. If I’m trying to crack what works on LinkedIn for me, I test small posts as teasers of the kind of content I dabble in. I try posting them at different days and times (Tuesdays and weekends 10:30-11 am seem great), and if this practice creates leads for my newsletter, that’s fantastic. Unfortunately, I stopped doing that on LinkedIn after a while, because unless you’re putting up posts regularly, the platform is ruthless to your reach. I couldn’t go beyond doing it once a week; I didn’t really enjoy playing the game.

That being said, there’s still a lot of room for quality content on LinkedIn. People are willing to go beyond just sticking to the professional and the business minded. They may actually click on a piece that talks about something other than the usual thought leadership.

I don’t struggle with Twitter at all because the platform is my “Dear Diary” journal, as opposed to my resume. Unsurprisingly, I get most of my traffic through the platform. I accompany every piece with a thread, because I assume that the average user gets a lot of think-pieces on their feed. I’m probably competing for attention with a few magazines, a dozen digital newspapers, and a hundred other newsletters.

I want to summarize the piece as a whole, so that I can at least get them to eat the bait. If they like it enough, maybe they go to the link! I do think getting Twitter Blue would massively help do away the need for threads — not because I can write all of it in one tweet (that is so ugly), but because Twitter Blue accounts are favored much more than normal ones on your feed. I’m not ready for that leap, though.

It has become harder to track how Twitter behaves over time. I benefit from having a custom domain for Hot Chips, so my tweet with the link doesn’t suffer too much damage. However, it’s always a risk. If I put up a thumbnail photo in the first tweet introducing the piece, how do I guarantee that all viewers of the first tweet move to the second tweet (which has the link)? The thumbnail would have to be really interesting and cool — like a meme you made. Or you’re super compelling in your very first 280 characters. Which is why I almost always put the link in the first tweet. It’s certainly always something worth debating, though.

I have…not paid attention to Instagram at all, despite having a separate page for the newsletter. It’s not that I consider it beneath me or anything. But it’s significantly much more work than either of the above platforms. Reels are tough and carousels take a lot of time. Twitter and LinkedIn alone get me exhausted. I haven’t exactly looked into how effective Instagram is as a lead generator for your personal newsletter, but reels are 100% unbelievable growth machines. I feel like there’s an opportunity there if someone is willing to put in that effort.

All of this is to say that promoting your work on social media can be really exhausting. I’ve gone from cringing at people who self-promote themselves as much as they can to really respecting them. They’re comfortable with (and proud of) their work, and they have no trouble spreading themselves all over various social media.

I’d say what certainly works is banking on the community of readers you build when you start out writing online. Some writers are even vocal about the fact that they discuss ideas with their subscribers online. It feels quite akin to making friends, meeting like-minded people. Unless you have ambitions to be really famous, there’s little point in acting on an external pressure to keep up appearances. But building a community and interacting with them also increases the likelihood that they will tell their friends about this piece (that you wrote) they once read while they’re discussing the history of the vinyl, for instance. I don’t think you need to be online all the time to build a community like this.

Many writers call this the problem of finding your first 1000 readers. But I’d say that the number can be anything you like. The idea is to find those loyal people who feel a spark when they read what you write. Normally, it should be someone outside of your immediate circle of influence. There’s nothing more exhilarating than someone earnestly asking you about how you wrote XYZ and you explaining the same to them.

I highly recommend reading this incredible piece by , who navigated his own way towards finding his first 1000 readers. Spoiler alert: he didn’t really follow the conventional methods of being a hit newsletter that I listed above. He did it by being a “Dear Diary” journal online. And he didn’t adhere to sticking to writing about just one niche. He became whoever he wanted to be.

That’s a reader you want to keep forever. That’s a reader for whom you’d make all your pieces free if you ever create a paid tier for up-and-coming subscribers. It’s helpful to frame this as a marketing problem statement if you want to do that: what kind of person is most likely to be interested in my newsletter? I’d say that once you get your first few hundred readers, you’ll know the answer.

And if you really want to start off by writing about anything under the sun, do it. You either evolve as someone who finds a niche or two, or as someone who has mastered the art of making your stream of consciousness sound like poetry every time. The only caveats are to not stop writing over the course of your life, and to see what you could do better as compared to your last release.

Write bros.

Lastly, some pieces I’ve read that probably influenced the way I write. I think these are pieces of writing that I love and sometimes borrow from. I don’t think there’s a better answer to “how do I write better” than “read more”. This is advice I’m terrible at following myself, for the record. And it’s always useful to go back to your favorite pieces, books, or even visual media (if you love taking inspiration from all kinds of art). Maybe I’ll create a full-blooded list of my favorite media one day, just so that I can go back to them when I’m lacking in creative juices :)

• Donald Glover Can’t Save You

• The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going — ProPublica

• Excel Never Dies

• The Many Dimensions of DeMar DeRozan (mostly anything by Mirin Fader)

• The Roys’ Summer in Italy

• Jennifer Lopez’s Body

• The case of fake IMDb credits by . I was legitimately jealous of this piece. The sheer attention to detail really had me wanting to be that good.

• This video on a very specific NBA event literally blew my mind on how good storytelling can get. I spend way too much time watching basketball videos like these.

• Any Good Work video. More than being insightful, they’re extremely funny and well-structured.

• This video essay on The Weeknd’s musical evolution. I probably shouldn’t be sharing Weeknd content after the disaster that was The Idol, but this was too well made for me to not be sharing.

If you loved this, please feel free to like/share/subscribe! I’ll be back next month with one of two ideas I’ve been (somewhat) working on. I think they’re both exciting. One of them happens to be on music (again). The other one happens to be about, in one way or another, Gurgaon (again).

I guess there really are some things that scream me :)

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Yeah, I missed a month of writing. I’m not the biggest fan of it, but personal and professional had taken a bit of toll on me in July. I also did some travelling in the same month, and that was the good thing about the month. But this piece has little other reason for delay.

However, it is here, and this is a fairly personal story for me. While it is the standard deep dive you might expect of Hot Chips, it was inspired directly by an incident whose details I’ve not explicitly mentioned in this piece. I enjoy being inspired, but I do not enjoy mishaps happening to me. Something about art only coming from pain etcetera etcetera.

Anyway, customary playlist. I have had no time to make one because I could only do so much while being sick. But here’s one (hopefully) long enough song to make it stick!

One more note: this piece is not at all a value judgement on readers of self-help books! I have no intentions to have it be read as an attack on anyone :) I use it primarily as a lens to look at something else, while, of course, providing my personal opinions on them!

You know, legal notices founded on a claim of defamation can really change your life.

This one night, after receiving said legal notice, I found myself explaining to my mother the supposed business of content. It was only the other day that acclaimed director Shoojit Sircar gave us a piece of his mind on this business, and he’s pretty good at cinema. There’s a lot of content everywhere — the proliferation of text-based content is a lot more (annoyingly) overwhelming than visual or audio. Lately, everyone feels this way about content.

Sometimes, when you feel a certain way about problematic content and express that online, your probability of potentially getting called to court increases with how popular that expression becomes. But by the end of this entire ordeal — which is a fun story for another day — I didn’t harbor negativity for the person who wanted to intimidate me.

All I had done was call out a LinkedIn post that made use of a clickbait-y headline based off of a mass layoff in a multinational, only to sell a course. It was insensitively worded even to the untrained eye, but I guess the business of content works that way. In effect, I had only earned the brunt of the worst of the platform’s dynamics. The dynamics that promote the most cookie-cutter writings — some wildly questionable that make you wonder who hired them.

The explosion of LinkedIn as a creator-friendly app has also seen the unfortunate templatization of content that we all rue today. I think most people will agree that what you read on the platform is fairly flavorless. And Indian users are responsible for much of this activity on the platform. What I also believe that how you write is often a function of what you read.

And we read a lot of things about self-help.

Booksmart

A system I’m truly enamored by is the marketing insights industrial complex.

Once you follow enough content writers and ghostwriters on Twitter, you realize that all of them have “insights” on human behavior and the human condition to offer. And it’s really vague what kind of insights these are. What do you know about the human brain that decades’ worth of philosophy and neuroscience haven’t already spoken about at length?

Maybe that last statement was a little reductionist, but man, there are a lot of experts on the marketing of marketing and the psychology of psychology. It creates newsletters that are about marketing newsletters, and after a while, you wonder whether you’re insane or if this is just a labyrinth full of faff? But that’s just Twitter.

I feel very similarly about self-help books, which has existed for much longer as an industry, and it may not be a stretch to call it a predecessor. Both spaces have a significant overlap — in that they become about the human brain, its motivations, its twirls, and how to control them. In India, an economy striving for middle-income status, self-help books have had their own journey. Some written by people within, and others by people outside the country.

In 1999, a Canadian Indian lawyer named Robin Sharma wrote a book called The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. It’s about a lawyer named Julian, who had most materialistic things a human could hope to own but gets struck with a bout of chest pain while in court. A doctor tells him that his job is taking a massive toll on his life. From there on, Julian sells everything he possessed goes on a spiritual journey to — where else — India. He learns 7 lessons in that journey, that are supposed to contribute to a healthy and worthy life.

This was a self-help book about rejecting materialism. India underwent a series of economic liberalization reforms in 1991 and fully embraced capitalism, in the hope of jumpstarting economic growth. There were seemingly more opportunities for money to be made, now that the market had become freer. In that vein, it might have been a good idea to remind everyone in the country of their spiritual, non-hedonistic roots. Robin Sharma’s book assumed the front shelves of many bookstores for years.

We were also reckoning with trying to be a nation among nations. In 1999, the late APJ Abdul Kalam released Wings of Fire. I remember seeing so many of my school mates carry the book around. It was a staple in our library — and for much of India’s youth at the time. Kalam’s story from being the son of a boat owner in Rameshwaram to becoming the premier missile man in India inspired many. It also marked our tryst with (auto)biographies — a category of books we would continue to love dearly.

We also read a lot of books that one might associate with being more individualistic, more libertarian, and (supposedly) more meritocratic. Until 2007, Indians searched on Google for the words “Ayn Rand” more than any other country, and even after that only ceded the top spot to the USA. And as of 2012, she continued to be one of the top 20 writers on Flipkart by sales. It’s taken us a while to shed the dangerous philosophies of Objectivism.

These major ideas gripped the pulse of a middle-class India that now wanted to capture some upward mobility for itself: a penchant for biographies, a desire for (some version of) meritocracy, and an on-off relationship with materialism and inner peace. All 3 ideas have morphed in both form and popularity over time and branched into variants. Like the expletive-filled brutally honest book that derides conventional self-help books. Or the books about dealing with people. Or the books about habits and mindsets. And the books about money.

Stranger Than Fiction

Debasmita Bhowmik, an editor at a publishing firm, tells me a truth that one may find concerning, “In India, the division between non-fiction and fiction is widening.”

Non-fiction has lately been eating fiction’s share of Indian reading. Of that, biographies, conventional self-help and spirituality take a nice pie. There’s a reason that to this day, you can see roadside booksellers in Delhi continue to advertise Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog and the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs.

A search for the phrase “bestseller books” on Amazon is extremely likely to show you a bundle of books written by Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and James Clear. What’s insane is that books written more than 80 years ago like How To Win Friends and Influence People continue to hold their own against a more recent release like Atomic Habits. Books like these are traditionally called “backlists” — they are perpetual revenue generators for publishers.

However, this brand of books has spawned the anti-self-help book, where an author like Mark Manson (of The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F**k fame) may thrive. Or even popular YouTubers, who have decided to enter this royal rumble ring. Shwetabh Gangwar, a creator who makes videos on (pop) psychology and philosophy, released his book titled “The Rudest Book Ever”, which promises to “make you rethink everything you taught”. The Guardian even had a funny term for books like these: Tedcore, based on the fact that these authors would have likely given popular TED talks before, and often use dubious and irreplicable research to back their claims.

The game has also flipped for publishers. Radhika Marwah, an executive editor at Penguin Random House, says, “Publishing is a small industry that’s fighting to stay alive. The creator economy is booming now, so publishing has to ride that wave.” Influencers naively expect book deals to be big bidding wars. But publishers often have to chase them by offering the lure of physical distribution. “Most influencers aren’t writers and they won’t write fiction. The most obvious choice, then, seems to be self-help”, says Radhika.

We talk about self-help gurus here, but in India’s case, the guru might be more literal. Autobiography of a Yogi is a book that continues to one of the bestselling books on Amazon India. The book continues to be aggressively marketed both in the West and in India by the organizations founded by the author Paramahansa Yogananda — the Self-Realization Fellowship and the Yogoda Satsang. In fact, the language of this book provoked an Indian-American literature academic to term the style “Guru English”. In 2016, Jaggi Vasudev / Sadhguru wrote “Inner Engineering” and became a New York Times bestseller. He follows a similar marketing strategy as Yogananda did, but his Western popularity is only more recent. There is Gaur Gopal Das’ Life’s Amazing Secrets, a top result on Amazon and Flipkart both for the phrase “bestseller books”.

As of recently, we have also flirted with the book that aims both at creating wealth (as opposed to making money) and inner peace for oneself — where one need not be sacrificed for the other, and you can achieve the latter through the work you choose to do. That you can have your cake and eat it too. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, by the eponymous entrepreneur and investor, may fall under this category.

Bookstores, especially chains, have a massive role to play in how widespread the acceptance of self-help books has become. Nithya V, a designer at Zubaan Books likens the collections at bookstores to be akin to social media algorithms. “The consumer’s work is cut out because of such book placement, so there’s little incentive to deeper within the shelves”, she says. The publisher will likely pay the bookstore in exchange for front-and-center exposure. Hilariously, Nithya tells me how this also shows up in another annoying algorithmic manifestation — the dating app. “You’re not reading stories about people, about lived experiences, it’s just men writing for men”, says Nithya.

It’s not like these books are only for the enjoyment of an English-speaking audience, though that is certainly the dominant consumer set. Self-help books are now being translated in multiple Indian languages, too. Radhika tells me that while the Indian market traditionally follows America in terms of the popularity of a self-help book, some books like The Psychology of Money had it the other way round. Which might explain why the book is available in Gujarati and Hindi as well.

In comparison to other books, the self-help genre markets itself. “Non-fiction books on politics and history are better promoted through events involving debates, where you invite the press and other distinguished people. Books by business leaders have physical events”, says Radhika. Both forms of marketing are fairly low ROI, but a self-help author will likely need pure digital marketing. It also helps that print runs for these books tend to be significantly bigger than that of any other.

There was a time before Atomic Habits when James Clear was a darling on (dead?) social media platform Quora. In 2016, Ankur Warikoo decided to begin something called “Warikoo Wednesdays” on LinkedIn. Neither had any idea that they would be starting an epidemic.

It’s Only Words

In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in a whopping $26B deal. Since then, the platform has moved mountains to increase user engagement.

This piece from The Ken outlines LinkedIn’s various product experiments. One of them had something to do with editorial guidelines, where posts by users were classified as gold (viral stuff), green (non-harmful), grey and red (which represented the range of unprofessional content). LinkedIn didn’t just want to be job portal anymore, but its ambitions to be a social media feed probably already existed in some form way before. The now well-known Top Voices program — that lists the most popular writers in a particular subject from each country — seemed to be a thing beginning 2015, if not formalized. It also brought back polls in 2020 — a feature it removed way back in 2014 — in an attempt to cash into the increasing amount of time everyone was spending online in the pandemic. And for the record, there was a 55% increase in year-on-year engagement on LinkedIn since March 2019.

Sukhada Chaudhary got her first international job, and second post-MBA gig through LinkedIn. She has been a longtime user of the app and was also a Top Voice in 2021. When she journeyed as a freelancer, the platform was her strongest lead generator, and was easier to use rather than building her own website from scratch. She has seen every significant evolution of the platform, from its “corporate bulletin” feel to the doomscroll it is today.

“LinkedIn inherently rewards a reductionist thought and has little time for nuance or deep thinking”, says Sukhada. While she views it as a net gain because it still means visibility for good content, the issue then is that reading on LinkedIn becomes a substitute for any actual reading. “Everything is going to be read from the perspective of optimization: ‘is this going to help me in my work’”, Sukhada continues. She likens it to an attitude that only cares about the bottom-line.

But more importantly, this has also manufactured a need online to sound more insightful, even at the expense of faffing. This need may even have real-life precedence. Sukhada recalls how a senior manager at her first job would narrate a very personal incident and pass it off as consumer behavior with little argument from anyone because, hey, he’s senior, so he must be right. Under normal circumstances, one would undergo brainstorming and rigorous analysis to find out how people interact with your product. I’m tempted to call this the Atomic Habits syndrome, but such mindless narrative extrapolation has existed before it became so widespread on the internet.

This isn’t even the worst turn of insight mining. It wasn’t long ago that Deloitte India fired an employee after he decided to sift through a book about the conditions that fostered the rise of Adolf Hitler for business lessons. It was a #FridayInspiration post, meant to find dazzles of efficiency and productivity from the good and not-so-good of a clearly bad guy in history. Of course, this may also have some precedence in Mein Kampf being a consistently top-selling book in India, sold by multiple major publishers — besides being, at some point, a B-School darling.

“Unlike Twitter, LinkedIn is not a confrontational platform”, says Sukhada. And her (if I may) insight makes a lot of difference. You’re not likely to get a well-thought-out reply to a certain post on LinkedIn, you’re likely to get a “great insight” or a “great post” from a commenter. It’s an annoying response because it doesn’t add anything to the discussion. But comments make your posts likelier to be shown on someone’s feed.

Twitter X can often be a bloodbath when it comes to cringe tweets posts, and then you can always mute the tweeter. A horde on X can completely trash your confidence — something that won’t happen on LinkedIn because of its non-confrontational nature. “One of the greatest threats to confidence is the laughing emoji, because it indicates sarcasm. LinkedIn now has a cute “haha” react instead”, says Sukhada. And much like business lessons, overdone humor has become a staple on the platform.

None of this matters more than LinkedIn’s trump card faux-feature — the ability to attach photos (or carousels) with your post. Why is this important? Because a post with a photo is significantly more likely to grab eyeballs, which is not something the platform says explicitly. On the other hand, a post with an outbound link is automatically downgraded in the algorithm. A lot of the posts that draw significant attention have a question at the end that begs for engagement in the form of reacts or comments. “What do you think?”

And now that LinkedIn richly incentivizes creators, the pressure to appear a certain way consistently gets higher. LinkedIn was active early on in trying to source voices from outside the corporate realm. People belonging not to managerial posts or business functions, but professions like doctors and fashion designers have featured on the yearly Top Voices list. Instagram influencers have also decided to build their network effects on the platform.

While many of these creators do bring in their expertise in certain fields, the internet ground is ripe for templatized content from rookies who rely precisely on the limit of their knowledge to write. This became much easier with the advent of GPT-4 generating content for you whenever you need it. If you’re an influencer with a substantial LinkedIn following, you probably have a content schedule of the prompts you want to write about when.

The circle of knowledge for this set of creators extended on how to make a piece of content pop on the feed. For YouTube, it usually means catchy, almost bait-y video thumbnails. Twitter is just outright funny or controversial, there’s little middle ground. LinkedIn takes its playbook from the writing style employed in self-help books. This is not to say that Twitter hasn’t had its fair share of self-help content: the term threadboi has already made its way into Urban Dictionary.

And Words Are All I Have

How To Win Friends and Influence People was the result of Dale Carnegie doing a lot of lectures on public speaking across America. The book has sold 30M copies since its release in 1936. Now, its admirers are vast and varied. A couple of priests who were kidnapped in Russia in 1998 tried using the book’s strategies to appeal to their captors’ good natures, if those were still there. But also, a good chunk of Nazi Germany and Charles Manson also found inspiration in it. Carnegie found the former loving his book hilariously concerning.

What I really want to highlight, though, is Carnegie’s writing style. He uses a personal story and finds one flimsy string from there that he can connect to something (or someone) bigger and better known. It’s not necessarily the style he follows in every chapter, but he’s quoted stories about everyone ranging from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Abraham Lincoln to Charles Schwab. And line breaks. Lots and lots and LOTS of line breaks. A tool deliberately abused to make the easiest read possible.

Here’s some of that writing:

If you read this story and thought this belonged on LinkedIn, I wouldn’t blame you.

This is just one style of writing that self-help has seen. There is also the conversational mode of writing, where one person asks questions and the other provides answers. Usually, the latter person is someone who is presented as an all-seeing, all-knowing, stoic character who has been through the highs and troughs of life. The former person might be someone much younger. This is a strategy followed by Robert Kiyosaki in Rich Dad Poor Dad. I assume that years later, Ankur Warikoo followed suit with his second book, Get Epic Shit Done.

His first book, Do Epic Shit, followed a very simple bullet-style of writing. Incessant line breaks, not a single paragraph more than 5 lines, attempts to write quotables ever so often, and lots of advice. Here’s an example, in the particular format that is present in the book as well:

“As adults, the single biggest hurdle to learning is pride!

I’m a grown-up now. I know everything!

Most adults repeat this to themselves in some shape and form, thus living in a prison.

It’s okay to not know!
It’s okay to accept things you don’t know!!
It’s more than okay to learn even after you’ve become an adult!!!

Because those who learn, irrespective of their age, are the ones who continue to grow.
The greatest illusion is that life should be perfect!

People who are enjoying their lives are at a competitive advantage.”

These are two writing styles that have dominated LinkedIn’s content pipeline. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either way, but the bigger issue is one where everyone ends up sounding the same. It’s hard trying to discern a unique writing voice from anyone. And coupled with hacks like adding an engagement question at the end, or an unrelated photo, makes this practice almost insufferable.

There is also the obsession with human psychology in these books. The principal foundation of Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why” is that there are two ways to influence behavior: manipulation and inspiration. Tiny changes in the form of habits make all the difference in the world. The idea that mentalities and mental toughness are apparently such easy solutions to problems drives much of the self-help industry. Here’s someone using a supposedly real-life bank robbery in Zimbabwe to talk about mindfulness and some MBA lessons. Note that this is only part of the post:

This piece by Mashable distills every bit of self-help content into 11 rules, most extremely obvious, some not as much. But it’s such a brilliant hack into writing the easiest kind of self-help article. Radhika tells me that for self-help, language is not necessarily the #1 priority. In this PhD thesis submission, the researcher seems to figure that the self-help book has a lot in common with a children’s book. It’s also an incredible paper that does a lot of linguistic and numerical analysis of how authors use certain moves in narratives to drive take-home lessons, or how often the word “you” (or “yours”) comes up.

One idea that the paper touches on is that of the author-reader relationship. How much do you, as an author, want to be seen as someone who only has imperatives to sell? Or do you make suggestions that may or can help you? The benefit of using imperatives, as one author the researcher spoke to says, is that it cuts out fluff. There’s no “can” or “may”, it’s “just the facts”, so to speak. It may be an honest attempt to create an equal power relationship with the reader, but once you get a hive of fans that agree with your book, it’s not so equal anymore.

Many junior and mid-level employees in corporate India have taken personal branding extremely seriously. It offers the allure of a solid network (and cool opportunities by virtue of that) that consistent posting on LinkedIn offers. On some level, I worry that it causes people to be something they are not.

It’s worrying that we increasingly use mass layoffs and unfortunate deaths as opportunities to advance our personal brands. You could say that no self-help book explicitly advocates this, but this trend follows the same playbook as using any random incident for a fable. Moralistic stories are dangerously charming in their own right, but this is no bedtime story. These are stories that people buy without a second thought because it comes from dedicated careerists.

To Take Your Heart Away

It would be a hopeful measure to track whether the self-help book as we know it today leads to a funnel where people read harder, more challenging, more imaginative books. Both Debasmita and Radhika felt that this didn’t really hold true, and might not change too much in the long run.

Debasmita says that the above is often an argument heard in favour of easygoing, masala-filled fiction that was characteristic of someone like Chetan Bhagat, that he brought reading (in English, at least) to a larger audience in India. Or did he? It’s hard to tell whether reading in India has changed vastly over time. More people in India read books today, but does it get everyone to go beyond their comfort zone?

A LinkedIn post that I came across said, “Read non-fiction to raise your floor. Read fiction to raise your ceiling”. I’m not sure why we need a case to read either, and why it has anything to do with floors and ceilings. The quote likens reading books with the hyper-optimization of the human being, as if that was all books were meant to do. This is also not unconnected with the idea of reading books as a compulsion rather than for pleasure.

Let alone the fact that self-help books get away by being individualistic, apolitical and negligent of systemic issues — a criticism that has existed for long (though this book by a literature professor argues in another direction). The tables have turned to an extent where we use “why reading fiction is important” into another piece of bulleted content for our followers. I doubt that it is anything beyond self-serving.

LinkedIn was never meant to be anything more than a place to talk only shop and work, and that’s completely fine. And it’s also fine that self-help books find an audience there. But the platform has now become a content machinery that is incapable of budging out of a certain hive mind. We live in an age where we run the risk of classifying everything as content. LinkedIn is no exception, but it is also an exemplar into the worst outcome of that risk. There’s a reason that a subreddit parodying posts that come out of this machinery exists.

When it comes to India, it’s only a small audience with access to great jobs, education and networks that exerts so much influence on the platform. None of it is deliberate or evil or misleading. But it has the hallmark of a broken clock with little cognizance of much else besides being right twice a day. Yet everyone around you has one such broken clock, and these broken clocks have been selling well forever.

I remember feeling angry, then sad, then just hoping that my legal notice didn’t turn into a lawsuit, or that my employer didn’t take this complaint seriously. The influencer that sent me the notice had a lot of linguistic similarity with the writing styles I’ve mentioned above. I was rendered more helpless when the influencer put up a second post about me (without any details about me or my tweet), framing to their followers my callout against them as defamation. My anxiety was through the roof for an entire week.

You know what I couldn’t help but admire? That even this second post was so immaculately framed as “overcoming the odds” that their followers ate it up without context into what I said. As a “we fight fire with fire” tale. It was so reminiscent of a self-help book. I saw the post that I had initially called out later on r/linkedinlunatics, which had the most hilarious comment section. Much later, fortunately, this whole saga became just a cool “2 truths and a lie” story that I like to tell friends over the dinner table.

I love content, and I believe everyone has a unique writing voice of their own that doesn’t necessarily have to be in English. Social media has made it possible for everyone to share their unique stories. You can find them even on an all-work-no-play platform like LinkedIn. What is worrying about is the number of people who copy writing voices without a specific expertise. Everyone does it in the hope that they get a robust following.

However, when I searched for the person who post the “lessons from a Zimbabwe bank robbery” story on LinkedIn, I found at least 5 more people who shared the same story. Word for word.

When everyone’s super, no one will be.

Do you agree?

Special thanks section!

Debasmita Bhowmik: Friend, advisor, and an editor of books. For being the first person to riff on this piece with me, this story wouldn’t be as fully fleshed without her. She runs a platform that enables some wonderful writing on culture called Incurato.

Sukhada Chaudhary: Besides being extremely well-read, Sukhada is a ball of good-natured optimism who has a great Twitter. She leads marketing at a social impact startup with a mission that she passionately believes in and advocates for, here.

Nithya V: For being kind enough to give me a candid interview. She has a cool Instagram page that she uses for her slick designs, here.

Radhika Marwah: For giving me incredible insights into the world of publishing in India, and some crazy stories about editing self-help books.

Sunaina Bose and Molina Singh for being the most selfless proofreaders, and Mansi Dhanraj Shetty for introducing me to Radhika. And Shephali Bhatt for an early discussion around LinkedIn (and one rant about the legal notice :)).

Technically not long since I last wrote anything on the internet, technically. In May, I worked with the lovely people at Plum — an insurtech company that gets teams across startups the best insurance plans! They curate a newsletter called “Humanise”, that covers all things workplace culture and wellbeing. I’ve been a fan of their brand for a while, so when they asked me to do a piece for them, I said yes! Here’s my piece on tough career decisions and the emotions we go through when we deal with them.

Back to regular programmimg: this does not follow any story like the original piece. This is purely a zone where I’m putting out all that I left on the cutting floor. It is me nerding out to the max :) But before that, if you haven’t read Return To Home Bass 1-2, you might want to give it a go. I threw myself into it like a dog who sees a chicken bone, and I can never adequately explain how close I am to the pieces.

Return To Home Bass 1

Return To Home Bass 2

I have inserted a playlist that I’ve been curating since I wrote RTHB. I keep a rap playlist called 808s 101, that has the JPEGMAFIAs and the Kendrick Lamars of the world. It only made sense to have a desi version of that playlist. I update it fairly regularly as well.

Have fun reading + listening! This is quite the short piece as well :) I’ll be back next month with a piece I’ve already begun working on!

The working title for Return To Home Bass was 8PM in SDA. I think that Drake’s “timezone / place” songs are some of his best. “6PM in New York”, “5AM in Toronto”. And I’ve had one too many good memories over the last 2 years in SDA Market. It is probably my favorite place to be in Delhi. Be it Helter Skelter’s delectable starter palette (with 1-1 on beers), or Spice Aangan’s shawarmas, or the Cake Patisserie. But not Nukkad, never Nukkad. Terrible food.

Yes, if you've seen my Twitter, I do one too many tweets on Drake. Horribly lopsided parasocial relationship — he doesn't help his case either. But “If You're Reading This It's Too Late” made my life in Gurgaon so much easier. I wasn't sure I belonged here. Every day I craved for a day back in time, back at home, when I could be carefree. But I knew that a day like that wouldn't hit the same. I'd pine again for the fast life, even though it would run its (golf) course with me. This album feels very much like that — a hat tip to those days, a hat tip to the days that felt like a sad winter, and a hat tip to being grateful for where you are right now.

Sometime in June 2022, I remember doing the stupidest thing possible. I tried and cold-DMed Prabh Deep on Twitter, fantasizing about him responding to eager fans like me. But I understood that the chance of him responding to it was abysmal. I mean, I don’t blame him, he’s a popular artist. And at the time, likely busy making the tape we now know to be Bhram.

I knew I was going to interview friends. Jayant and Abhiroop are 2 of my dearest friends, not least because of how we bonded over hip-hop. If I had more space on the canvas, I’d have loved to take a deeper look at what subgenres of hip-hop they identify with the most, and hopefully in the context of Delhi. Does Jayant like boom bap more? Why? A poignant thing he told me was the idea that how he listened to music didn’t matter because his identity as an East Delhi native would always take precedence over that, and any music that’s relatable just reinforces that. He feels lonely not because he’s alone, but because he’s surrounded by people who will other him.

What does it say about Abhiroop’s penchant for this very specific brand of hustle rap? As a kid, the people who he hung out with often bullied him. He also always considered himself an outsider of the city because of his dad’s requirement to move around the country as ex-Air Force.

I got to know Ritika and Taran only last year purely through Twitter and found them very cool, and coincidentally absolutely insane connoisseurs of the scene. Ritika waxed lyrical about her love for Seedhe Maut’s Bayaan to the point where she could have an album just out of all that she said. It means a lot to Ritika — who has been affording her own way through college since 19 — that she’s only recently been able to lend her pocket to Seedhe Maut’s gigs.

Taran associates Delhi rap with anti-CAA and Pinjra Tod protests, getting used to comfort zones, car rides, all the things she hates about life. “Delhi people always have opinions they want to push in conversations that don’t even involve them”, she says. Like the time a bus conductor she had zero communication with before told her to lose weight. Above all, she finds home in the lanes scattered with Delhi’s “ghatiya makaan” — ugly bungalows.

Chhavi was someone I met through a mutual friend while I was writing Part 1 — so essentially a godsend. One of the funniest jokes she tells me is that if you ask somebody in West Delhi what their father does for a living, the answer would likely be “we just get rent”. She’s lived through a culture where feminism is only nominal, and woke thought is non-existent. But she’s built her own sense of identity through all of her time in West Delhi.

I feel honored to have gotten to know my older friends a little better, and make some new ones, because of this piece. They gave me answers to questions I probably wouldn’t have been able to ask in a more casual context. It’s also music they’ve lived / are living through, and they’re seeing the same era as I am, but all with different lenses.

Fun incident. I went to an underground gig in Saket to see Saar Punch perform. I came away having a knockout time. Outside the venue, I met Burrah, who casually chatted me up. I told him about Hot Chips, and his eyes visibly lit up at the idea I was working on (which was this). I don’t know whether he did (and even if he didn’t I don’t put it past him, he’s too busy), but he gave me big ups that day. “GET THOSE HOT CHIPS, BOY”, he said as I walked out of the lane. I felt really happy :)

One of the questions I asked Bharg about Sab Chahiye is the frequent use of humor. I felt that Rawal and Bharg had quite the tendency to use animal metaphors the way we watch capybara reels today. The album has 2 songs titled after dogs. Apparently, that’s a Rawal obsession. He’s well-known to show off his own pet dog on his Instagram. But I’ve always been enamored by how dogs are used in Delhi hip-hop. Jungli Kutta, Who Let The Dogs Out, Chitta by Prabh Deep (“tere kutte khade tenu kattan de lei”). It’s reflective of how we see dogs in society. The more exotic breeds get lavishly treated, but the gruffy street goodbois are met with extra armor.

On Baat Bangayi, Rawal says “apna time aayega” which is followed by a laughing track. An A1 use of the laughing track being post-ironic. I often think about Gully Boy’s effect on the scene. While the Delhi scene existed well way before — KR$NA appears and writes EVERY SINGLE BAR in the first rap battle with MC Sher — the sound evolved in the late 2010s. The gullies of Mumbai aren’t the same as the gullies of Delhi, especially in terms of the unique problems they face, and their socio-economic statuses. Delhi’s brand of hustle rap is significantly different from that of Mumbai. Yet, KR$NA did an incredible job writing Sher’s lines.

Apparently, Ikka did the verse for Pew Pew in a day. The work ethic of some of the oldheads of the scene is more hardened than anybody else’s.

Saar Punch has a skit in his EP Oopar Neeche titled “Big Ass (Skit)”. While recovering through his breakup, he met with some friends who were talking about what they wanted in a partner. He didn’t want any of that and would rather stay silent, so when his turn came, he just said “BIG ASS”. And a friend was recording. What you hear is the original voice note.

Saar’s favorite hip-hop sample is Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam on Kanye West and Rihanna’s “Famous”. Huge fan of A$AP Rocky — the goal for him to make smooth tracks like him and Anderson.Paak. I see a lot of Tyler The Creator in him, though, and probably a bit of Amine. He’s busy making new music, but he continues to earn new fans because of Oopar Neeche — particularly for Maykhana — and his latest single, Kyun Tu.

One of the funniest comments I saw on Saar’s older music (which he doesn’t associate with anymore) was “Your lyrics are my college days bro”. Saar wanted to actively move away from that labelling (which he very successfully did on his EP). But on some of his earliest work that you can find on YouTube, you can tell where that college comment comes from. Apparently, lots of people in the comments think he looks like Jasprit Bumrah.

I ask the folks at J Block about the classic “your audience comes from an extremely far-removed reality” conundrum. Let’s be honest, the crowd at city hip-hop gigs is all South Delhi. It doesn’t help when shows keep happening at Saket Social. Lil Kabeer’s answer? “Accha hai bro, mujhe toh maza aata hai. Paise unhi se aate hain.” I lowkey cackled. And if the turnout for a gig was too low, they didn’t take it to heart — it just meant less pressure for them.

Both Bharg and Lonekat give their flowers to DU rock culture as an inspiration. There’s a lovely podcast Lonekat did much after this piece with Culture Ghalib that I would highly recommend listening to (primarily because Lonekat is so articulate). He talks about the peaks of North-east rock — a culture that’s still very much alive.

Lonekat graduated from Delhi University in 2012. He recalls rap-rock continuing to be prevalent while he was in college, and that rockers liked to shit on hip-hop as a genre. While he names Korn and Rage Against The Machine as staples, I like to think of Linkin Park as being the leading light for young Indians who suddenly had access to YouTube in the early 2010s. His first artistic tryst with hip-hop was in 2017 when he chanced on black magic, or as it’s well known, FLStudio. Then a beat was made, and he jammed with a few friends. These days, you could make a hit on your iPad.

J Block are hilarious. Faizan accuses Lonekat of being a “beat maker who misplaces files”. The sample on a beat was gone, and the issue got so bad that they needed to go to Nehru Place to fix the CPU and replace the hard drive. But this was one of the first instances that the two of them collaborated. Faizan learnt the guitar himself, at home. He credits his older brother — musician Agaahi Raahi — who knew all there was to know about the internet. Both brothers released a sweet EP only a couple of days ago. Sweeter was Faizan’s post that accompanied it, it’s a read in itself.

He met Waris through Facebook. Waris doesn’t necessarily think of music as his only avenue for a long-term career. He doesn’t feature on their debut album as a collective, Kho Kho, because he wasn’t in town the 2 days they recorded this album. In FOMO, he made Frootie with Faizan and Moon / dr chaand. It’s one of the few songs you’ll find on his Spotify. However, Waris does have a passion for following in the footsteps of Cole Bennett, gawx, and vuhlandes — he loves being behind the lens, and wants to shoot music videos. He shot one very recently, and it’s gorgeous.

Kabeer is really, really focused on using his voice as an instrument: like Kendrick Lamar’s tone switches, or Kanye beginning with 808s and Heartbreak. I ask him about his voice alternation in Sawariya, from J Block’s album. He quotes aliases used by comic characters as an inspiration — the kind that Daniel Dumile adopted into the now-immortal MF DOOM, may he rest in peace.

Karun started writing poetry while in 6th grade. He remembers a time when he would write quadruplets on Facebook with the hashtag #sher. And then he would move on to Instagram, providing numerical hashtags to each poem. Then the quadruplets became bars when he found out Udbhav — his school junior — makes music that well complemented his poetry. One goal that Karun wants to pull off with Udbhav — score an entire Bollywood soundtrack on their own. There’s a lot they can bring to the table that Bollywood doesn’t have yet. Maybe that time will come sooner than we think, especially now that they have Honey Singh’s endorsement.

Tarun’s deep voice in many of his songs — especially the pit he goes to in Delhi Nightz — is the courtesy of waking up early in the morning just to record music. He studied in Sachdeva Public School in Rohini, where he remembers placing a little firework in one of the Educomp systems in the class. “Bandon ne photo bheji hai katton ki”, Tarun recalls seeing photos of guns in his school. The kids have graduated from Liberty shoes to Jordans.

Tarun always knew that he needed to make his own mark in the world, and no one would hand him anything. He built a successful YouTube channel in The Teen Trolls, with two of his best friends — Karan Chawla and Rishab Batra. He’d lie to his family saying that he’s going for tuition classes, to spend the time making YouTube videos. From there, to doing his first show in the city of Toronto. Watch out, Drake.

Viraj Gulati / Smitt (and previously IDEK?) has a perpetual dilemma to solve. He tells me that his idea of success is to have enough money to make auteur music, but for that, he needs to make more entertainer music. He believes that there is a sweet spot in the auteur-entertainer spectrum which won’t necessarily make anyone disgustingly rich, but would be quite fulfilling as a career. Flying Lotus and Robert Glasper are just some of his life guides. It’s evident that Prabh Deep has magically rubbed off on Smitt — he speaks of his artistry in the way William Wordsworth spoke about daffodils. Smitt recalls trying to put a tune to Prabh’s stories of self-worth, ego, and the fall of his pride. He will be releasing an ‘IDEK?’ album later this year.

Between work, falling sick (a bit too much), and other personal delays, this piece is late enough. I’m surprised that the problem was not procrastination this time.

So back to work! I’ve teased this piece long enough on my socials. Now I’m super excited to show you what I was working on, and who I have been interviewing for it. Appropriate playlist attached; I’ll leave you to the rest. Happy reading :)

In December 2022, Spotify rolled out a unique rewards program in India — the first (and so far only) country to get access to it.

If you use their Premium Mini (₹7/day OR ₹25/week) consecutively for 10 days, you would be entitled to another week of the subscription for the shortchange amount of ₹2. One heck of a program by this product manager named Szymon Kopec.

However, what I really want to draw attention to is the timing of this plan. The original Premium Mini plan minus the new rewards program was introduced in India in December 2020. Before the Premium Mini branding, one day’s usage of Spotify would cost ₹13. And one week’s, ₹25.

Spotify has shown signs of remarkable growth in the last 3 years. Since its launch early 2019, it went from 2M active users, to around 6x that number in the third quarter of 2020. Leadership from the company, from the VP of markets to founder Daniel Ek himself have repeatedly noted that India is an important market for them, and India is one of their highest engagement regions. But engagement unfortunately doesn’t always mean money, especially you keep finding yourself reducing your plan pricing to cater to a country known for not paying. Ask any consumer entertainment company — ask Netflix, and they’ll all tell you the same thing.

It’s hard to crack India as a market for entertainment.

Here’s a killer dashboard from Anton Averkiev comparing the price of one month of Spotify Premium across countries, adjusted against the American dollar. The “0%” bar is at $10, which is the cost in the US. India is nearly 600% cheaper.

This is part of a much larger interesting pattern of consumer behavior towards how we value art and artistry, in any form. Foreign players don’t seem to be very sure of whether there is willingness on the behalf of Indian consumers to subscribe long-term to their content. And this is not necessarily a trend that’s only seen among Indians that can’t pay — it’s sort of a running joke to have more than enough money to pay for YouTube or Spotify Premium but never give in to the constant flux of advertising that these platforms throw free users into.

We saw this behavior in all its glory in the first 3 weeks of January, when everyone (and their mother) who had bought a Lollapalooza India ticket was suddenly looking to resell it in black to anyone who would go instead.

Encore, Do You Want More?

From the time that the advertisement for The Police’s 1980 fundraiser concert included showing an Indian policeman, to having elite domestic IP like Weekender, Supersonic, to international IP like Global Citizen and now Lollapalooza, live music has come a long and fruitful way.

Michael Jackson has only ever toured once in India, and that was as a fundraiser. For some very-odd reason, the Shiv Sena declared this concert that cost a then-whopping INR 5000 / seat tax-free. Quite objectively, tickets for big concerts today are cheaper than what they were then, and concerts back then were hubs of the social elite who could drop major dimes in a fancy hundi.

However, it’s not like artists never paid us the respect we’re due as die-hard eaters of good entertainment. In 1993, Bryan Adams played in Bombay, beginning the start of a beautiful relationship that had him come 4 more times to the country (most recently in 2018), and solidified his status as India’s 2nd-favorite Canadian behind Akshay Kumar (sorry, Justin Bieber / Trudeau). Enrique Iglesias came in 2004, with tickets priced at 600 and 900. And oh baby did he like it, enough to come back in 2012.

A landmark moment for India’s live concerts space was Iron Maiden gracing Bangalore in 2007 — marking a peak for the city’s metalhead scene. It’s actually bewildering that we’ve been graced by Iron Maiden (2007, 2009), Metallica (2011), and Megadeth (2012) in the pre-streaming era, where it would have been difficult to prove their Indian presence via direct album sales. Megadeth were the headliner for what was just the third edition of Bacardi NH7 Weekender, organized by OML.

While Weekender started in 2010 as an answer to UK’s Glastonbury, an entrepreneur named Shailendra Singh decided to host a buffet of electronic music in Vagator, Goa, and called it Sunburn. In time, it grew to be the 3rd largest dance festival in the world. Axwell, Martin Garrix, DJ Snake, KSHMR, the world’s best EDM acts would show up year after year in Goa just for this. And for a good while, this spawned an obsession that India would have with electronic music. In 2013, also in Goa (Candolim), VH1 launched the multi-genre festival Supersonic.

Northeast India also launched a few festivals of its own, with rock and folk-focused lineups. The Ziro Festival was started in 2012 by Bobby Hano and the guitarist of Indian band menwhopause Anup Kutty. Every year, the Apatani tribe of the Ziro Valley provides its resources to a festival renowned for not just the music, but its picturesque backdrop. In a similar outdoorsy vein, the Orange Festival (in Dambuk, Arunachal Pradesh) is a unique blend of live music and adventure sports, while sporting a diverse lineup focused on highlighting regional talent. NH7 Weekender is held in Shillong.

Towards the later 2010s, India began to see international franchises put their stake in the country’s music listeners. In 2016, the Electric Daisy Carnival, whose flagship event happens in Las Vegas every year decided to branch out to India for the first time. So did New York’s Global Citizen Festival — a fundraiser concert for late teens and early 20-somethings, organized by the Global Poverty Project, and curated by Coldplay’s Chris Martin.

Both happened in November 2016. Someone high up just said “Honey I Shrunk The Kids” “Kids I Shrunk The Money”, which damaged our economy, and also killed EDC India to the point where they never came back again. Coincidentally, Global Citizen came to our homeland because PM Narendra Modi infamously wished for the force to be with those attending the New York edition in 2014.

Large corporates have also notably used fests / carnivals as lead generators for their business. In 2019, the inaugural OnePlus Music Festival was held in Mumbai, headlined by Dua Lipa and Katy Perry. So was the first edition of Zomaland — part food fest, part music festival. In 2022, for a Feeding India fundraiser, Zomato had Mumbai rollicking to the AutoTuned magic of White Iverson himself, Post Malone.

Between fundraisers, corporate festivals, consumer IP (including one-off concerts), India’s market for live entertainment has set impressive benchmarks every year and is growing more diverse.

Estimating the market for live music in India is quite a tough nut to crack — when I have a guesstimate I’m confident with, I will certainly let you know. Why it is so is because how fragmented the market really is — across genres, across lineups, across different franchises and stakeholders that choose to enter this space.

Songs of Experience

Yet, for all its splinters — how is it that almost every major large-scale live event in India has to happen in Mumbai — specifically Mahalaxmi Racecourse Road?

I pose this question to Roochay Shukla, Senior Marketing Manager at Outdustry — a market-leading artist services and rights management firm whose clientele includes Dua Lipa, Diplo, Major Lazer, Lauv, Jungle and India’s own Sez On The Beat. He oversees marketing and promotions across all media for his clients.

He takes me through the capacity of each kind of festival. An ancient rundown Bollywood studio — the kind that burnt down in Om Shanti Om — hosts the Mahindra Blues Festival, which saw 3000+ attendees. But go any bigger than that and it becomes harder to find a good venue. 5000+ people will need something like Jio Garden. If you’re playing to over 10000 people, you might as well do it at a cricket stadium. Indeed, when U2 came to India for the first time in 2019, they performed at Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium.

Mumbai and Pune are the usual suspects when it comes to deciding on a venue for a music festival. For the last couple of Weekenders hosted in Pune, the venue has been Mahalakshmi Lawns. Lollapalooza was hosted on aforementioned racecourse in Mumbai, which has a slick set of apartments that overlook the track whose rental I’m too afraid to enquire. Not least because the artists who have played there include — Ed Sheeran, Martin Garrix, The Chainsmokers, deadmau5, and now The Strokes.

3 of the 5 names above are essentially EDM artists. The evolution of our obsession with electronic music has an extensive history. Initial lineups of IP like Supersonic have always been electronic-heavy. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Supersonic’s 2015 and 2023 lineups, respectively. Notice the difference in the top 4 billings in each image? The top 4 in 2015 were all DJs.

The early 2010s saw different subgenres of house music — progressive, electro, deep —dominate the charts. The most important names advancing that music find their place in the lineup on the left. By 2014, India had….ahem, housed nearly every big name in electronic music. Swedish House Mafia, Armin van Buuren, UK legend Fatboy Slim, and every other name mentioned over the course of this piece.

“The EDM bubble in India exploded when electronic bridged pop”, says Roochay. Pop’s more ear-friendly, bouncier elements balance out the harshness of the percussion used in electronic. While not strictly electropop like Dua Lipa or Calvin Harris, this music was still catchy and accessible. With respect to India, we saw this trend peak when Nucleya decided to pick up a console and put the shehnai and every Indian percussion instrument he knew into his track.

And made thousands of people scream “ek bhayanak atma hai” in perfect unison.

Nucleya, Marshmello and Alan Walker were the biggest beneficiaries of this love for poppy house music. While an Axwell or a Hardwell still brought on an extremely loyal fanbase that loved to rage, these 3 (and their like) were absolute crowd pleasers. By this time, due to YouTube and the advent of streaming in some capacity in India, artists had begun realizing that India was no longer a market they could ignore. After the first time they would perform in the country, their social media could potentially increase manifold by the sheer droves of Indian fans.

I speak to Devarsh Thaker, ex-VP of Content at OML, and someone who has regaled me with stories of chilling with Chet Faker. He’s overseen marketing for 5 iterations of Weekender. To him, an artist showing out their love for India in tweets or stories is not surprising. “It’s beautifully engineered by artist management”, he says.

What does he mean? Skrillex, who has been to India just once in 2015, has, for all intents and purposes, a song called Mumbai Power. His erstwhile management — Warner Music — might say something like “hey, Sonny, you have at least 3 million fans in India. Do a little something for them?” Or Marshmello, who is represented by Universal. Akon doing “Chhamak Challo” was not a moment of sudden love for Indian tradition from his end. It was a calculated move, whose seeds were probably sown a few months before the release of Ra.One when Akon has performed live here.

There’s a reason why, without fail, international artists across genres put out “Happy Diwali” and “Happy Independence Day” wishes on social media.

Over time, the hype around progressive house plateaued — not necessarily reduced, because they still sell out shows in India like hot cakes. But the interest in that subgenre has splintered into other forms of electronic music, too — most notably, techno and trance. Live electronic shows promise a night of extreme, nonstop partying and headbanging. A culture so distinct from any other genre, and certainly not for the faint-hearted.

In India, if the live gigs of the 2010s were dominated by electronic music, the decades before that clamored for rock. We’ve witnessed major rock festivals like Rock ‘n India, Independence Rock, and Great Indian Rock Festival — the former brought in Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Slayer. “College fests would always have ONE Indian rock band perform at the end”, recalls Roochay. In fact, Independence Rock was born because the principal of St Xavier’s Mumbai had barred Indus Creed and Mirage from coming to their annual fest Malhaar.

However, rock isn’t as hip today. Independence Rock (now revived) and Great Indian Rock Festival died natural deaths of sorts. This is no coincidence — “rock is dying” is an adage that seems to hold up every single year in the streaming age. “The rock fans are always the first to be disappointed when a lineup is announced”, says Roochay. With Lollapalooza India, two bands heavily rumored to be in the lineup were Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers — the latter were fresh off 2 new albums in 2022.

The one exception to the supposed perception of rock seems to be in northeast India. Ziro continues to uphold its tradition of being focused on rock and folk, while also giving the stage to more homegrown, regional talent.

In Roochay’s opinion, rock can explain why rap blew up in India — the two genres share similar elements: the fandom, the aggression, the moshpits. The transition of rock to hip-hop could be compared evenly with that of EDM to pop, or that of trance to techno — one of the fastest growing genres in India.

And it’s this diversity that fests have to take into account while thinking on programming lists. With the advent of streaming, and (more importantly) playlists, deciding lineups for fests has become easier, more data-driven, more strategic.

Everyday I’m Shufflin’

Devarsh has had the privilege of having deep conversations with Chet Faker, who told him one day “I’m upset that no one knows my real name, Chet Faker was just an experiment”. It didn’t help that his name was a derivative of one of the popular jazz musicians of all time. Devarsh, on the other hand, wanted him to come — like his song — down to earth. This was his ego talking, the people love him for the music he made under that name. It means something.

However, in 2019, opening Weekender was not Chet Faker. It was Nick Murphy. Chet Faker had taken a sabbatical from 2016 (one he eventually broke). Chet Faker would have had a ton of equipment and a band with him onstage. Nick Murphy just got himself and a sound engineer.

The decision to get Chet Faker / Nick Murphy to headline Weekender 2019 stemmed from the fact that he was touring in Japan and Hong Kong. Of course, this information was also something that the Weekender core team kept a track of through their programming list. Either way, his agents likely put out a feeler towards booking managers of fests, promoters, and labels in India. It would make no economic sense for an artist to come all the way from Australia.

Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines, are all top target countries for artists to set tour dates. “The top new tracks on a global Spotify playlist see their initial growth being primarily driven from Thailand and Philippines”, says Roochay. Then Europe takes notice of the song’s growing popularity, and the song blows up even further.

But different entities circle around the Indian market for an artist touring Asia in different ways. One way is tracking growth in different countries — a perennial process that feeds programming lists of fests. But Devarsh tells me of the time when Weekender called Poets of the Fall in 2018. A marketer in OML was tasked with sizing the market (consultant-style) for the legendary Finnish band using its social media following —> what % of it was Indian —> what was the regional distribution of this Indian following. OML narrowed down areas in North-East India are having the most sizeable POTF fanbases. This process would also help with getting a user persona for running targeted ads.

Post the market sizing, and speaking with the respective artist managers, a deal is signed. Usually, the organizer promises the artist with a performance fee, a guarantee on handling any cargo and crew that accompanies the artist, and travel & accommodation requirements. For rock bands, this same performance fee would be very sizeable. But more importantly, the economics of calling a rock band would doubly worsen because the napkin math behind it would say that they won’t generate enough revenue. I would not bet too much on rock bands generating substantial revenue among GenZ in 2023.

Rafael Pereira is the founder of artist liaising agency Cadre, and of his own legal setup Tinnuts. What Cadre does is that after the promoter has signed a deal with an artist to come to India, it takes care of all of their personal and hospitality needs. Cadre has liaised with artists for Weekender, Lollapalooza India, and the Isha Ambani wedding — it must be quite the job to look after Beyonce’s accommodations and wants. Anyway, Rafael confirms the logic of such napkin math in more qualitative terms:

“On New Years’ Eve, electronic artists often play 6-7 shows in a span of a day. They find themselves doing the New Year countdown multiple times in the span of 24 hours — playing nonstop from the start of the new year in Japan, to the same in California.”

Electronic artists are not only more cost-effective than rock bands, but their live setups are highly repeatable. Here’s a simple representation of how genres rank across factors that enable them to conduct shows smoothly:

U2 was brought to India courtesy BookMyShow. Cadre handled the post-booking liaising with U2 for their Joshua Tree tour in 2019 in Mumbai. “One of the toughest productions ever in the history of Indian live music”, recalls Rafael. Promoters were afraid of taking a risk like this after Justin Bieber cancelled all his Purpose tour dates in 2017, right after performing in Mumbai. Again, the U2 Mumbai concert was a consequence of the band touring in Asia.

When the expectation from the artist is much less, or when the artist is significantly more mobile, a Landed Deal is commonly signed. Such a deal contains none of the guarantees behind equipment and crew, but just a fixed fee and accommodation. The artist just has to land themselves in the fest on D-Day and perform. Most Indian artists and international DJs are brought in using Landed Deals because it’s easier for them to manage travel that way.

Naturally, artist costs would take a major chunk of the budget. Devarsh quotes that for Weekender, it would be upwards of 30% of their total spend. I have a few assumptions about what the figure is, and that involves assuming the average price of a Weekender ticket — owing to its multiple tiers (the complete non-VIP season ticket is Rs 4000). Some math tells me that artist fees could easily be more 6CR for a fest of Weekender Pune’s size. It doesn’t involve stage production costs. Assume that for this scenario, the revenue matched the cost of the fest:

Playlists have been an inflection point in tracking artist popularity, and thereby the viability of them performing live in India. “Save YouTube, the consumption of international music is higher on Spotify than any other DSP”, says Roochay. His expertise lies in understanding this popularity in India. 15-20% of the songs in Spotify’s Top 100 tends to be non-Indian music. As of 29th March 2023, 2 songs from The Weeknd’s Starboy (a 2017 album), Ed Sheeran’s Perfect (2017), and One Direction’s Night Changes (2014) feature in Spotify India’s Top 50. Indians can be very loyal music fans, even when the song is 9 years old.

One of the more robust indicators of artist popularity is how many third-party Spotify playlists you’ve been added to. This has become much stronger in the wake of popular playlist curators charging indie musicians for placement. Of course, playlist culture has been running for years now — with a Spotify playlist playing an integral role in making hip-hop the most popular genre in America. Translating playlists directly into live gigs is also not foreign. Spotify India has a desi rap playlist called Rap 91 (our version of RapCaviar), and a playlist to promote indie musicians called Radar India. Both playlists have had exclusive RSVP-only events where the acts in the playlist were called to perform for a day in a small yet sparkly location in Mumbai. For all you know, Spotify could very well launch their own music festival in the future.

Having The Strokes, Imagine Dragons, DIVINE, Cigarettes After Sex certainly sounds like the playlist of a well-off 21 y/o student studying in Delhi University’s lush campuses. With a side order of weed to go with the vibe of the college party.

Dance Now

It certainly matters what the purpose of your music fest is, because that determines whether you’ll be selling tickets to a 35 y/o Pantera fan who laments the rise of pop, or the aforementioned 21 y/o.

I speak to Owen Roncon, chief of business of live events at BookMyShow. Owen oversaw all of Lollapalooza India this year. And he paid a lot of heed to the chatter he heard online about the fest. He understands that the lineup looks like a modern-day Spotify playlist, but this was not entirely deliberate.

“We’ve had conversations with 200-250 bands / artists to get this lineup. We paid heed to the chatter online, and we would love to get more heritage next year.”

Owen said that there are typically 3 layers of audiences at gigs: those who come for the music, those who hang with the music lovers, and those who come because it’s cool. Lollapalooza’s goal would be to convert the third group to the second or the first increasingly every year. There is no particular way to track this, but it would be a good symbol of retaining more customers annually. “Lollapalooza has always been a festival about the discovery of sounds, as opposed to being cool.”

Devarsh looks at it slightly differently, even though Weekender is more about the discovery of sounds rather than being a status symbol. “The minute people start pegging the fest to one artist (likely the headliner), they put a value to the ticket. This is counterproductive to the festival as a whole.” The fest is bigger than any one artist. The headliner will perform only for a couple of hours.

The solution, then, is to market Weekender as a community experience. People love going to Weekender Pune / Shillong in groups of friends. It becomes a fun vacation for them, and Weekender becomes a top checklist on things to do in that vacation. More than this, though, Devarsh focuses on the value of cracking a community around the fest, because these will be lifelong fans. The fest has a tier of tickets called “Weekender Warriors”, that gives you some perks (like a VIP ticket) and a mug that says “I was there NH7 (insert year)”. Some people have as many as 8 mugs.

Paid marketing is also designed to reflect this audience split. While the top of the funnel will be the fans who are there for the experience, the next phase will be to target the “music purists” who are likely coming to see just the headliner — like FKJ, Steven Wilson, or J.I.D. They’re also people who might just buy a single-day pass to see these artists only.

“Who’s your end user?” For different fests, the answer varies differently. Zomaland has a few metrics that they would be tracking besides the success of their fest — ideally, something like the number of Zomato downloads. “This is why Zomaland’s ticketing has shifted to being inside Zomato instead of being liaised to a third party”, says Roochay.

The reason why, for CSR, Mahindra chooses to do the Blues Festival and the Kabira Festival, is their inherent want to establish themselves as a conglomerate (slash-family) that is in tune with the roots of the country. Blues is hailed as one of the fundamental genres of music as a whole — one of its roots, so to speak. Of course, the goal may also be to cross-sell and up-sell Mahindra products at these festivals. You could apply the same logic to why the Sulafest happens in a vineyard in Nashik.

But such end-user differentiation is not just a feature of festivals organized by corporates like Zomato, Sula, OnePlus, or Mahindra. Within purely consumer festivals where the product is the music / experience (as opposed to the corporate brand), there are niches. Magnetic Fields is annually held in December in a lush, rundown palace in the sand dunes of Alsisar, Rajasthan. A phantasmagoria of light and sound, Magnetic Fields’ starting ticket tier costs Rs 12500 — expensive by any standards, but the offering itself is unlike any other in India, where you get to set your own tent and treat yourself to performances in the desert sunset.

You can’t pull off a festival like this without adequately strapped sponsors. Some festivals become synonymous with their longtime title sponsor, like Bacardi Weekender. Every title and associate sponsor will have a stage named after them. Magnetic Fields usually licenses its stages to — Budweiser (or BudX, in this case), Jameson, Corona and RayBan. It should not be a surprise to anyone that alcohol brands are likely the most popular type of sponsor for music fests. What popcorn is to the theater experience, alcohol is to live music.

Once you have your sponsors ready and your stages sold to them, there’s really just one thing left to decide: what will you charge your end user?

In India, this is always a tough question. We are very price elastic. More so for spending on a non-necessity like consumer entertainment. Almost no other country in the world has as many “Early Bird” ticket phases as India has. And even though half of the audience buys tickets closer to the date of the festival, the limited “Early Bird” phase is the biggest litmus test of the potential success of the event.

“Most other nations really only have 2 slabs, while India will have an endless number”, says Roochay. Which makes deciding those number of slabs beforehand really important. Owen tells me that BookMyShow has an in-house formula that they follow and have developed over years of ticketing live events, that takes into factors like disposable income, time of year, their own spend. They create an end-to-end P&L for Lollapalooza India as a whole, based on the average price of one ticket, and how many people they would need to sell it to in order to hopefully break even.

“We ask ourselves ‘would I buy this ticket’ constantly as a team”, says Owen. When you adjust the average price of one Lollapalooza India ticket against the dollar, it nets to around $100. The first general admission tier of the original Chicago event costs $375 — nearly 4x that of India.

And it’s much easier to market a one-off concert where only one artist is the draw. The promoters’ sole job is to make known to everyone that this artist is performing. But for a fest — a bundle, in essence — it’s different. Which is why you can justify Rs 5000 being the price of a Backstreet Boys ticket to Backstreet Boys. Of course, Lollapalooza India’s lineup and scale is smaller than that of Chicago, but it must still be tough to settle on Rs 8000 as the average price for a bundle that features The Strokes, Imagine Dragons, Jackson Wang, and Cigarettes After Sex. Or, if you take Weekender, then Rs 4000 for The Lumineers, J.I.D, and Dirty Loops.

Yet, for how value for money such a ticket often looks, it is still hard to justify to an Indian consumer why it’s fair.

Gandhi Money

Live entertainment in India follows rules that consumer products / services in India often have to. One litmus price test, multiple tiers of pricing, bundling. There’s a reason why a large fraction of OTT subscriptions in India are sold primarily through data plan bundles of service providers like Jio and Airtel — in 2021, telco-bundles drew ~85% of all OTT viewership in India. There’s a reason why Spotify is trying a plan like Premium Mini, and why Lollapalooza India ticket-holders went into panic mode trying to resell their ticket near D-Day.

Lollapalooza India 2023 was enough of a success to return next year. Turnout was around 60000 people in all of its 2 days, which means it sold anywhere between 25K-30K tickets at the least — majority of which were likely sold during Early Bird and Phase 1. The lineup features multiple domestic and international headline-level acts — an impressive feat in India’s history of live entertainment by any measure, all at the early bird price of Rs 5000. What, then, explains the consumer reaction to it?

“The problem doesn’t end there — AP Dhillon, RHCP, Diplo, humein sab chahiye — we want everything”, is Roochay’s take. And he’s not wrong. It’s hard enough to get an international artist that’s touring in Asia to India, let alone all the way from their home country. But this is not messaging that the consumer will be mildly interested in understanding at all. The average consumer doesn’t want to know the behind-the-scenes of how hard all of this is. And as a promoter, you can’t convince the consumer that something is “great value for money” by simply stating the same.

It becomes trickier when the price itself acts as an unpredictable signal, let alone for an experience like a music fest that’s already hard to value. “The minute you bring down the cost, consumers feel the quality is off. But when you increase it, they question the value of it”, says Devarsh. What is then the solution? Devarsh also answers that, and it’s really as simple as building a culture of gigs over time:

“The more gigs happen, the more people understand the value of experiences. It takes time. Quality gigs were once unheard of in India. At a point in time, India had no regulations for accommodating something like Weekender — we had to sit with the police and municipal corporations to build out rules for something that was new to them.”

There are strong signs that this is happening. Both Roochay and Devarsh mention how quickly Bonobo sold out his show earlier this March at a non-music venue like The Lalit. Even for something non-music, Daniel Sloss sold out all of his India tour stops this year — Mumbai and Bangalore went away in 10 minutes. Bonobo was promoted by SkillBox, and we got to see Daniel Sloss (as well as Post Malone) because of BookMyShow’s efforts. Promoters like them are leading the charge on getting artists with all-time appeal across regions.

Large sects of Indian audiences are taking in music trends. Be it India’s obsession with K-Pop (that spurred someone like Jackson Wang coming here), India’s obsession with Taylor Swift (she's….really, really popular in this country), our continued love for yesteryear artists like Linkin Park and Eminem, we have acquired so many contemporary tastes today that any artist worth their salt will be hard-pressed to find an answer to why NOT to come to India.

We’ve also been playing catch-up in a lot of ways. The proliferation of data usage in India (owing to Jio) has led to us consuming a whopping 19.5GB / month, which is apparently 6600 songs’ worth. India is a mobile-first market, that is now being exposed to trends that have been existent for much longer in more developed nations. This is one reason why the misconception of artists only playing in India past their prime exists. The power of our consumption was only unlocked a few years ago. Even then, we’ve been welcomed by lots of international artists during or before their peak. Imagine how much better this could get in the coming years.

On the part of the promoters, the goal is always to improve the next iteration of the festival. With respect to Lollapalooza India, Owen says, “You have no references or guesstimates here. But we had to do lots of tech prep, met with infrastructure hiccups.” He says that BookMyShow is already working on smoothening the kinks out — like redesigning the layout of the fest in order to better the consumer journey, already working on the lineup, and using all the learnings they have received this year.

With time, people will find it hard to move away from how much meatier live entertainment offerings in India will be. 2022 was the first year we saw gigs bounce back from 2 years of being dead. It has been quite the return.

At the end of the day, you can’t please everyone with the lineup. But every year, the hope is to please some more.

Cover photo credit: Martin Garrix’s own Twitter.

Special thanks time!

• Chinmay Bhogle, Aaron Barboza, Abhay Sharma — for being incredible help with this piece, wouldn’t have been possible without you guys. You know why.

• Supraja Srinivasan, Head of PR and Comms at BookMyShow — for entertaining all of my questions, coordinating the interview with Owen, and chipping in with your own wonderful insights during the chat.

• Roochay Shukla, Senior Marketing Manager @ Outdustry — I hope to do a behind-the-scenes for Sound Logic, and much of it will be peppered by my chat with him. One of the most delightful conversations I’ve ever had for Hot Chips. He’s @roochay on IG.

• Devarsh Thaker, Marketing @ Fampay and ex-VP of Content @ OML — for regaling me with incredible Weekender stories, insane insights about the music industry, and your own love for Chet Faker / Nick Murphy and Steven Wilson.

• Rafael Pereira, co-founder of Tinnuts and Cadre — thank you so much for taking out time for what was a fascinating conversation. I’ve not delved too deep into the legalities of contracts that govern live gigs in this piece, but that’s a conversation in and of itself that I had with him.

• Owen Roncon, Chief Business Officer of Live Events @ BookMyShow — for entertaining all the questions I had about Lollapalooza India, and understanding what I have been trying to achieve this piece.]

• Kushan Patel and Sunaina Bose, for the usual solid proofreading and editing <3

I will be taking a long-due, long-intended break. Unfortunately, the break cannot be from work because something has to pay the bills :) so sadly no proper Hot Chips in May. However, I might do a behind-the-scenes for an old piece! I’ve been toying with BTS pieces, and while those won’t be story mode, I have enough leftovers to create something fun out of them!

But I will be back in June. With a story I already know I’m going to write. Non-music / non-entertainment, but still very much cultural — depending on how you decide to define culture. It’ll be personal, too. But then again, every piece is :)

I hope you had fun reading this one. As a fan of live music (mostly hip-hop of course), and a so-called patron of the arts, I wanted to write this for quite some time. Please feel free to share it if you loved it! I will also be doing a BTS of this piece in the future where I put all the facts and figures that don’t find a place here. A LOT was left out on the cutting table.

Until next time :)

First of all: if you haven’t yet, please do consider moving Hot Chips from your “Promotions” tab to the primary inbox. You can add “pranavmanie@substack.com” to the primary inbox filter on the search bar above.

I had thoughts about a piece of media I just consumed, and felt like I couldn’t hold it back in. Yakuza 0 is a stunning game, and I hope everyone gets to experience it. I mention a bunch of other media alongside the game in this, so I’ll clear your first fear regarding that — this is a spoiler-free article!

Regular programming will continue — I have, yet again, put myself in the throes of high creative ambition (which makes this piece a nice breather also). But I really want to write the next piece, and the one after that. Super excited (and nervous) about the effort it will take.

Such pieces also do me good: I remind myself what structure looks like. I love having a newsletter for trying out new ideas and experiments like this.

As for the backing track, I thought about a killer song with a crime story. But then, I realized, this is more about being a man with a code. So I went with a track that made more sense than any other, and as the piece progresses, you’ll see why. You have probably heard it before :)

Happy reading!

“I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy! Are you so fucking blind that you don't even see what I am?”

It’s been a long time since I gave a movie an instant 10/10, until I watched Michael Clayton earlier this year.

It has earned a spot in my all-time list, thanks to a tight script, great acting, and an anti-hero you want to root for. George Clooney has a bit of a history playing distressed chip-on-the-shoulder characters. Michael Clayton, Bob Barnes, Ryan Bingham, and in some ways, even Danny Ocean. No wonder I love the dude so much.

This post isn’t explicitly about Clayton, at least not for the majority of it. But the first quote feels tailor-made for Kazuma Kiryu and Goro Majima — the two playable characters of 2015 hit video game, and my current obsession, Yakuza 0.

I find male characters who believe in brotherhood, and who always feel like they have something to prove, very charming. They might be lonely, and their sense of belonging is consumed by where they work or who they work for. Make no mistake, they see no easy escape from their lives. They rely on only so many people in their lives and will almost always look stiff. Their default mode is to be hands-off — don’t ask questions about where the money comes from. They may or may not care about a hopeful world, though not really what you would call cynical.

In short, they need therapy.

Yet, they believe in having honor and a conscience. For a setup like the extremely respect-based yakuza, somehow, it makes sense. They have weird ideals about giving and taking that will not fly in any world except the one they have constructed. With law enforcement in Japan becoming significantly tougher, the yakuza are a dying breed in the 21st century. Dwindling numbers, lesser sources of income, and being forced to adopt a legitimate way of life.

Money For Nothing

In Yakuza 0, you play as two characters who you might just mistake for Ryan Gosling’s driver character in….Drive, of course. Remember him? Stiff face, extremely lonely, consumed by driving, very hands-off until he feels like something around him has morally decomposed into the ground.

Yakuza 0 is set in between December 1988 and January 1989, shuttling between the fictional red-light districts of Tokyo and Osaka — Kamurocho and Sotenbori, respectively. Both areas are named after real-life districts Kabukicho and Dotonbori. The game has been lauded for making scarily exact replicas of the real-life areas. This Reddit user does a shot-by-shot comparison between Kamurocho and Kabukicho. The latter is known for being one of Asia’s biggest nightlife districts.

While released after Yakuza 1-5, Yakuza 0 is a prequel. And the level of detail of Kamurocho has been stunning — Kotaku published an entire treatise on how Kamurocho’s identity changes over time. Tall buildings present in Yakuza 5 that didn’t even start getting built in Yakuza 0. The franchise spans 3 decades, from the 1980s to 2016, when Yakuza 6 was released. And new constructions play more than just a visual placeholder in the game.

Buying land was all the rage, owing to Japan’s extraordinary asset price bubble until it burst in 1992. The center of the game is a pea-sized piece of ground that is valued at a billion yen — around USD $8M in that time. The plot is key to Kamurocho’s revitalization project — in which, of course, a yakuza clan called the Dojima family has lots of stake.

The yakuza have always been conscious of their public image. Most notably, members of certain gangs were among first responders post the devastating 2011 Tohoku tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Protection money was a common source of income for the yakuza, but they ensured nothing happened to the shops they were protecting. Common business owners might even have dealings with them.

In a way, much like their Italian-American counterparts, the yakuza have alternated between “necessary evil”, “Robinhood”, and “downright evil” when it comes to civilian perception. However, that perception is defined by whether there’s a direct victim at the end of the crime.

Or so says this Oxford paper by Peter Hill. Hill studies how Japan’s economic boom (and ensuing collapse) influenced how the yakuza operated. Gambling and protection were foundational sources of income. In fact, the yakuza get their name from a losing hand in a Japanese card game called oicho-kabu. Loan sharking, prostitution, extortion were pretty common. Drug trafficking became a massive source of income by the 80s, displacing gambling. But as long as this didn’t result in a murder or a theft — as long as it was victimless, the public was okay with it.

It’s funny that meth is listed as a top source of income: the yakuza live by an unwritten code called the ninkyodo. One of its tenets is that consuming or dealing in drugs is a hard no-no. I suppose money makes the world go round or whatever. Probably what Walter White thought, too.

This piece by the Japan Subculture Research Center seems to have been informed by a yakuza boss himself. He says that yakuza extortionists are driven by a sense of justice: “If you’re being blackmailed by the yakuza, obviously you’ve done something bad and deserve it. We’re enforcing social justice and fining people for their misbehavior. What’s wrong with that?” Another member likened the sokaiya (racketeers) akin to the fourth estate of Japan — because like the press, they would dig up information on big corporates and threaten to expose them, those companies would now be (ideally) forced to behave. I certainly don’t believe this, but it’s also not necessarily a crime with direct victims.

And then the yakuza found, quite literally, a land of opportunity. Police countermeasures had driven them to find new ways to earn cash. In the 1980s, everybody and their mothers wanted some land, bought like Japanese hot cakes.

The yakuza ventured into the construction business — Hill estimates that in 1990, construction alone would have netted them 800M yen (upwards of $6M). In Yakuza 0, there are instances where gangs hire homeless people to loiter around buildings in order to reduce the value of the entire edifice. Silent, unspoken threats are made to owners of flats in such buildings — or money is thrown at them. In a similar vein, gradually, yakuza started placing a ton of money in the stock market.

In such examples of white-collar crime, relationships and information are worth gold. There is a price attached to information — which could make or break someone or something. You know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone. And the yakuza and the state have often had mutually beneficial relationships — the state would hire them to throw out labor unions, or anyone who resembled leftist ideals. The state-yakuza symbiosis allowed the yakuza’s real estate business to thrive.

There’s a brief on the yakuza business by — of all institutions that could make one —economics consulting firm FTI Consulting. The firm quotes one slick example from 2008 (*gasps in economics*) of two yakuza faking a job at a trading company, presenting a sound investment in what seemed to be a company invested in renovating Japanese hospitals. Of course, it was a Ponzi scheme — worth nearly $1B.

If you really want your mind blown, the yakuza’s most important family — the Yamaguchi-gumi — is often touted as Japan’s 2nd largest private equity fund. That’s what information sells for.

Man’s Gotta Have A Code

The game makes you feel the importance of the price of information immediately. Both Kiryu and Majima feel overwhelmed by how much information is being thrown at them. They feel like the world is moving way faster than they had ever imagined. For both, age-old values of brotherhood and humility held priority. But seeing those fade away in the face of a gold rush makes them helpless. The two beat physically strong opponents early on, only to realize that the men who rule them can’t even flex a bicep — yet are invisible hands, puppeteering everything else.

An orphan, Kiryu joined the yakuza because he wanted a life where people around him would respect (not fear) him. A parallel vigilante with a strong moral code that may sometimes be in defiance of the law but is otherwise going to do the right thing. He has a no-kill policy: as a user, you can’t get him to kill anyone in the game.

Majima wants back into the yakuza — a moment of brotherhood cost him membership and an eye. Now, he runs a cabaret, and it’s doing really well. But money doesn’t motivate him, and he doesn’t care about much else. While he wants back in, he discovers that much has changed about the yakuza, in an ugly way. But that’s how Majima also finds out he has a moral code. You can’t get him to kill, either.

Of course the game has violence — a slick, state-of-the-art fighting mechanism inspired by multiple martial arts ensures that. But the most powerful people are those with enough chit-chat material in their veins; they leave the violence to their junior employees. This quote from a game villain says all about how flexible the meaning of being yakuza is:

“I was the yakuza mint, but somewhere along the line, gettin’ bloody started feeling like a pain in the ass. I figured out that bein’ the smart guy takin’ baths in his cash was a helluva lot easier.”

The game takes no time in throwing you into some difficult boss fights, only for you to realize that those still have a template you can follow to beat. Having a finger cut for dishonor — yubitsume — is the last thing they need to be worried about.

Much like Ryan Gosling’s Drive character, neither Kiryu nor Majima is really the type to cry. But they end up doing so as the story progresses. While the nature of crime changed for the yakuza, the level of greed didn’t. In a way, the price of information also included the sanity of those involved in it. Fighting was the easy part, living with one’s own choices was the toughie. Especially when you willingly took the high road that would have risked your own life but was still the right thing to do.

(Moral codes? In this economy?)

This particular theme of Yakuza 0, of fighting something you can’t see or understand, is eerily reminiscent of No Country For Old Men — one of my favorite movies of all time. The old man in question is a sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones, but you feel like you don’t see enough of him in the movie for the story to be about him. Yet, he makes one of the most fateful lines I’ve ever heard about the nature of good and evil — and why this new evil is a no-fly zone as far as he’s concerned:

“The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world.”

Kiryu and Majima seem to be under 30, so not even half as old as the sheriff. But assuming that honor doesn’t exist among criminals, both of them entered the wrong profession. Kiryu’s (good-natured) naivety and kindness blindsides him from seeing ahead. He believes in living by a code — much like the sheriff. He also believes that if he faces a nemesis, they must also have a code. He’s devastated to find out that that’s not true anymore.

Besides forbidding drugs, the unwritten ninkyodo covers a few other major points:

• Treat your oyabun (the head of a yakuza family) with respect

• Don’t steal from/rob the everyday man

• Don’t mess with another gang member, or be indecent with a member’s partner

• Be chivalrous and helpful to people in need

This code explains Kiryu’s gradual dissonance and disillusionment with the yakuza. Historically, the yakuza came from two of the lowest social classes in the 17th century — the tekiya (who were traders) and the bakuto (gamblers). Being wielders of not just wakizashi swords but also social justice was supposed to be natural for them — especially as a group who started from the bottom. It’s why Kiryu had wanted to be part of such a ragtag.

[Fucking hell, I have never been able to store a wakizashi or a katana in Kiryu’s inventory throughout the game. Sure, maybe it’s because [redacted spoiler], but bro, what the hell?]

What explains Majima’s broken relationship? Being out of the yakuza for 3 years certainly adds to it. He wanted to get back into the game. Seemingly, he was ready to do it at any cost — be it 500M or 5B yen. However, killing a civilian was not really something he was willing to do. It’s also not really something that the ninkyodo approves per se. But like Kiryu, Majima also doesn’t know where his purpose lies if not for being yakuza.

In fact, in the game, Majima derides a yakuza boss for having slipped from his old ways of being known for beatdowns, and turning into a sleazebag who can’t see beyond luxury. Even if he did re-join the yakuza, Majima can’t contemplate whether being a member means the same as it did a few years ago. That such a pivot really made that boss less of a man — less of a modern-day samurai — in Majima’s eyes.

Either way, lose-lose for him.

This unwritten set of rules is also intertwined strongly with what it means to be a man, and how one can prove themselves worthy of that dignity. Almost no deal in the game seems to be written in stone — I have no idea if the yakuza really believed in someone’s word. Yet, the ability to look someone in the eye when he’s been humiliated is accepted as an inherent characteristic of being yakuza. No wonder they have often been compared to the samurai.

I’ve never read any bro code that exists in real life. But, from what little I know and have experienced in life, these rules are not very different from what it means to “be a man” for civilians like me or you, either.

Admit it, being yakuza sounds cool. There’s a reason why The Godfather is so beloved: the likelihood of a dude calling the story one of Mike Corleone becoming boy to man is pretty high, regardless of Mike’s body count. It’s why we find the energy of Goodfellas extremely infectious. Even when we know that there’s no honor among criminals, a man is defined by whether he rats out someone or not. Robert De Niro said it best:

“I'm not mad, I'm proud of you. You took your first pinch like a man and you learn two great things in your life. Look at me.

Never rat on your friends. And always keep your mouth shut.”

God of Death

Michael Clayton is a fixer at a top corporate law firm in New York. I doubt that fixers exist in Indian corporate law, but Clooney has said that there are some real-life events that inspire the plot of the movie. Fixers do exist — Donald Trump had an infamous one named Michael Cohen. And his type has received some lavish Hollywood treatment: Michael Clayton, Inside Man, even Pulp Fiction with the Harvey Keitel character “The Wolf”.

I won’t tell you how the movie ends. But while Clayton shares a lot of similarities with Kiryu, Majima, and Ryan Gosling’s unnamed Drive character, there’s one key difference that helps him stand out: he understands the ever-changing nature of crime because he’s also one of the people perpetuating it.

(“Say what you will about lobbying/fixing, at least it’s a legitimate business.”)

Clayton benefited from being fronted by a legal entity like his employer. His job is to “clean”, like a janitor — as he’s so often called in the movie. Clean the mess that his employer’s clients have left behind — ideally so that it never sees the light of the court’s day. Sometimes, such messes may involve accidental manslaughter.

Unlike Kiryu and Majima, Clayton knows the price of information. Sometimes, he sets it too. He never resorts to violence — he doesn’t have to. He knows that by the end of the day, the last person he spoke to will get his — or his employer’s — work done.

But Clayton isn’t happy. He may be great at fixing, but he doesn’t want to do it. He’s going through his own phase of disillusionment. His face betrays him for all 1.5 hours of the movie — he doesn’t believe that such work adds any value. In any other sane world, fixing should have been illegal, and he would seem to be the first to admit that fact. It certainly isn’t morally fulfilling.

But he’s invaluable to his employer, and he has a family member’s loan to pay off. He’s trapped in his own expertise. It’s a job that — as evidenced right at the beginning of the movie — led to a divorce, and created some distance with a son — that he’s trying to bridge. In short, Clayton needs therapy and to quit his job.

Then, like Kiryu and Majima, Clayton is faced with crime turning its evilest head. Something that even he couldn’t see coming. And it shatters every excuse he had for his sorry profession. The kind of white-collar crime that the yakuza also ventured into starting from the 1980s, but fronted by legitimate capitalist institutions. The kind of crime that will most likely require a symbiotic relationship with the state.

A friend once told me that Yakuza 0 is the most Marxist game he’s ever played. I’m not entirely sure, because my real estate portfolio and cabaret club business in-game seem to disagree. But story-wise, he might be on to something. The way I feel about Yakuza 0 and Michael Clayton is very similar, especially in their critiques of capitalism and how it forces men to think about their manhood.

You know what they say about protagonists, right? They are neither heroes nor villains, but tragic main characters whose own decisions may seem to set them up for their own downfall. In real life, me or you would never dream of interacting with a Kiryu, a Majima or a Clayton. We would either dismiss them as mercenaries with no real allegiance, or criminals who only understand the language of violence and blackmail. Or just a lowlife in general.

But in video games, movies, and books, you want to root for them. Sure, they’re anti-heroes by virtue of being in professions more morally ambiguous than most (something about there anyway being no real ethical consumption under capitalism). But you want them to win. You want their choices to make sense. Because even in a world with no real ethical consumption, you’ll meet aplenty crossroads to do the right thing.

And for the kind of character that I describe in this essay — that is defined by where they come from, who they are, and who they know would have been if not for this world — reducing them to just one dimension of being undesirable simply by virtue of being criminals/fixers feels like a mistake. Kiryu wants to create his own definition of being a yakuza: one for whom sticking by his brothers matters more than climbing up the ranks by hook, crook, or book. Majima is too jaded by the life for him to be conventional — yet mentions of his loved ones arouse his soul.

You want these antiheroes to reunite with their children, or their siblings, or successfully protect the ones they love. They probably might not succeed, because that’s how tragic heroes are often written. But for that one moment where I beat the fuck out of a dipshit yakuza boss who crossed me (as Kiryu/Majima), I cleansed a part of my soul. Or for that moment where Clayton does [redacted], or Ryan Gosling’s driver character does [redacted], I am okay with there being a “victim” on the other side. Or when the fucked-up Logan — not Wolverine, Logan — takes his adamantium claws out. Or when The Punisher goes all guns blazing.

I love the male antihero. I will always hope they get a happy ending. It’s a tall ask, because choices can leave behind trauma. Yakuza 0 ends in a way where the after-effects of those hard choices shape the lives of the individuals involved forever. You ask yourself if such choices matter in a world that is so grey. There’s a moment when Kiryu defends his choice of suit color to his oath brother Nishikiyama:

“I’m not feeling black or white these days”.

I don’t know what happens in Yakuza 1-6. I don’t know what becomes of Kiryu and Majima after this, and how they cross paths again. They will. Maybe, for all I know, they could fight each other.

But having seen Drive, Michael Clayton, Logan, Deadpool, The Punisher, Jesse Pinkman, or the million other male antiheroes that direly need therapy, I know why both of them needed to win.

Until next time :)

Jokes aside, you should read 1 and 2 both. You can go to RTHB 1 from here:

Return To Home Bass 1

All non-English lyrics have reference numbers that lead you to a Google doc with the respective translations. I hope you have a great time reading this and listening to the playlist. If nothing else, I can promise that the playlist is brilliant — it’s one heck of a home run in my humble opinion. If someone from Spotify India / Gaana / Wynk / JioSaavn / Apple Music India / YouTube is reading this — I know it’s a bad time, but please hire me, pretty please.

Happy reading!

It takes a while for Delhi-NCR residents to understand that surviving the city is basically just a series of “me and the homies” memes. This could not be truer for hip-hop collective J Block.

I meet Waris and Saqlen near the Qutab Minar metro station, and I walk with them to the destination. He’s 21, and he just made a poppy song called Frootie, along with J Block co-members Faizan and dr chaand. Saqlen is J Block’s manager. It’s a lazy weekend for 6 of the 13 members present, living close to the metro station. Besides two people, all of the rest present at the time do not originally hail from Delhi.

At the time, J Block was looking for people to handle social media and operations for them. 2022 was a record year for them — over 1L listeners and 4L streams. As I enter, I’m greeted by Faizan and Lonekat, and Morocco were playing Portugal in the World Cup quarterfinal. Nobody, absolutely nobody, wanted Portugal to win. “Fucking colonizers.” I enter their studio, which is where we have our conversation. Later, I meet (Lil) Kabeer and Adam Bo. The dining room had a bowl with cat food. But their cat, Joey, was nowhere to be seen.

For a good hour or so, Lonekat — real name Siddharth Sengupta — thought that I was there to be interviewed for a position to manage J Block’s social media. Hilariously, he had no idea why I was the one asking all the questions.

J Block was never supposed to be defined. Faizan tells me that all of them were on their own roads and knew only 1-2 of the entire current collective before. Facebook was quite the matchmaker. Waris, a multimedia student at Jamia, loves making videos, and Faizan knew him through one such project he had done for his brother. Waris knew Lonekat as the guy who, in no uncertain terms, digital-slapped the shit out of Facebook sanghis. Kabeer came into the picture through Waris.

J Block had crossed over the rap collective-to-brotherhood bridge. Together, they had seen enough shit. Like the time they tell me they had to vacate their last flat back at Kishangarh, on the morning of a gig. This, after leaving the Sarita Vihar J Block that inspired their name — that’s 2 rental changes in nearly 1.5 years. We share considerable anti-Delhi landlord/broker propaganda. With how much we discuss landlord complaints, J Block’s idea of drill music will not be the sound popularized by Pop Smoke. It’ll be the house downstairs with their construction.

All experiences that contributed to making their latest album Kho Kho. Political, sonically mesmerizing, absolutely stacked, there’s little doubt that J Block had a lot of fun making this album, and it shows. And it was made in all of 2 days — recorded, mixed, mastered. It’s also a lot of storytelling — with a song literally titled Kishangarh.

“Kismat ke bistar ko laangke
Phandon se bani ek seedi ko baandh ke
Challe ke baadal ko phaandke
Bann jaana Suraj aur ladh jaana raat se” (1)

Politics is important to them. Lonekat is the oldest, and thereby the voice of reason among the group. For the longtime DU graduate, politics is daily existence — “even if I write about sex with a partner, it’ll have politics in it.” Faizan is a graduate of JNU, Waris is a student at Jamia. None of them had music in their initial life plans. Waris loves joking about how he loves forming connections just because the other person was a Muslim like him — which is how he says he befriended Faizan. J Block also proactively check each other’s lyrics — if there’s a word that’s extremely derogatory to a certain identity (race / religion / caste), the inclusion of the same is heavily debated.

Both Delhi and hip-hop are enriched by a strong sense of community and companionship. Between asshole neighbors, shitty landlords, and feeding one cat, J Block recorded an album in 2 days. They’ve battled all the hammers that Delhi could possibly throw at them, and made bangers — not only as a collective, but for their individual tapes, too. They’re trying to expand the horizons of what is possible at the intersection of visual and audio. Delhi’s hip-hop scene blossomed into something bigger than the city because of rap cyphers, collectives like J Block, and the metro.

What The Fuck Is So Funny About Me?

J Block’s camaraderie shines through their humor. There’s no doubt they’re funny, and it’s reflective in their music. Delhi hip-hop is a lot of internal and third-party strife, but you best believe it will be dealt with, with hilarity.

During the 2 days that J Block made Kho Kho, Waris was back home in Lucknow. In our conversation, he (rightfully) whines about how he isn’t there on the album. This FOMO is why he made Frootie. Produced by Faizan and featuring dr chaand, yungwaris narrates a fun tale of what seems like a one-sided crush on a woman he wants to have the namesake drink with. Sure, I felt sad for Waris, but it’s hard not to laugh at the cheeky metaphors he uses:

“Been 2 days baby, MIA
Dil mera bhaari hai kilo 2
Tetra pak bhare gaadi mein fir
Knock knock, ab sang chalo tum” (2)

Being seen-zoned is still a first world problem. Bad drainage, water and electricity crises, terrible landlords, food poisoning, smog — Delhi’s primary coping mechanism to all of these is humor; especially the kind where you’d like to spit slang quite often. Unlike elsewhere, nobody would bat too much of an eyelid if you threw the Hindi word for “motherfucker” around (unless you want said eye blackened, you should do it outside Delhi). It’s entirely possible for someone like me to find myself not being able to stop muttering the word for the smallest nuisance, in any setting, formal or not.

While not ideal, gendered slurs have become part of the dictionary. It’s mutually understood that these words mean little except for displaying an aura of anger. The weight of either word has then been lightened to just words that are thrown around because it can feel therapeutic to scream them out loud without having to face consequences for it. It’s how the weight of the word “fuck” has reduced over time, and now you get to see it on news headlines. It’s the verbal equivalent of smoking — despite being not the best course of action, throwing slurs is the ultimate relief in this city. At least I can cry about my woes in Delhi in the crassest way possible without anyone judging me.

Here’s Garv Taneja, aka Chaar Diwari, moving like the Bounce Tales ball on a killer beat — talking about a constipated day with no water in the house….

“Paani nai aa raha, bhenchod!” (3)

….yet having the balls to say he feels wet and fresh in his drip:

“Khana khaya par na aai dhang se tatti mujhe
Tabhi toh maine gatki hai hajmola
Aur mai drip se hun geela, par lagun bhola” (4)

Of course, there’s MORE than one piece of pop culture that’s titled “Delhi se hun bhenchod”. Be it the song that’s just a display of Delhi machismo partying with pegs and momos, or the show by comedian Nishant Talwar, Delhiites have now owned the image of being armed with a barrage of foul-mouthing. Whether that image is self-generated, or reinforced by pop culture, or both, is unclear. However, it went from being a survival instinct to a mark of identity and bonding among the city’s people.

Being foulmouthed and supposedly having the contact of that one goon with a Scorpio have become staple cliches that have — both sarcastically and not — made their way into Delhi hip-hop. As with any mainstream hip-hop movement, the Delhi scene is also no stranger to having gendered slurs once every 5 lines on average, if not more.

Below is Fotty Seven explaning how he appears to be a “galat launda” (literally “cool criminal”). What is Delhi’s music is incomplete without it having some sense of (male) entitlement? And “Galat Launda” is precisely that kind of song, but with a deft touch of self-awareness. Spoiler alert, he needs money because his dad won’t give him any. So he demands the shopkeeper give him actual change instead of Eclairs:

“Paise jode aapas mein, fir botal daali kaagaz main bey
Kitni toffee dega, bhai? Baaki paise wapas de na
Bhai darta nahin apne baap se, matlab
Tera bhai darta hai bas apne baap se” (5)

Living For The City

Elements of humor, crassness, lethargy, bakchodi, flexing, and of course a bit of partying are part and parcel of Delhi hip-hop.

And these elements often sum up to give us “the Delhi song”.

The Delhi song is often the banger on an album. Slick, often grand production, quick-tempo, maybe a feature artist or two, and lots of flow changes. While certainly not as fast-paced or perennially wide awake as Mumbai, Delhi moves with its own gusto. The kind of gusto that makes you want to exit a boring party, only to roam around the streets where the orange lights haven’t yet been replaced by LED ones, ideally to find one of those late-night lip-smacking paratha spots in some narrow lane. The kind of gusto that leaves you too hammered to make the effort for a wholesome, healthy brunch and settle for a McSpicy Chicken. Javed Jaffrey, by Gair Kanooni, is that song:

“Sadkon pe chalte hum auto main
Raat ko nikalte hum Jordan main
Red light ke aage ek shortcut hai
Back on my bullshit, back on my bullshit
Sammad and Jatin, Maccy D breakfast hungover on Sundays” (6)

Saransh Batra shows up on a GMeet call at midnight wearing a lavender hoodie. Most people know him as Saar Punch, the lead artist behind the city anthem that featured heavily in Part 1, Kaloli. In his view, Delhi is certainly about that gusto and aggression. “But you can’t put the Delhi song in a box.” His biggest hit to-date is a Delhi anthem that didn’t talk about hotboxes, hangovers, afterparties, showing off, or fancy cars. For him, Delhi is also evocative of a certain idea of momos and red chutney, shawarma, weird encounters with the police, and driving in a black Santro.

Indeed, that’s what he does in his music video for one of his earliest songs, Ghar Nahin Jaara. The music video is about Saar and his friends driving in a black Santro receiving a briefcase from a dealer late at night. They open it, and a light emanates from it — akin to the mysterious Pulp Fiction briefcase. However, unlike the movie, we can see what comes out of the briefcase — a packet full of momos, and a massive bowl of red chutney. Saar has an unwavering belief in chutney making average momos feel like a trip. He also comes out in support of having mayonnaise with momos and tandoori momos — a Delhi concept that can often be very divisive.

But Delhi concept nonetheless. Much like Delhi’s shawarma that has nothing resembling hummus. Much like those disgusting mashups of two incoherent dishes like nutella golgappe that you get to see on reels. You can tell the obsession Delhiites have with the obnoxiousness of its gastronomy that it had to make it to pop culture.

Food, hangover cures, Air Jordans and Nike Cortez kicks, anime references, footballer namedrops, political jabs and crowds of people in rooms are all Delhi hip-hop staples. To no one’s surprise, much like the rest of us, Delhi rappers also grew up watching One Piece, DBZ, Naruto, and playing FIFA. “MMM” by Seedhe Maut narrates a supposed average day in the life of members Calm and Encore. One that involves playing a gig after popping a Crocin post a night of raging. These 6 lines summarize the essence of a Delhi song:

“Inn jaise parose kadhaiyo mein
Dikhti kyu jalan badhaiyo mein
Dalai Lama, Saitama jhai mein main Kai bana
Inko hu Rakhta main dairo mein
Deal karu mana dekh signed hu main
Aaj ke liye Bruce Almighty main” (7)

Taran Kaur has lived in Delhi for all of her 22 years of existence. She can’t see herself living anywhere else, because everything is so conveniently available.

Her sincere belief is that Delhi shines when you roam its streets with people — ideally on late-night car rides. She has songs that scream Delhi to her more than others — Javed Jaffrey is one of them. For her, Delhi songs aren’t just about its pace, but also how political they are. Delhi songs help her verbalize and consolidate everything she hates. For the dissident (and DU graduate) in her, these songs take her back to the CAA-NRC and Pinjra Tod protests in 2019.

The relationship between Delhi’s activists and its police couldn’t be more strained — primarily because of the latter’s lack of restraint in using force. It’s surprising how there aren’t more “fuck the police” chants in Delhi hip-hop, and many of the police references happen to be around being chased for petty crimes. But it’s safe to say that Delhi rap is little without its politics. Part of why rage in Delhi music has a grunt to it is because Delhiites have a ringside view to the slow erosion of democracy. You can avoid the news, but you can’t unsee the roads you’ve travelled by often having their names changed to something ghastly.

Or when they’re building a monstrosity around India Gate. But for Delhi hip-hop, regardless of the news, the revolution continues to be alive. Here’s Kashmiri-based Ahmer to televise it for you in his mother tongue, to a tune by Sez On The Beat:

“Aazha gasi yeti athshar
Fhandh wanaan yim aksar
Bandh karan yim daftaar
Gandh karaan yim nafar
Aaz watan saeri chuent
Asli Koshur Hip Hop, Aazha gasi laaeth” (8)

Good Time

Something that Taran highlighted to me that I didn’t realize earlier, is that — platonic, romantic, having a companion who roams Delhi with you enhances your perception of the city manifold.

Delhi has little to worry about when it comes to the abundance of open public spaces or events. Art exhibit, museum, comic book show, auto expo, gin drinking fest, food fest — Delhi certainly feels more alive when you have company in these gatherings. This is a report by the Delhi Urban Art Commission, that elaborates on the massively numerous public spaces in the city. Your experience of these spaces is heightened by the companions you visit them with.

There’s a nameless, undefined charm to how this happens in Delhi — it’s as if your companions are there as a pinch to tell you that what you’re experiencing is not a dream. You stop looking at Delhi as a big bad overwhelming place, but instead use your friends as reference points for the places you’ve been to. Friends who may even share the same aspirations as you, who looked at Delhi with the same cynicism, until they met you.

Pitampura lad, and one-quarter of Gair Kanooni, Tarun is wide awake — not just for an interview with me, but also career-wise. Fresh off his new track Mujhmein, Tarun is on a roll. He operates with a sense of grit — for which he credits his friends. His best two friends who he built a big YouTube channel with back in school, called The Teen Trolls. He wants to succeed on his own terms — he funds his own music by doing wedding shoots in Toronto and wants his friends to do well too.

He affectionately calls me beere, a brother. Beere is also the alter ego he prefers to be known by. It is the name of his most recent full-length release in 2022 — the alter ego came about incidentally because everyone started calling him that after the album. My favorite track from the album — one that reflects Tarun’s personality to me — is Eazy. While the song is about taking it eazy, the opening lyrics couldn’t be more emblematic of Tarun’s proverbial chip on the shoulder:

“Wishes bohot, beere badte reh aage
Iss zindagi mei sui chubhey, tabhi buney dhaagey,
Shayad aaj ka yeh din bada low hai,
Kal subah uth ke khidki pe koyal
Suney mera masterpiece” (9)

To Tarun, the Pitampura-Rohini area is Delhi. Beere is full of references to hotspots in the region. While he now lives in Toronto — home of the famous CN Tower, Tarun spent most of his life seeing the Pitampura TV Tower in the horizon. He remembers the fun times he had in DC Chowk — even asking his fans at gigs how many of them hailed from there. Nightly car rides — gedis — with friends in Pitampura were bread and butter. One of the skits on the album is seemingly from a gedi.

It’s on these gedis, with friends, he’s had uniquely insane Delhi experiences. He recalls when the Teen Trolls gang was driving to eat something late at night. They were stopped by a car in front of them, and a drunk man came onto them for no reason. He smashed their mirror. The stranger vehemently fought the 3 of them, who were built well enough to fend one man off. “Rukja bhosdike mera ghar hai yeh mai batata hun”, Tarun recalls saying. The man beat them up and drove off.

The 3 friends didn’t tell their parents at all. Instead, their first reaction was to go to McDonald’s. “Bhenchod usko bataunga mai”, Tarun recalls one of his friends saying later. Since they had spotted the stranger’s number plate, they were able to report and have him arrested.

Experiences like these shaped Beere. A composite of characters he’s seen and talked to in real life, Beere is a representation of someone from Pitampura. And of course the composite shares some traits with his creator, while being opposite in other ways. Beere (and Tarun in real life) has placed a firework in an Educomp machine in school. He drinks and smokes, Tarun doesn’t. Beere is self-sufficient like Tarun himself.

Above all, Beere takes it eazy. Hakuna Matata.

“Rehta main eazy, fikar nahin,
Mushkilein beeti, zikar nahin,
Kal hi raat pee thi, liquor nahin,
Zindagi seedhi, Twitter nahin” (10)

Free Lunch

“Woh sabse tez aur sabse khoobsurat
Iss roshni ki murat jiske aage jhukta hai aksar
Ek hi mez par baithe kare baatein aksar
Mera mann hichkichahat aur woh toh” (11)

Graphic designer Ritika Varshney has lived across regions in India — Kota, Bhopal, Chandigarh, parts of Gujarat, Delhi-NCR. She came to study in Delhi University. As someone who doesn’t rely on her family for financial support, and has no relatives in Delhi, she says that city’s open public spaces and hip-hop music have been saviors.

“Kuch nai hai, CP ghum lo, Jor Bagh mai chal lo”. In private establishments, there is pressure to appear and act in a certain manner. Not in public spaces, that birthed the legend of a man who made his career off of breaking into dances on the spot on some of Delhi’s most popular commercial lanes. And, of course, re-hashing the same dialogue about unemployed idiots who live in big mansions.

In fact, Puneet Superstar is one of Delhi’s most awesome symbols. I didn’t believe that the world could ever be my, or anyone’s oyster — until I saw his dancing videos. He uses the same streets that much of Delhi frequents. He doesn’t care what other people think of his antics. You could just meet him one such day, and he will greet you kindly. Delhi has mostly been kind to its street artists — clips like these sometimes go viral as well. Only recently, however, there has been a crackdown on street singers, which was also met with fury. The outer circle of CP has seen breakdancers, Hare Krishna singers, ukulele players, guitarists. Puneet Superstar is only the most unabashed version of this street art. I saw him as the chief guest at a free art exhibit at India Habitat Centre by the very-talented visual artist (and scene-maker) Sumit Roy.

Ritika hopes to catch him randomly in Delhi’s public spaces someday, dancing his heart out. The confluence of friends she can cherish, public spaces, the Dev-D soundtrack, and Delhi hip-hop has helped Ritika through financial, familial, and emotional struggles.

In fact, this confluence may often be more deliberate than you think. Delhi University is, while mostly crumbling, still the premier non-technical public university in India — both Ritika and Taran studied there. Its top colleges draw talent from various backgrounds — those extracurricular quota admissions for music and dance can be VERY competitive. Despite all its flaws, it does a better job of bringing people of various classes and upbringings to one place than most other institutions.

I hope you remember Bharg Kale from Part 1 — the next 2 songs are produced by him. He graduated from Hindu College in 2019 — 2 years my senior. Before he went to college, he had little idea of jazz. "Two of my seniors from my Western Music society took me to Piano Man to see some Ukrainian jazz musicians.” That changed his life, and consequently influences the way he makes music. He is grateful to the college crowd he met at DU for listening to Tame Impala, Hiatus Kiayote and Ella Fitzgerald for the first time ever. He credits DU’s rock band culture for his musical evolution. First opera show, first time he heard psychedelic, all because of his friends in DU.

Without these public spaces and easy access to private institutions like Piano Man, Delhi rap could not thrive as well as it has. This Red Bull mini-documentary (featuring Gabriel Dattatreyan from Part 1) on Delhi hip-hop proves just that. B-boys and budding rappers would use spots like the skate rink in Deer Park, and spots around Hauz Khas Village, for cyphers. Dance, music, graffiti, everything was open here.

Baby Don’t Hurt Me, No More

I’m not really an expert on love. Nor am I an expert on public spaces in Delhi. I (or anyone else) also have to be neither to know that Delhi’s public spaces are breeding grounds for romance. A TripAdvisor reviewer from California has an opinion on this. Even Deustche Bank has an opinion on this, but a favorable one — its Cheap Date Index ranks Delhi consistently among the most low-cost cities to have dates in.

But Saar Punch made an entire EP on love in Delhi, called Oopar Neeche. He’s an expert. The story of his second track, Maykhana, is incredulous. He was driving a then-friend (also the focus of the EP) on the Naraina flyover, back to her house in South Delhi. They were stuck in a bad jam, and on the right, there was a sunset. She asks him if he was looking at the jam on the right. He was looking at the sunset, and that was what was wrong with her — she missed the forest for the trees.

“Bas kehne ki baat nahin,
Mai kar dunga kuchh bhi tu hukum kar,
Sukoon se bharti ho kamre ki vibes
Tum gaana ho jaise koi slowed aur reverbed” (12)

For the record, not only did they get into a relationship after this exchange, but they also broke up, and Saar made 6 more songs about it. “That relationship shouldn’t have happened, man”, he chuckles. It ended with a voice note that the woman supposedly sent him after the breakup, where she made him block her. That voice note was recreated in the final track of his EP, Kuchh Bhi.

Moments like these can define simple man-made cement structures like flyovers forever for you. I know I will never look at Safdarjung Tomb again the same way because I associate it with a heartfelt moment with a person. At the same time, you could not like a pretty area because you had a terrible first date. But Delhi is a people’s city: our perception of its haunts is colored by who we went to the haunt with.

Oopar Neeche is remarkable in its vulnerability. Save for the late 2010s, global hip-hop has never been known for vulnerable lyrics among male artists. But that seems to be changing with regards to Delhi. Saar says that despite Delhi’s unforgiving nature, there is a softie within every Delhiite that can give Mumbai’s niceness a run for its money. He has his own set of friends he’s open with, who don’t necessarily overlap with his hip-hop mates. From falling in love, to a messy break-up, to coping with toxic mechanisms, to self-love, to self-destructive voice notes, Oopar Neeche is cinematic.

Tarun shares a similar view about vulnerability. “Ginke 2 dost rahe hain zindagi mai”, he says. And he shares all his highs and lows with them. A personality shield might be a necessary condition to survive the city, but significantly more important is an outlet to channel the shrapnel of emotional violence away. Heartbreak in the city feels much worse, since it mixes itself with Delhi’s classic forlornness.

It’s a tightrope walk to know when to wear armor, and when to shed it for someone else. In Delhi, it’s easy to tip over on either side of the thread. Here’s Faridabad rep, and ex-MTV Hustle contestant Agsy talking about her own experiences with being unguarded in a song about love that can destroy:

“Khaiyan to me dardi
Nhereyan nal lad di
Dar vi me chad du
Je tu banjave chan vi” (13)

Money Moves

2022 was a massive year for hip-hop in general. Many artists — most notably Kendrick Lamar — used the pandemic to introspect, and came back stronger. While the Delhi scene had some great releases in 2021, 2022 was stacked. Acclaimed releases from Seedhe Maut, Prabh Deep, Karun, Udbhav, Gair Kanooni, Sez On The Beat, Rebel 7, just to name a few. More importantly, live gigs returned in full spirit last year.

It’s hard to quantify how mainstream Delhi hip-hop has become. But, of course, there are indicators. The most recent trailer for Netflix India’s next release, Class, features KO by Prabh Deep, and All Nighter by Gair Kanooni. To date, Indian OTT releases have lacked the smart use of indie soundtracks/rappers — barring exceptions like DIVINE for Sacred Games. That seems to be changing in a big way.

More recently, the ongoing season of Bigg Boss had a special episode — a concert by MC Stan, Ikka, and Seedhe Maut. Quite possibly the largest TV representation not just for Delhi, but desi hip-hop all-in-all, in a long time. Bigg Boss sees more than 120M viewers. That’s the potential audience that was exposed to desi hip-hop.

“Hai yeh man-slaughter barbarian style, kaidi kalai
Aur kalam ki nok se faili tabahi
Iss zakham ki hai ni dawayi
Pehle hi dedi safayi” (14)

There are certainly some clear baton-holders in the Delhi scene currently, who are being heralded as changemakers. By virtue of their 2018 debut album Bayaan, Seedhe Maut (and Sez On The Beat) are one such frontrunner. Since 2018, the duo have racked up 600K monthly listeners on Spotify. If the blue arrow on the next graph is any indication, they have broken through the milestone beyond which growth would become unstoppable for them. The fact that they also released arguably their best album in Nayaab, in 2022, may have something to do with it.

In ~5 years, Seedhe Maut have racked up a fifth of the monthly listeners that Raftaar has, and a little more than one-tenth that of Ikka (who they have collaborated with). Both Raftaar and Ikka — who have been in hip-hop for around 15 years — came out of their own slumbers recently to remind everyone how good they can be. Their high numbers of listeners come from their deep work in Bollywood, as opposed to more independent catalogs. Ikka has only 2 albums of his own in his career, released in the last 3 years. So does KR$NA. These three rappers come from a more single hit-focused culture of making hip-hop about gloating.

The final track from his EP Hard Drive Vol 1, Raftaar’s JASHAN-E-HIPHOP is a scintillating display of the art that India and Pakistan can make together. Featuring Pakistani spitfire Faris Shafi, with a beat by Pakistan’s top producer Umair, JASHAN-E-HIP-HOP is the musical equivalent of two Mortal Kombat special moves fused together with a beat switch. It is a celebration, a jashan of the best hip-hop talent of the Indian subcontinent:

“Pade maar, sarhad paar baje Kalamkaar (Raftaar’s label)
Taape bina taar kare border paar
Gunehgar bar deti jaane maar
Baap ke udhaar pe na chale car” (15)

Delhi hip-hop has moved from the culture of making just flex and party singles, to full-blooded albums that deserve attention front-to-back. Bigger artists tend to have entire album rollouts — with the intention of introducing their fans to the web3 world, Seedhe Maut gave out free Nayaab NFTs on first-come-first-serve. The NFT holder got exclusive access to the behind-the-scenes for the album.

But little screams impact more than when you look at how one’s music has changed someone’s life. In November of last year, alcohol brand Simba sponsored a 2-day hip-hop fest called Uproar, which had many of these acts. Before Ikka came on stage, a fan was making his way into the stands with a large frame. The frame was a customized photo collage of Ikka bhai. Mid-performance, Ikka calls that fan on stage — who seemed to hail from the same area as the rapper. The fan was visibly very emotional, and hugged Ikka — who said that he would hang the frame in his own studio.

You see glimpses of similar impact in the YouTube comments section of these songs. Delhi’s rappers, and desi acts in general, have been able to tap into my generation’s frustrations about family, education, direction in life, money. They will be waxing lyrical on the internet about why they felt so much about a composition.

Home Base

“Dekhta sapne saare aukat ke bahar,
Ferdinand Magellan, lunga duniya ki naap” (16)

I’ve been in Delhi-NCR for 3.5 years. While in school, I had harbored ambitions to study in a top college in DU. College, job, love, situationship, relationship, good chole bhature, tandoori momos, a very weird police encounter (that ended harmlessly), protest, and a hit piece on Medium — all firsts that the city has given me.

I always have a song playing in my head. Life can often get boring, so I spice it up with some background score. Hip-hop has always been that score. It has been my source of optimism, because out of the 73 hours of music on my all-encompassing hip-hop playlist, I must be able to find at least 5 minutes’ worth of anger to get over a shitty Delhi landlord who will refuse to pay for the house’s main fuse blowing out.

I see those memories where the city gave me brain (or lung) damage, and now they’re painted with the lyrics from these songs. Yes, the motor for water supply stopped functioning. Did I meet a snooty kid in college who went to an elite Delhi school? Do I feel like it’s going to be a very lazy morning with an unhealthy breakfast? I have songs as answers to each of these questions.

Delhi hip-hop contextualized my memories in the city with respect to why the city operates the way it does. Why, despite its holes, it continues to have a charm in its natives’ minds. Or how I can survive the city — the music does both recommend healthy and toxic coping mechanisms.

I’ve neither laughed nor cried more anywhere else than I have in Delhi. I still remember the first time I rented a 3BHK flat near university — I was hit with my first anxiety attack because negotiating with the broker took so much out of me. Or when Gurgaon’s corporate-induced loneliness hit me like a brick, that I nearly stopped believing solitude was real. In such times, the F-bomb feels like an Uno +4 card that I can use anytime, anywhere, without consequence.

Of course, unless the other person has a +4 too. Much like this video.

The highs are high. When it’s me and the people I love, chilling at Deer Park, petting the cutest dogs doing ramp-walks on the dirt. Or walking across Janpath Road to get coffee from DePaul’s. Or having a picnic at Lodhi Garden against the gleaming sun. Or an extremely thrifty smackdown brunch at Majnu Ka Tila. Or dancing to AP Dhillon with strangers in one of Gurgaon’s BYOB machans.

Why I wrote entire treatises around friendship and love is because the Delhi experience is as good as toilet paper without them. Delhi hip-hop is most informed by those qualities. Seedhe Maut came together because Siddhant Sharma and Abhijay Negi met randomly at a SpitDope cypher. Rawal and Bharg met very similarly. J Block was much more haphazard — 13 people, all of whom didn’t know each other. Gair Kanooni is 4 people from different walks of life. School buddies Karun and Udbhav reconnected after a long time, and made some of the best music the city has heard.

In fact, Karun’s Heeriye, which also features Udbhav, Toorjo Dey and Barf (with the music video shot by Tarun), reminds me exclusively of what Delhi sunshine feels like. Karun loves poetry, and much of his music is centered around past romances. Probably why, when we spoke, he said that Honey Singh certified him a lover-boy:

“Kal aane wala, kyun mujhse puche
Mai tera kya banu
Dur na jaawe accha soniye
Hath mera padhle, mere heeriye, heeriye” (17)

Experiencing these joyous memories, with my favorite people, in the city that has become a part of me, feels emotionally overwhelming. When I return back home via the Yellow Line metro, I struggle to put into words what I feel. I wish Mirza Ghalib’s ghost would possess me so that I could write poems about how good my day was.

But on the metro back home, I want to hit replay on the memory. Be it cultural, culinary, lethargic, picnicky, I want to immerse myself in what I feel. That such a memory I could only experience in the capital, and I’m okay experiencing Stockholm Syndrome for it. The packed metro cabins feel lively and great. For once, I’ve beaten the loneliness so characteristic of living here.

I just play the music and take it all in :)

My favorite thing to write — the special thanks section. So here goes:

• Waris, Saqlen, Faizan, Kabeer, Lonekat, Adam Bo, Akx, Circle Tone, dr chaand, Battery, Agaahi Raahi, VIP, ishan — J Block for being the loveliest hosts. Their next tape, Love Marriage Haldi Bangers, will be out very soon. I saw Lil Kabeer record a verse — I’m not sure if it was for this album, but it was fire. Apparently, the album has yet another landlord diss? The struggle never ends.

• Saar Punch. I’ve had the pleasure of watching Saar perform Oopar Neeche live, and I am pleased to tell you that every son on it was meant to be listened to in open air. I hope he sells out shows soon. He intends to have a fruitful 2023, and is already off to a great start — Oopar Neeche just crossed 500K Spotify streams.

• Tarun Kukreja, who’s been incredibly helpful. He wants to release more music this year (listen to his first release of 2023, Mujhmein), and — being a professional videographer — explore the music video side of things. He usually takes clients with love marriages and haldi bangers. Or bangers in general — he shot a Bohemia concert in Toronto.

Besides them, the rest of the artists who made RTHB possible: a) Bharg Kale — who’s all over both RTHB playlists for very good reason; I had the fortune of watching him and Saar perform Maykhana live; his new single Darta Hu Mai is out, b) Karun — who is enjoying an insane creative peak; his single Chaand is live, c) Viraj Gulati / idek — who will soon be releasing as part of Smitt & Wessn; I listen to their bop Big Boy to feel tall against Gurgaon’s buildings.

Gabriel Dattatreyan for being extremely helpful with the history, beginnings, and sociology of Delhi hip-hop. I envy those at NYU who study under him.

Ritika Varshney and Taran Kaur for being such sports to allow me to interview them. I learnt tons about desi hip-hop AND Delhi from talking to them. And I have tons of conversation material with them in my working document that couldn’t translate here. What if I also open my own podcast? Too much?

Sumit Roy, for giving me his time. A good amount of effort went into framing this piece, and his answers to my questions, while not explicitly here, have significantly helped bring focus to it. I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of catching one of his art exhibits, they’re a goldmine to the hip-hop fan in me. Check out his Instagram. He also has some rap of his own, here.

A repeat for all the other people who helped with the entirety of RTHB: Rijul Seth, Ishartek Pabla, Meher Sachdeva, Dhruv Trehan, Aditi Singh, Tanya Singh, Abhiroop Dey, Nicaia D'Souza, Jayant Bakshi, Manik Dua, Chhavi Bahmba, Shruti Gupta, Kushan Patel, Jayesha Koushik, Molina Singh, Sunaina Bose. It’ll never be enough to thank them.

Opium of the Masses / Paridhi Puri for translation. The Medium piece I mentioned earlier was co-written with her — she’s a better writer than I am. This newsletter would probably not have existed if we hadn’t written that piece. And Sharika Parmar for some very crisp Kashmiri-to-English translation on the lyrics to Elaan!

Lastly, thank you Alamy Stock Images for the beautiful minimalist map of the city.

Until next time — which is pretty much next month :)

I’ve wanted to write a hip-hop piece for a really long time. I’m sure it must be pretty evident from the song choices I use on my pieces otherwise. But I’ve always known that I wanted to write a sprawling tale that fused where I have spent most of my core memories in the last 4 years, and my favorite genre.

Then I became a fan of Delhi hip-hop, and a piece came together for me. I knew I wanted a few more reads under my belt before I undertake something this ambitious. This two-part piece would be nothing without the people I’ve interviewed.

My pieces are natural extensions of the questions I have in my brain. If I can’t find satisfactory answers to them online, I see if I can answer them for myself through this newsletter. This also falls in that bracket, except it’s more personal than any other deep dive I’ve ever written. I’m so glad that I will be ending/starting this year with this duology.

On that note, this is a playlist that I would request you to play while reading. This is all from the desi hip-hop stable, predominantly from the Delhi-NCR scene. Many of these songs are relevant to the piece as you gradually read it. If Hindi is not your first language, I’ve added reference numbers that link to a document of translations :)

This is Part 1 of Return To Home Bass. Part 2 will feature some more people beyond the names you see here, and will also be a little personal like this one. Happy reading!

Metro rides can reveal a lot about you and where you live.

As someone who has to live in and work out of Gurgaon, I travel to Delhi quite often. My weekends squarely land me in its most value-for-money lip-smacking eateries that I know I won’t find in Gurgaon. And it’s not necessarily just the most bougie areas of the city — there’s a sub-conscious attempt to make a comforting haunt out of every nook and corner I instantly like.

But every time I have to head back home, the route is the same. The Delhi Metro’s Yellow Line is the beating heart of the entire train system (sorry, blue liners) — longest, last to shut, the most crowded. The south-most 8 stations of the line mark the bridge portal between Delhi and Gurgaon. Traffic lights and car beams turn into large, empty farmhouses and open-air banquet venues on your way back. Then houses slowly start populating. Then come the massive glass buildings far in the backdrop, the structures most symbolic of Gurgaon — if they have anything to say at all.

On 26th November, a cold Delhi Saturday, I returned from INA in a metro cabin after meeting a friend for a lovely lunch. An early winter sunset illuminated the cabin I was in, but then I saw those huge, ugly, round bastions of capitalism they collectively call CyberCity. Most rides like this are accompanied by harsh, industrial, abrasive music, in tune with the pace of Gurgaon life. The lyrics fit perfectly with the instrumental — flexes of grind, classic slang, threats of violence against enemies and fakes, slick wordplay, and an unsaid belief that the artists know they’re absolutely murdering the beat. “PEW PEW” is one such track.

And you know what? I reveled in it. For 2 minutes and 21 seconds, I had enemies I didn’t name, jewelry I didn’t own, a chip on my shoulder, and a challenge for the PCR van to catch me. Considering who raps these lyrics, I Rawal-ed in it:

“Talk to the hand mere haath mei hai dhan,
Mujhe pta hun mai bhundfaad chaat meri kam,
30 laakh stream 4 mahino mei album pe pehli,
Promotion pe paise nai talent hai baby” (1)

Daytime Gurgaon is a struggle, despite its streaky crimson sunsets. You’ve seen Los Santos from GTA V (not San Andreas), right? Gurgaon feels like that, minus the Hollywood sensibilities. Where GTA satirizes the American Dream, Gurgaon feels like a Pyrrhic victory for the Indian parallel. You hear a friend talking about his time at Los Angeles and its recklessness and you say to yourself, “This sounds like Gurgaon.”

Different people have different coping mechanisms when it comes to surviving the pace of the city, and keeping sane. Mine is listening to hard-hitting, gym-bro, kill-em-all hip-hop while strutting corporate corridors. There is a (flawed) sense that unlike the legacy areas of Delhi dominated by generational wealth, Gurgaon is meritocratic and deserves its riches. That its large professional base is all shop, little talk. Letting the talent and the real estate portfolio scream the loudest.

But the thing about “PEW PEW” is that it comes from Delhi-based artists, one of who went to the same university as me. You could listen to all the Kendrick Lamar and Future and Missy Elliott to feel hype. Yet nothing feels as close and relatable to when the beat has the soul of the region you live in. For the cut-throat, money-minded, seemingly meritocratic, haphazardly-designed maze Gurgaon is — the menacing bass, the venomous spew, everything fell into place. You have little choice but to embrace it for survival, and somehow feel gaslit into seeing the good in the city.

Stockholm Syndrome, if you will.

“Yeh sheher nahi, mehfil hai.”

Most people would argue that in 2022, for Delhi and the National Capital Region, only the first half of the sentence above is true. Especially after 2014.

The idea of romancing a potential love interest in Delhi - or Delhi as the love interest itself - has for long been a fantasy perpetuated by Bollywood. The narrow lanes of Chandni Chowk, the sensory overload of Jama Masjid, the cutesy spots of Sunder Nursery, the green vastness of Lodhi Gardens, the hoity-toity brown-colored civil buildings of Raisina Hill. Somewhere in 2009, AR Rahman said that it might be a hit formula to make an album that’s a combination of some of these utopian concepts.

Don’t get me wrong — I love Bollywood songs about Delhi. There’s something about watching the gang from Rang De Basanti drive that car of theirs around India Gate. Or watching Sonam Kapoor overlooking the old-world charm of the Delhi-6 area. Or getting a teaser to the eventual real-life romance between Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan with the Humayun Tomb in the backdrop in Kurbaan.

But Delhi is also — and has always been — about the confrontational East Delhi, the loudness of West Delhi, the bratty opulence of Mehrauli’s clubs and the slums that surround them, the smog, the road ragers, the terrible first dates, the loneliness that exists in the artificial architecture that crowds Delhi’s borders; the underlying current that there is, and has been, something fucked up with the city. And if you believe that a city is its people, then Delhi has negative karma. It’s a weird disconnect to have some of the most mellifluous music known to India be about a city that is struggling on every possible human front you can count. Climate change, politics, infrastructure, transport, family — you name the issue, chances are Delhi is in some limbo phase of it.

Of course, there are movies and songs that bridged this disconnect. Khosla Ka Ghosla released in 2006, and we saw an accurate depiction of what people of the city might been like — specifically, middle-class West Delhi uncles and villainous brokers. My own all-time #1 Delhi depiction — Dev.D — came out in 2009. It was a saga of blurring in and blacking out at different parts of the city, masked as a story about the intersection of a crisis of masculinity and romantic obsession. Delhi Belly felt like a representation of life as a 20-something male bachelor working in the city. Titli resembled some of the blunter nature of people, friends, brokers I knew.

(Yes, Delhi brokers are disgustingly natural grifters. Slicker than BYJU’s sales teams.)

Music-wise, though? All of these movies had bangers that reflected Delhi in one way or another. “Pardesi” from Dev.D has a trance for a music video that takes place a in a shady garage bar in the dark locality of Paharganj. Oye Lucky Lucky Oye’s music is the equivalent of a cheerful escapism, hopping from one neighborhood of the city to another. "Dilli Dilli” has a frenetic pace that foretold the kind of movie No One Killed Jessica would turn out to be (and more):

Mori jaan pe japti banke, banke kaali billi
Japti kaat kaleja le gayi, mui Dilli le gayi (2)

Not a lot of this music felt like it came from a lived experience. Naturally, the nature of Bollywood music production is fairly composer-reliant. Names like Amit Trivedi (who has produced a lot of the music above), Ram Sampath, AR Rahman are all brilliant, of course. But they’re bound by the visual media they accompany. There’s something about them that, to me, doesn’t scream, “Maybe this music was made from the kind of dingy rentals one may inhabit in the city, 3 blocks from my own street.”

Now? Indian producers are turning Bollywood samples on their own vinyl heads — much like Jeenedo by Udbhav on this playlist. Famous rappers/producers often have a type-beat associated with them, that other budding producers try and copy to get their attention — this is a DIVINE type-beat. Dudes no more than 23-24 years of age are busy minting money crafting a future where their type-beat hopefully goes global. Rappers are switching flows the same way you imagine Goku charging up his ki to achieve super-saiyan status. And they live here, come from the areas that we refer to colloquially. Old songs from the 70s are looping and opening into head-scratching quick-tempo instrumentals that could background score that memory of the first time that you, as an outsider, landed in Delhi. And that could go either way — if you were wowed, perplexed, or horrified by what you saw. I’ve had multiple moments in Delhi where I’ve experienced all three simultaneously.

“Kismat ki chaandi hai pighli pighli
Dikhti shakal apni dhundhli dhundhli” (3)

Music Makes You Lose Control

Nayi Dilli mai swagat hai, aadat hai bangayi
Jab se baarvi mai phukte the hum (4)

The first few signs of a Delhi hip-hop movement came from b-boy break dancing. Gabriel Dattatreyan, an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology at NYU, recalls to me the days of yore in the city when he was researching Delhi’s burgeoning scene for his doctorate thesis on the global familiarity of hip-hop. Punjabi mainstream music had taken off — owing primarily to the unicorn nature of Honey Singh. And Yo Yo (among other similar popular ilk) was often the subject of mockery and insults by Delhi’s then-up-and-coming hard-hitters, who have presently crossed multiple strata of fame — Raftaar, Ikka, KR$NA. They would pride themselves on their West Coast gangsta inflections with a North Indian finesse.

And then the b-boys started trying their hands at writing bars. These were primarily heterosexual men who had come to the capital in search of a new, dreamier, more fulfilling life. Gabriel’s book begins with the picture of a migrant late teen who would draw graffiti, improve his pen game, voice his story in the numerous public spaces of the city — much of it as a respite from the dreariness of earning bread like millions of people do every day in India. They got more exposure to pop culture and consumerism than anyone in their family ever had before them.

There were two major levers that allowed this democratization. One was, of course, the internet — even in its disgustingly glitchy pre-Jio 3G form. But second, which is more relevant to Delhi, is the existence of the metro. The Delhi Metro is one of the most successful large-scale public transport systems in India, to-date. It takes 1.5 hours to go from Gurgaon to Connaught Place by metro. You could possibly cover all four cardinal directions of the city in a little more than half a day, and feel like you’ve seen 6 different regions. Couple that with the prevalence of rap cyphers happening across the city — most notable being the MC Kode-hosted Spitdope, that sees (and has birthed) the who’s who of the scene.

Between Karol Bagh’s Punjabi liveliness, Chandni Chowk’s rusty lanes, and Ghaziabad’s wild infamy, Delhi hip-hop was poised to be a grand, tasty stew of perspectives that wasn’t just about the romanticization of its monuments. This has also led to the formation of diverse collectives, most of who may not even be Delhi natives. Metro rides can indeed reveal a lot.

“Shanivar ravivar saare yaar mere saath
Maine gyarvi naap diya pura Ghaziabad” (5)

And this is considerably different from Mumbai hip-hop, where a lot of the music comes from its slums. Despite the local, connectivity between neighborhoods is fairly inconvenient in Mumbai. Even if it wasn’t, the cost of living and the lack of truly public spaces is enough to dissuade the underprivileged from going outside. Gabriel explained this to me as Mumbai’s slums being a container for artistic expression — what he believes Delhi successfully prevented. And the second largest slum in Asia is also Mumbai hip-hop’s beating heart. Because of how the metro democratized movement within the city, budding spitfires they would seldom feel the need to say they’re from the hood as a form of validation.

This marks one of Delhi rap’s most unique differentiators is how there is a distinct middle-class tone to it. Most of India’s population belongs to the low-to-middle income category. The Indian middle class is in the trenches compared to that in more developed nations. There is certainly a dream to afford everything for oneself and their near and dear ones as an artist. For Delhi hip-hop, that often comes from a place of being directionless, as opposed to being in utter dire straits.

Delhi rap feels aspirational, nostalgic, yet on the verge of going back to some unwanted old habits. Imagine the lanes of an old public housing colony, where the kids play cricket in the evening, go to tuition right after, are wowed by what a marvel GTA San Andreas (or battle royale, in a 2020s context) could be, discover Eminem for the first time, peep a little DBZ in the night, and would compare Beyblades and cricket bats. There’s a lot of innocence and camaraderie in this portrait, but Delhi rappers are also concerned with how those kids — their old pals — panned out as maturing humans. And how they survived, if they did.

The dark places that the scene’s artists tend to talk about are more emotional than physical manifestations. Overworked-and-underpaid fathers taking out their frustrations on the women and children in his household. There is little respite, yet there is an acceptance that they wouldn’t be who they are without these experiences. Here’s Ikka — who actually hails from the infamous Burari — narrating a story he has seen up close personally (if it’s not his own), from his second album Nishu:

“Mintu ki Sega me Sonic chale, Swat Kats 4:30 baje
Rank 1 mere patte bade, Bachpan se jeete na clash kare
Baap sharabi, beta awaara, sabki nazro mein mai awwal nakara
Tuition ke teacher ko office ka gussa, birthday pe mere phatte se maara”
Main bachpan se pisa bachpan se gussa bhara
Aise halaaton mein suna tha Shady, inspired hua main rapper bana” (6)

Hip-hop derives quite a bit from personal trauma. Be it 2Pac talking about his dad, Eminem calling his mother all sorts of names, or Megan Thee Stallion using angry music to recover from a shooting. Delhi hip-hop is not very different, or at least it has begun to move towards vulnerability of late. There’s also an attempt to embed such experiences within Delhi’s cultural zeitgeist. Dev-D uses the almost-mythical DPS RK Puram MMS Scandal as a plot point. Similarly, Seedhe Maut’s Anaadi culminates a dysfunctional father-son relationship into the kind of regular road rage death that turns into a Delhi newspaper headline.

Stagnant Water

Delhi’s cultural zeitgeist is a little difficult to break down. The city has lore no matter where you look. Some of it is also very uncomfortable conversation now crafted into Netflix IP like Delhi Crime, but this piece isn’t about that.

What makes Delhi’s canvas so all-encompassing is a) its various areas, and b) its people. The fact that every area has a different identity, as well as distinguishable, desirable and unwanted identifiers adds to the love-hate that its people experience.

Jayant Bakshi is a social sciences graduate from Ambedkar University. But when he tells someone that he’s from East Delhi, all his prior qualifications take a backseat. It doesn’t matter where he studied — he’s already generalized. Beyond that, nobody cares that he’s from Anand Vihar — a civil upper/middle-class residency in the grand scheme of East Delhi’s impoverishment.

“Stagnant water”, he calls it. In fact, what Jayant feels about how he is perceived, even as someone well-off in otherwise a poor region, is pretty aptly reflected in this satirical Outlook piece from 2019, titled “Where The Hell Is Seelampur”. East Delhi is no stranger to ghetto-ization. And Jayant is theorizing to me why the eastern sides of so many cities across the world are ugly — maybe something to do with rivers flowing eastward? Unlike a Saket or Chhatarpur in the south, East Delhi is used as an umbrella term for its individual areas. Frustrated, moody, grimy — Jamunapaar looks like the city planning manifestation of an insecurity.

And the insecurity is pretty big. This lovely short piece from Down To Earth talks about two Delhis: a South Delhi, and Delhi’s slum colonies (like in the East) that were built out of a need to house migrants. It explains a bit of where the insecurity stems from. But that’s only one way of dividing Delhi into two.

South Delhi’s money is multi-generational — you’ve heard the jokes about South Delhi kids. East Delhi, however, has primarily nouveau-riche residents. They earned their riches through scrapping and buying land for cheap. Real estate is a massive status symbol in Delhi-NCR first, long-term investment next. Yet, Jayant tells me that in an attempt to play the status game, East Delhi residents are perceived as gaudy to the rest of the city. Signals like buying branded jerseys instead of first copies and knockoffs — a culture that Delhi markets like Palika Bazar have popularized — become important and aspirational. A culture that has intersected with Delhi hip-hop.

East Delhi is also incredibly polarized, both in terms of wealth and politics. Even among the economically disadvantaged of Delhi, those in East and North-East Delhi have had it worse. In the 2020 assembly polls of Delhi, The Quint reported that much of the communal violence up to the voting happened in east and north-east Delhi. East Delhi is a BJP bastion. It’s not enough that random fights happen here all the time anyway.

Jayant says that he could once see the Sun hide itself — that’s how smoggy and grey Jamunapaar can be. It’s appalling how common a mugging in Anand Vihar is — Jayant recalls a time where his phone was stolen at knifepoint, and the police did zilch to recover it. How he’s lived here, even as someone with financial privilege, is reflected in these bars from another Jamunapaar resident, rapper Raga:

“Jamnapaar ka safar tu
Kar tu paar aaj
Mere sath aaj mere yaar aas-paas khaas-khaas saare badmizaaj” (7)

Jamunapaar became a hub for rap cyphers a few years ago. Raga was born from rap battles in the region, and in 2022, he signed on to American label Def Jam’s Indian division. East Delhi underground cyphers then seem like a respite, eventually only to turn into a legitimate career option. An escape from areas like Dilshad Garden, Karkarduma, or jhuggi jhopri clusters like Kalyanpuri and Khichdipur.

Away from the physicality and emotional strife of Jamunapaar.

Bhature Western

On the other end of the Delhi Metro Blue Line, bang opposite Anand Vihar/Yamuna Bank station, is the vibrant West Delhi. The image of being the land of some of the best chole bhature in the country certainly helps. Having an alumnus like Virat Kohli is icing on the cake.

Bharg Kale appears on my Zoom interface, sitting in a room with the most vibe-y purple lighting. After all, you can’t be known for cooking monster beats like “PEW PEW” and NOT have the room where you make music all spiced up. Among other things that will feature later in this story, he tells me that one of my favorite songs of 2022 — West Delhi anthem Kaloli, which he produced — was initially meant to be a type-beat.

The cover for Kaloli is that of the famous, Virat Kohli-endorsed Rama Chole Bhature. The song is about a West Delhi colony, where the kids wear narrow pants to school, buy (yet again) first-copy Jordans, drink in gleeful abandon, are as happy-go-lucky as one gets. Delhi is home to a lot of fashionable number plates — the kind where 8055 is designed to look like BOSS, and 4141 like “पापा” (meaning father in Hindi). The scooty having “fuck you” written behind is almost believable. West Delhi is loud and proud, peppered with small parks smack dab in the middle of public housing.

“Scootiyan di number platan te likheya fuck you
Dikkiyan ch paiyan wooferan di crate boom boom
Boom vajda ae poora jail road
Tihar vich nachde ne kaidiyan naal jailor” (8)

Abhiroop Dey is an engineering graduate who works for a management consulting firm. Currently a Palam resident who finds himself in Gurgaon quite often for work, his experience of (south) West Delhi is partly what you’d expect from a song like Kaloli. “Your colony friends are your first friends”, he says. There’s an unsaid brotherhood that exists with them, that celebrates alongside you, that stays with you even after everyone goes their separate ways. A very Punjabi way of living.

But these colonies tend to be very homogenous, too. Upper/middle-class West Delhi is a lot of family businesses. Kids who haven’t had the social privilege to explore alternative careers follow the father’s footsteps as a means to an end they don’t know yet. Chhavi Bahmba, a visual designer and longtime Hari Nagar resident, talks about how she knows so many friends who have struggled with their individuality. A running joke she has with her mother is how they didn’t know life beyond a 5 km radius, beyond the same 4 friends from school. She was/is surrounded by Kapoors, Khannas, Aroras, Marwadis, Agarwals. For the Delhi hip-hop fan in Chhavi (she has a brilliant Delhi hip-hop Instagram page here), the lyrics speak to her.

In West Delhi, families laden with money — ideally from businesses and rent receipts — are also fearful of when it may leave. This results in a lot of frugal practices. However, when it does happen, status signaling among them also ends up being perceived as gaudy, simply because it’s more material than subtle. Much of the younger generation’s idea of status and individuality ends up being warped — especially when their families (and the colony aunties) already have a defined idea for their future. And a lot of the music from the area does lament about the need to be remembered and not be forgotten in their parents’ dreams for them.

How do the kids of West Delhi deal with the fact that this is true for so many of them? Bakchodi. Gossip. Random fun. Bitching. Saying wild, weird things for jokes. The kind that you would hear in Kaloli. It’s their version of using humor to cope with trauma. Even often at the expense of being politically incorrect, since cancel culture is the last thing on their minds. All that, and the age-old escapist activity of drinking:

“Velle bande badmash eh colony de” (9)

And West Delhi hip-hop seems in complete contrast to this gaudiness, this unsaid caging. They’re trying to define cool on their own. They’re trying to move away from the flashy cars that can often be seen on their main roads.

The lanes of Rajouri Garden and Karol Bagh are occupied by families who settled here after the Partition. Maybe, the sense of community comes from the fact that these families have seen conflict across decades.

The potential reparations that are owed to community members (for example, those who were victims of the ‘84 violence against Sikhs across Delhi) now are vote bank fodder. Areas like Tilak Nagar are instead crumbling under the weight of failing infrastructure and drugs.

This is the zone where Prabh Deep operates. His breakout debut album, Class-Sikh, was self-admittedly unabashedly a Delhi-18 talk show. He has a chip on his shoulder especially when it comes to state neglect of his people, freedom of speech, drug abuse and school. Even when he disparages what has happened to his streets, he can never shed where he comes from, never not be full of life, never not be bakchod:

“Kara fun preshaniya da kadda hal
Fikar ni mai krda hona ki mere naal kal
Te hoya ki si kal oh vi yaad nahio mainu
Zindagi aa jeeni aaj bas yaad aio mainu” (10)

Gabriel tells me of the time he met a 16 y/o Prabh Deep, who was introduced to the power of storytelling through rap through b-boy culture that Gabriel was studying at the time. Here’s a CRED ad where he talks about what being a Rs 3K/month clothes salesman taught him.

East, West, and the northern migrant settlements of Delhi pale in comparison to how much the cultural heritage (owing to monuments, of course) of South Delhi is in constant conversation. Chhavi says that this high ground of Mehrauli’s cultural heritage is what adds to the class struggle between the old rich and the new rich — that the latter are always trying to prove their status. Where the old rich live is always in vogue, owing to the aforementioned romanticization.

But some people like AB17 don’t care. Further south-west is the Najafgarh area, notorious for crime. That’s the area he has to inhabit and embrace, even as he wants to get away from the gangs of thugs who rule his locality. But his trap-inspired, drug-induced music is how he chooses to be king of the hill they call Delhi-71:

“Baarvi marksheet ni lagi hui charge sheet” (11)

Rap is no more just lyrical miracles on a boom-bap beat. Artists like AB17 are stretching the barriers of what is possible when your instrumental sells the image of a shady smoking room — the hallmark activity of society escapism. The substances go beyond your usual Gold Flake, marijuana, or scotch. You need a trip to speak about the tunnel vision that has clouded your lived experiences. While often derogatorily associated with “mumble”, Delhi hip-hop is also very much this, too.

No Hook

Much like its lore, Delhi’s sound is also hard to pinpoint, beyond a certain black fog that hovers over it. When Leonard Cohen sang “the minor fall, the major lift”, he was probably talking about why so much of Delhi hip-hop plays on some minor scale on the musical octave. It makes you an oft-unwilling slave to the (city’s) rhythm.

Chandigarh-based producer Viraj Gulati, who goes by idek, says that Delhi hip-hop has a lot more 808s — harder bass kicks, snares, and hi-hats. He spent a lot of nights in Delhi, primarily to market his music — and to him, the city’s music feels a lot like its uncertain, foggy nights. Despite being from Chandigarh, he believes Delhi music has more balls of steel. Delhi’s sound is arrogant, he says, much like its people, and is more emblematic of its nights than days. For the 20 year-old whose breakout came when he produced Prabh Deep’s Taqat from his bedroom, working overnight is not foreign. Neither is opening live for Prabh Deep.

In fact, there is literally a song called “Delhi Nightz”, by Tarun and Lil Kabeer. The music video pretty much feels like an intimidating, melancholic night in the city, even when there’s no immediate threat in the surrounding:

“Delhi ki raatein
Jahan pe kaale dhande chalte din dahade
Jahan pe baithi cheele tujhpe aankh adake” (12)

The funniest part of Delhi’s music is certainly the crowd that comes to a concert, to consume entertainment far removed from their reality. Delhi crowds can be extremely rude — they will call for the headliner while the opener is performing. Viraj’s take? “As openers, our job is to fill time. Cool changes every 6 months in Gurgaon.” It’s his version of “the consumer is king”.

Much of the credit for crafting Delhi’s sound goes to arguably India’s greatest hip-hop producer to-date, Sez On The Beat. Even idek remembers when he auditioned for a beat-making competition by Sez and Delhi-based Rebel 7, called Rebolution. Sez has inspired revolutionary desi beat-makers like Lambo Drive, idek, 3bhk, Karan Kanchan, Udbhav and Bharg. Sez is all over this playlist, if his influence isn’t evident already. But all of these producers are now expanding on their unique sounds.

For Rohini (and sometimes Pitampura) rep Karun, Hindustani classical is a go-to. He’s a massive fan of stringed instruments, and that goes beyond the electric guitar as is so prevalent in his 2022 release Qabool Hai. Sitar, sarangi, tanpura — his Mendus-produced banger Sheeshmahal is a glorious exercise in adding headbanging bass to homegrown instruments. It goes without saying that Karun also wants to make commercial bhajans — not just because he feels close to God, but also because he knows how incredible it can sound. The love for Indian music also guides a lot of production choices for Karun, like old Bollywood samples — especially since his partner-in-crime producer Udbhav is a massive RD Burman fan. The problem lies in sample clearance — until now, they haven’t had the money to pay for these samples, and they certainly do not want to get into a copyright lawsuit.

Even for the inherent poet in Karun, hip-hop goes beyond rap and poetry — he sincerely believes there are differences between the two, and words mean nothing without the music. It’s probably this philosophy that put the sheesh in Sheeshmahal when I first listened to it.

As an Air Force kid, Bharg has toured across Delhi-NCR in terms of residency. His belief in hip-hop as an umbrella term for a certain kind of music mirrors that of Karun — he wants to bridge the gap between rap and indie. He doesn’t think that Delhi’s artists set out with the explicit intention to make an entire body of work dark. What he does agree with is the idea that darkness is embedded in the subconscious of Delhi’s flamethrowers.

Bharg’s breakout album was with rapper Rawal, the much-heralded pop/rap joint Sab Chahiye. There is always a dichotomy that exists between rapper and producer which gets resolved by chemistry between them — the kind Rawal and Bharg have on the tape. They didn’t need to spell out what they were thinking. This chemistry has an entire city screaming “Dilli ka ladka par peeta mai Bombay Sapphire”.

Even as Delhi hip-hop grows more experimental over time (like with Karun and Bharg), adding lavish electric guitar outros, beat or rhythm switches, and sitars and dhol, it somehow maintains an ominous mist.

And this ominous nature of the music may still be more conscious for the firemen in the booth, who have voice the words. Like the ones who rant about Delhi’s love-hate trait. Seedhe Maut’s Rajdhani is an angry ode to the city that gave the duo everything, yet always found a way to make them beg, and make them bloodthirsty. Being the capital of India means that a Delhi hip-hop song is incomplete without talking about its politics. Public institutions like Delhi University, Jamia Milia Islamia, JNU are victims of an overarching right-wing saffronwash that calls anyone with an anti-establishment bent a terrorist. Rap is aggressive poetry about politics. And rappers understand it more than anybody. And Seedhe Maut’s Rajdhani is no different.

“Rajdhani rajdhani, 100 sawal hai lekin terpe hai ek bhi jawab ni
Paida hua tujhse zindagi tujhme bita di
Seekha jo bhi seekha hai tujhse
Toh hun tere jitna khoonkhaar bhi” (13)

It’s years of frustration that comes through as telling a lived experience as it happened. Years of not feeling represented when someone discusses Delhi as a fantasy, a place to be.

I always thought that the idea of studying and possibly residing in Delhi was lovely. Only much later did I realize that my idea of the city is by virtue of Edwin Lutyens’ propaganda. Rent there is very high, and it’s the bastion of the legacy elite. I would hear and make jokes about how Rohini isn’t really a part of Delhi because it feels so devoid of the mainstream idea of Delhi’s bustle that was sold to me. Only to realize much later how mistaken I was.

If we were to go by all this music, it sounds like Delhi’s natives and migrants both are wrestling with a massive tussle between their love for their home, and when their home kicked them in the shins. I probably experience only 10% of all this by virtue of privilege, but even that feels overwhelming. This love-hate is punctuated by one’s class, caste, and gender. It gets worse if you’re a woman, or if you don’t belong to the most elite. But somehow, most people feels it on some level. Probably because no one in Delhi is truly a Delhiite — they all come from different parts of India.

Long metro rides make you wonder where so many people are headed, and why they are perpetually forlorn. These are people who travel all the way to workplaces in Gurgaon and Noida, from the Delhi that pop culture doesn’t want to talk about. The idea of a routine like that is infectious in its sadness. You wonder if romance of any kind is possible in a place like this, when the city occupies so much of your mindspace. The kind of romance and cuddle weather that we read about on social media when winter here sets in.

And when a longtime resident like Jayant says that he might just end up coming back to where he’s from, you wonder whether this is really Stockholm Syndrome. The highest form of gaslighting, that’s so subtle that you never see it coming. Like a huge cage that you feel like could never get out of, but you’re not sure you want to. His family never did, even when they were faced with the choice multiple times.

When friends of mine would say how much they would want to get away from Delhi, I’d ask why. When Twitter has its monthly “my tier-I city is better” battle, I conveniently forget the times the city has been unkind to me, in all its greyness, in the people I had to deal with, in the culture shocks it has given me, in all the times when I couldn’t relate or adapt.

But sometimes, I wonder if it’s all worth it. When there’s no one I can identify with on those packed metro cabins, the loneliness rides over me. And I don't ask why.

“Bhar lu majburi kar lu crush yu
Kush fuku bharpur tang hu mat puch
Sang tu nahi ghar dur, sard yu sab kyu” (14)

I just play the music and take it all in.

Part II comes out January 1st week, ideally to kickstart 2023! I promise Part II is brighter than this, features some more people (including the ones who were here), is definitely more fun!

Obviously, thanks to: Bharg Kale [who’s cooked up another one recently, here], Viraj Gulati [who’s about to release soon as Smitt in Smitt and Wessn which is on this playlist], Gabriel Dattatreyan [whose book is here], and Karun [who just received a massive endorsement from Honey Singh, who apparently certified Karun as a lover boy — more on this in Part 2 :))]!

Special thanks to: Rijul Seth, Ishartek Pabla, Ritika Varshney, Meher Sachdeva, Tanya Singh, Dhruv Trehan, Aditi Singh, Abhiroop Dey, Nicaia D'Souza, Jayant Bakshi, the kind fellow Substack-er, Manik Dua, Taran Kaur, Chhavi Bahmba! All of these wonderful folks have helped me so much across both parts — landing facetime with artists, giving me their thoughts as Delhiites, all of it. The totality of RTHB wouldn’t have worked without them.

Also, the best beta testers ever: Shruti Gupta, Kushan Patel, Jayesha Koushik, Molina Singh, Sunaina Bose!

And for a bit of help on the translation!

Until next time, and till then, Happy New Year :)

But the piece this time around is about coffee and how we Indians look at it today. It tilts more towards cafes than retail off-the-shelf options, but I had an extremely fun time piecing this story. As usual, I was blown away by what I heard from people and read, and I was constantly learning something new.

However, I drank more tea to get the energy to finish writing this piece. Sorry. Ginger tea is just the classic winter beverage for me. Thank you, Tata Tea.

I didn’t really give too much thought to the backing track, but since coffee table jazz is a thing, I figured I’ll go with one that’s not just popular, but is also a pretty good reading track, in my opinion. Happy reading :))

There’s an entire genre of videos on YouTube that’s simply about a routine day in the life of a management consultant in Toronto/Tokyo/London/insert global city.

Any given video has a set structure: show the consultant waking up, using some face pack product that has likely sponsored them, prep for work, take a cycle, get coffee, reach work, speed-run work….you know the gist. It’s every bit meant to be sold as a glamorous career option in all the things one gets to do as a management consultant. It’s actually a little different from the '“product manager” genre of videos, because at least the poor consultants seem to be on the grind all day.

But this post isn’t about what management consulting or product management is — you can pick up an MBA pamphlet for that. Among creators in either genre — every day, without fail, they go to the same coffee shop, and get that same cup of coffee. And while it’s certainly true for Western countries, you’d be surprised to see that behavior in Indian working professionals, too. The potential for one of us to make “content” around this is not far away — it’s already happening, minus the coffee.

(If my parents are reading this — please don’t pick up an MBA pamphlet.)

India has come a long way when it comes to consuming coffee — from “yeah, I’m good with my Nescafe” to “nope, not touching anything except my morning Starbucks”. And there is still longer to go. But between consumers who are extremely protective about their darling French press, and the professional who can only spend enough time to buy a frappucino, the spectrum of coffee among people who can pay (or don’t care about what good coffee costs) is huge.

This also raises the question of how spoilt for choice we have become, and whether as premium customers, loyalty to that one cup of coffee holds meaning for us. That’s loyalty not just in terms of what the product has to offer, but also what the brand is doing over and above the product to ensure some lifetime patreons.

In order to start this story, we might want to roll back a decade or so, to go back to when coffee started becoming cool, owing to a Karnataka native named VG Siddhartha.

The earliest I can remember being exposed to cafe culture in my tier-2 hometown was a Cafe Coffee Day store. Bright yellow lights, walls with word clouds, “A lot can happen over coffee” having its own space, brown sofas, a counter with some of the most delectable cake and sandwiches I had ever eaten, a verandah for outside seating, and amicable staff. I had not seen this before, because I didn’t know what cafe culture was before this. CCD defined that for an entire generation of people who didn’t hail from a metro, and who didn’t have enough immediate family members who had likely seen the massive green-and-white logo abroad.

And this was by design. Interactions with German and Singaporean cultures made ex-financial services entrepreneur Siddhartha realize that there may be money to be made in selling coffee to people under the guise of providing them with free internet. He decided to move his consumer business of selling readymade coffee to something that might give him more margins — like selling an experience. It’s not like internet was a very widely-available commodity back in the 90s. Sigh, kids these days, cribbing about their Jio Fiber connection snapping for just 30 minutes.

I’m kids.

In 1996, Siddhartha opened the first CCD outlet on Brigade Road in Bangalore. Its biggest draw in a tea-loving nation was its free (but timebound for an hour) internet. While, of course, metropolitan cities would have seen the first spoils, fast-growing tier-2 cities like mine weren’t far away — Bhubaneswar saw its own in the early 2000s. By 2010, there were 1000+ stores all over India — 5 times that of Barista, that had entered India in 2000 with its first store in Delhi.

More importantly, CCD had an otherworldly pulse on what areas in cities were truly popular. As part of their go-to-market strategy, many CCD stores neighbored popular schools/colleges — a cup of cold coffee with benchmates after a dreary day of classwork sounded like the perfect cure. In that vein, CCD had tie-ups with multiple institutes to have a subsidized in-house cafe — multiple IITs have this arrangement. I didn’t realize until writing this that the first store in Bhubaneswar was right in front of the lane that led to my school (and an MBA institute, while we’re at that — please leave me alone).

While Barista is Indian-origin, it always felt like it came from Italy or somewhere in the Iberian Peninsula, owing to the name and the logo. CCD felt very distinctly desi. That logo with the ugly thin font and inconspicuous green leaf that seemed to emulate the French accent over the “e” in “cafe” could only have been a product of jugaad. One look at CCD’s logo today should tell you that the change might have been tough for them.

But while CCD was able to sell the cafe experience to India, it never truly sold coffee culture — even if it sourced beans from real Indian coffee estates. For the longest time, Indians associated coffee very strongly with two other ingredients: milk and sugar. Sure, Barista and CCD explained the difference between a cappuccino and an espresso. But with template optimization over time and scale, you could never tell if you were just having milk with a yellow heart designed on the first layer of the cup. There was quite a blurry line between coffee culture and cafe culture, and there was no micro-level education that was undertaken by any chain at the time to explain the minute differences in cups.

In one way, at the time, coffee was perceived the same way tea was: something to have while sitting and watching the breeze, or chatting with friends. The local CCD store was a premium tapri, if you will, but one that sold coffee. Back in 2008, the average Indian supposedly spent an hour at a cafe — as opposed to a Brit who would be more likely to just grab it on-the-go and average only 25 minutes there.

But Barista and CCD alerted global chains to the possibility of the Indian market maturing to other subtleties of drinking coffee. “I mean, what’s big about offering free Wi-Fi? We could do that too.” English chain Costa Coffee set foot in India in 2005, but not necessarily only with the idea of importing coffee from another country. They found a local blend that matched the one they use in their stores elsewhere in the world. But Costa was playing in uncharted territory: the kind that doesn’t believe in on-the-go coffee. They were trying to do it without a strategic Indian partner, unlike a green-and-white logo brand we know. They were also trying to introduce India to a more premium coffee experience, Italian and all.

For better or for worse, Costa might have been right about its hypothesis on the Indian coffee consumer. After one failed attempt in partnership with the Future Group, that same green-and-white logo finally entered India through a joint venture with Tata in October 2012, opening its first store in Mumbai. The plan was to use the coffee beans that Tata’s estates farmed, thereby solving one end of the supply chain for Starbucks. Apparently, John Derkach — the then-head of Costa Coffee India — once said that he wasn’t afraid of Starbucks’ possible foray, having been used to fighting them in its home country, Britain. But cafe culture had now truly arrived, and this time, the free Wi-Fi was unlimited.

A lot of things have changed since October 2012. Cafe Coffee Day nearly shut shop under immense debt pressure, and turned into how we know it today — a has-bean. Starbucks is gaining significant ground, not just in terms of number of stores across the country, but also in terms of profit. Barista is re-orienting itself to scale stealthily. Costa went through its ups and downs, only to give India another shot with franchise operators Devyani International extending its partnership till 2026. But in the aftermath of the entry of global players trying to bring coffee to India, a few homegrown seeds were planted in the 2010s, that promised a much wider landscape to coffee consumers.

(Something about CCD being that ex that changed your life for the better, but you knew it was time to move on from them.)

India consistently ranks in the top 10 coffee producers. Yet, it usually exports around 70% of all of those beans. A HUGE chunk of the exported stuff — usually 60-70% — ends up being specialty coffee, which is as opposed to instant coffee. There is such a thing as Indian coffee, just that it has been for long largely unknown to regions that were not South India.

This was a gap that Blue Tokai wanted to exploit, and convinced farmers to sell their specialty beans to them, to roast and package for sale. They began operations in 2013, and at the time, they hadn’t started running cafes which they’re now more known for. 3 years later, co-founders Ayush Bathwal, Anirudh Sharma and Sushant Goel set up their own spin on farm-to-cup in the form of Third Wave Coffee Roasters. Sleepy Owl started around the same time, in an attempt to take our eyes away from cold coffee to cold brew, and bring more authenticity to the beverage. And these are only just the popular offshoots of the advent of cafe culture. All of these players were sourcing their coffee primarily from the same region of Karnataka, but found different ways to popularize it. And the battleground was a mix of playing direct-to-consumer, while ideally also opening offline stores. We were finally moving from cafes to coffee.

Cool beans.

Everything Nice

In the grand landscape of Indian coffee, loyalty to one brew is a complex question. I wish I could tell you that it had a straightforward answer. It is not aroma or strength alone that plays into why the average coffee consumer in India is a regular drinker of a certain kind of brew, if they are so. It is a blend of product and non-product factors, while also being limited by the (mis)conception that coffee is also viewed as an item of consumption to be had only on certain occasions.

But I would be wrong if I told you price wasn’t first on that list. Why CCD was able to succeed is because their average price of Rs 150/cup is accessible at once for many people in the earning spectrum. In fact, CCD’s highest-priced serving of coffee, hot or cold, is the (sinfully indulgent) Devil’s Own with cream at Rs 250 — a point that marked the average for other players trying to tap into a loyal consumer base for their brew. For starters, a regular cup of cold brew at Third Wave would cost that much, only to increase with size.

I distinctly remember a friend questioning the need for “fancy brew” as opposed to Nescafe — only to be countered by another friend saying that on a per-gram basis, both cost the same. And it’s true — Nescafe Gold costs around Rs 390 for every 100g, while a pack of Blue Tokai Attikan Coffee beans costs little more than Rs 250 for the same weight. However, naturally, a cup of ground coffee becomes more expensive to brew by virtue of needing to buy the equipment to roast the beans. You may always make the argument that said equipment would be a one-time purchase, but hefty one-time purchases are only useful if we use them regularly. No one knows that better than us thrifty Indians.

More importantly, we are still quite some time away from educating people on what equipment is required to brew those beans. It can be confusing, and a little intimidating at first, to navigate between moka pots, grinders, French presses, drip machines, and good old filter papers. In fact, many of us aren’t entirely aware of how the texture and flavour associated with light roast as opposed to medium.

Blue Tokai understood this early on. A quick look at their website UI tells you that they’re willing to put in effort to make the consumer understand what it is they’re consuming. If you’re a newbie, they have easy pour products for you that just need 4 steps, without any equipment. If you’re looking to have your own home setup, they are willing to offer you a discount on a machine + coffee bundle should you choose to buy both from them. This obsession over ensuring information symmetry for customers is also evident in the notes that accompany each Blue Tokai product — roast level, source, tasting notes — acidity and bitterness levels. And as of this year, they kickstarted something called the Taster’s Club — a series of subscription boxes, each of which is accompanies by 3 samples of 75g, along with a handbook, a video, and access to an exclusive Discord server. Blue Tokai has regular classes on how to brew ground coffee in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

I was almost going to make my own version of the iceberg meme to explain the kind of user evolution Blue Tokai is trying to bring about, but I guess Reddit (from u/ejtc25 on r/JamesHoffman) beat me to it already. I don’t know half of these things myself:

But education is important — not just because it leads to evolution of tastes, but fundamentally for Blue Tokai, it should lead to more money. Blue Tokai operates as both a cafe and a coffee retailer, and as of today, sells the entire suite of coffee products, from the bean to the mean machine. There is always the possibility that they may lose a small fraction of this customer set to more exotic forms of coffee that one may find abroad or in another places in the country — maybe a contact who owns some land at Chikmagalur. But they’re very firm on who their customer is — earns well, likely lives in a metro city, ideally Gen Z or millennial, wants to buy products that align with their values, likes cafes not just for ergonomic purposes (like work or the “vibe”) but also for the actual offering. As long as their product quality is top notch, they wouldn’t need to worry about a fall off. Price is not really an important consideration for Blue Tokai’s target audience, because they believe that the worth of a cup of premium coffee is justified.

It’s a notable shift from the singularity of “cafe culture”, and Blue Tokai is very self-aware about this. In fact, this is an actual quote from co-founder Matt Chittaranjan, courtesy YourStory:

“Our vision has always been to be a coffee company, not necessarily a cafe company. Cafes have been important because that is where people come, try the product, and compare how we are different from the standard coffee available.”

This is also true for Third Wave. If you are interested, on ordering a pour-over coffee, the barista can also show you how the pour-over machine actually works. The off-the-shelf packets also contain tasting notes and roast type.

One game-changer for coffee consumption in India was the pandemic. This was true across the entire suite of coffee products: instant, ground, sachets, filters, equipment. And of course, Dalgona coffee was one of the most popular searches across the internet. It may be safe to say that by virtue of CoVID locking us all down at home, some people might have had more time and money to learn how to brew coffee the way they wanted.

Sugar and Spice

But education is just one aspect of customer evolution, because what is education without scale? A large part of why Cafe Coffee Day succeeded was how effectively and quickly it opened stores, till it opened one too many. Third Wave aims to open 150 stores by March 2023 — that’s 150 stores in nearly 7 years. Blue Tokai, however, had only 50+ outlets by February 2022 — in their ~10-year span. Starbucks crossed the 250 mark earlier this year. But it’s where these stores seem to be concentrated that tell a greater story.

In 2018, Quartz did quite a funnily titled story — “Chennai, home of Indian coffee, scoffs as Starbucks enters the market”. Starbucks entered the city 2 years after it first entered India — which, for a tier-1 city, sounds slightly odd. However, the piece theorises 2 reasons for this delay: a) as protectors of the holy filter coffee, Chennai knew the beverage inside out, and b) CCD alone had 74 outlets in the city. To date, neither Blue Tokai nor Third Wave has a single store in Chennai. In fact, Chennai’s first roastery cafe opened only in 2020, after the first CoVID wave. The story doesn’t just lie in the fact that specialty coffee (or premium instant, in the case of Starbucks) seems exclusive only to tier-1 cities.

Blue Tokai is spread across 10 cities in India, and Third Wave across 8. With the exception of Bangalore and Hyderabad, there’s very little representation anywhere else in South India, or even in the east. Let this sink in: Blue Tokai opened in Tokyo before Chennai. It’s very likely that there’s little reason to chalk this up primarily to CCD’s omnipresence — South Indians just know coffee inside out. And it’s hard to be a coffee store in a city where the people you hope to attract believe that they can do better from the comfort of their own homes.

Which is funny — national stats show that tea outstrips coffee consumption in Tamil Nadu by a mile or two. Ganapathi Ramanathan, a marketer at insurance startup Plum, mentions that coffee has been a marker of caste in his hometown Chennai. After opposition to a Western beverage that could corrupt Tamil women, Tamil Brahmins drank coffee as a status symbol. Tea, on the other hand, was, and continues to be a drink for the working class — Ganapathi sends me photos of how small tea shops exist on every corner even in a city that’s known by the rest of India as a coffee bastion. Coffee hotels took off — with certain areas reserved solely for upper castes. Brahmins developed often-discriminatory rituals around coffee, which eventually crept into mainstream pop culture — and shaped our perception of Tamil Nadu as a state dominated by beans instead of leaves. There’s more in this paper from 2002.

North India loves tea — even if a tectonic shift in its inclination towards coffee began in the early 2010s. And within coffee, instant continues to dominate; being one of Tata’s biggest consumer segments last year. We love our adrak-wali (ginger) chai, and we are unabashed in how much milk and sugar we want in our cup. There is a significant difference in how South India perceives coffee as opposed to other regions of the country — making it a harder market to crack. That tectonic shift that marked an increasing preference over tea for North and East Indians is indicative of a large growth opportunity for coffee chains. However, on the flip side, the misconception about coffee necessarily needing milk has possibly destroyed palettes, and may not be present anywhere else more than in the north.

That being said, Starbucks has 300 stores in 36 cities as of last month. Half of the stores are spread across tier-1 cities. The Seattle chain has also opened at least one store in Bhubaneswar (which has 2 now), Trivandrum, Siliguri, Nashik and Guwahati, to name a few. With the field left wide open after the fall of CCD, Tata Starbucks is looking to crowd in and make the brand name more accessible and ubiquitous. In fact, Maharashtra — which ranked highest in tea consumption in 2017 according to the NSSO — has the highest number of Starbucks stores of any state in India.

And sometimes, expansion is just a question of high footfall. Massive chains literally placed next to, or opposite each other at popular areas in cities like Bangalore and Delhi is quite the “phenomenon”. Below is one such area in Gurgaon that I tweeted about (yes, my tweets often precede my pieces). Similarly, the Tim Hortons in Saket’s Select CityWalk mall, that opened only in August this year, is right opposite the Starbucks there. While all chains have differentiated target audiences, this looks like an attempt to get at fencesitters — with real loyalty to any one brew, yet.

I spoke to Vardhman Jain, co-founder of BONOMI Cold Brew (which, having tasted, I highly recommend), who refers to the popularity of cold coffee, or the Indian version of it — with lots of froth, icecream, and chocolate sauce. A very small niche in India truly understands as a standalone flavourful beverage, and our inability to separate it from sweeteners like milk hampers our taste buds. With BONOMI, that’s what Vardhman is trying to change.

He also tells me an alarming fact that at first sounds too insane: a large portion of India has some level of intolerance toward dairy, but does not know this yet. But apparently, this might have some truth to it, if not all. This may contribute to the idea of palette destruction when it comes to coffee — something that he’s trying to solve for at BONOMI. Moreover, health consciousness became omnipresent in the pandemic, because people realized that life is too short. This is why multiple coffee-related retail startups opened up in the same time — like Kaapi Machines and BONOMI as well.

The milk agenda is also something that seems to be pushed by chains. One look at Starbucks’ “barista recommends” proves that much — with the exception of the Vanilla Sweet Cream Cold Brew, every other item is the most indulgent combo of milk and coffee, and sometimes things like hot chocolate. The top 2 items are Cold Coffee, and Java Chip Frappuccino (which is just Cold Coffee with whipped cream and chocolate chips. I assume this dashboard is dynamic, but I don’t expect it to change to purer forms of coffee anytime soon.

Naturally, BONOMI has to constantly be abreast of what its customers like. Vardhman initially thought that his Classic Cold Brew would be the highest-selling bottle for them. He was proven wrong — it ended up being BONOMI’s caramel flavour, simply because it was sweet. After having received training as a barista, and enjoying coffee in its purest, most flavorful forms at different places, Vardhman was primed to introduce the same to a mainstream Indian audience. But it’s tough to sell cold brew that’s not inherently sugar-y in India.

But on the other end of associating sugar with milk is the idea that pure, unadulterated coffee always has to be bitter. Ashwani, the manager of the Third Wave store near Sikanderpur metro station in Gurgaon — one of the prime locations in the city by footfall, says that only 10-15% of customers drink black coffee or cold brew. This niche audience also knows that there is a difference between cold brew and black coffee, and are very likely to be repeat customers in Third Wave for the very same item. This is also a sentiment echoed by Vardhman, who often finds himself trying to explain the difference between cold brew and iced coffee. Or that coffee doesn't always have to be bitter.

Prathiksha BU, a reporter for YourStory, fits the ideal consumer for a lot of the pro-arguments for spending good coffee. Her hunt for good coffee came from her dislike (not necessarily intolerance) for milk. She tells me that she was not the biggest fan of filter coffee brewed at her family home either, simply because of the existence of milk and sugar in the final product. She started learning brewing her own beans from people in the industry, and also invested in equipment to do the same at home herself.

Welcome to the Working Week

There’s little doubt that coffee is quite a nice and complex beverage that deserves its own little time slot to enjoy while sitting in the balcony without any other distraction.

Assuming that’s true — it’s pretty insane that it’s become widely accepted that we find that our work has to accompany our cup of coffee. Those “day in the life” videos are the most popular exemplification of this.

Besides Red Bull/Monster, coffee is the go-to for people who need a productivity kick. And cafes have turned out to be a boon for people who need a space to work, and a good cup of coffee. But over the years, it’s become harder to decouple the relationship between coffee and work. It’s as if our idea of coffee consumption is increasingly defined by how we choose to work. It’s no coincidence that coffee culture in India has progressed pretty much hand-in-hand with its tech ecosystem.

Abhishek Shah, the founder of an early-stage e-commerce startup named KURA, is quite the frequent visitor of the Starbucks near his house in Mumbai. He tells me that he’d give Starbucks a 5 or 6/10 for the brew quality, saying that he’s certainly had better coffee. But one of the core reasons why he goes there almost every day is because it’s significantly cheaper than renting a co-working space, especially in Mumbai. He doesn’t use this Starbucks, or any Starbucks in general, for a social reason. For that, he prefers to visit indie shops, like The Bagelshop in Bandra. He adds that whenever he sets up an office space for KURA, he’d want freshly-brewed coffee every day — much like the Blue Tokai he makes when he can, and not the Starbucks that he finds convenient to go to.

It’s not tough to imagine coffee as a function of your profession. I speak to Ankit Kumar, who works in the product division of a company that — and I swear I didn’t realize this until I wrote these words — BREW.com. Working in a remote job allowed him to explore a lot of cafes in any given city that he stayed in. But at the same time, it’s also the type of establishment he goes to almost every day to do focused work.

His morning cup comes from a cafe near his place of residence in Bangalore, called All About Coffee. He has taken the black coffee redpill as well, having moved to loving the Americano more than the iced latte. My conversation with him indicates that certain cafes have different purposes for him. He looks at the cafes that he frequents for work as a ROI problem — “X is what I earn per hour. If I’m paying 200 bucks for 4 hours of productivity, what’s the return I get on my salary?”

And some cafes are, of course, deliberately designed to be productivity-friendly. Third Wave Coffee has a dedicated in-house design team, which ensures a couple of things: a) every store screams the brand’s minimalist approach, and b) there’s enough plugpoints in the entire cafe. Third Wave initially started by gathering micro-communities of people across different professions who enjoyed coffee. But in the last couple of years, especially with the boom that India’s startup ecosystem has seen, the chain became singularly known on social media as a productivity space. This is also one reason why Nikhil George, a fintech professional based out of Mumbai, prefers to go to Starbucks over some other chain — plug-points.

In metro cities like Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, our enjoyment of coffee also falls victim to convenience. There is no way anyone in either city is willingly wading through traffic (and smog) to go to a fancy cafe to have your work be accompanied by some incredible coffee. And on the days you’re not working, your will to explore is a little hampered by those same factors that define a city’s flow.

Utility, not experience.

Image is Everything?

Bigger chains capitalize on this idea of ease for the sake of productivity not only by expanding quickly across India’s prime locations, but also ideally by introducing a loyalty program. Both Starbucks and Third Wave have loyalty programs that are designed to retain regular customers. Interestingly, CCD was a pioneer of coffee loyalty programs in India, with the launch of the Citizens’ Card in 2002. This evolved later into earning “Beans” on the CCD app, which was launched in 2015. Barista launched its own “Bean ‘o’ holic” loyalty card in 2012, with consumers graduating levels by accumulating points with every purchase. Costa has an app for loyalty too.

How effective are loyalty programs overall? While it’s not known how successful that has been for most other chains, Starbucks’s loyalty program has been killing it in India — with users increasing significantly year on year. It’s the promise of rewards on a set number of repeat purchases, and the idea that the average cost of your cup of coffee dips with time through discounts. However, it’s not difficult to have the apps of different chains on your smartphone. You don’t necessarily have to pay anything beyond a cup of coffee to install loyalty apps.

Which is where Blue Tokai differs — it prioritizes discounts online subscriptions over out-and-out loyalty programs. Sarthak Rastogi is a venture capitalist at Gurgaon-based Huddle, whose portfolio includes Blue Tokai. He says that Blue Tokai knows its customers really well, who, unlike for other chains, also buy Blue Tokai’s off-the-shelf products in bulk. For them, investing in education has been the more important method of customer retention than any sort of loyalty schem Its customers are looking to migrate to a top-tier level of coffee, ideally never to look back on the artificially-sweetened products they were once used to. They understand what the brand of Blue Tokai stands for, and why so.

This raises other questions about brand perceptions. Why did Dalgona coffee get a bad name from coffee connoiseurs at the height of its popularity in 2020? Why is CCD sill so revered as the spot for a lot of “first” experiences? Why is Blue Tokai’s logo a peacock? (To that last question, they have a cool story about “tokai” meaning the plume of a peacock — the national bird of India.)

But adding to the idea of brand perception is a conversation with Tejas Kinger, a product marketer at Plum. He says that even though he can certainly afford it — and has spent a lot on experimenting with different coffee brands — entering a Starbucks continues to feel a little intimidating. This may have something to do with looking at it as an aspirational brand while a college student. A sentiment that Ankit also shared — spending a fraction of his first internship stipend at the nearest Starbucks store is a memory he remembers.

And image is everything, especially when it comes to getting new customers. Starbucks attracts aspiration, Blue Tokai evokes purity, Third Wave recalls utility, CCD is comfort.

This is also something that a brand like Tim Hortons — that entered India only this year with its pilot stores in Delhi/NCR — understands deeply. “Cheaper man’s Starbucks” / “Canada’s Starbucks” is the most common moniker that you could hear on the aisles of CyberHub in Gurgaon, where Tim Hortons first opened this August. The line to enter the store was long every day for at least the first 2 weeks from the store’s opening. More importantly, Tim Hortons left no stone unturned in cashing into its Canadian heritage — opening its third store recently in Chandigarh. They’re looking to be an aspirational brand, much like Starbucks, but a little more affordable. An increasing market size for coffee, especially among Gen-Z and millennials is something they’re banking on. It helps that their emphasis on literally painting the town red reminds one of Christmas.

The Fourth Wave

India is well into the third wave of coffee right now — where the story behind the beans has become more important than ever. The quality of the bean is important, and the consumer should be able to manipulate the bitterness and texture of their drink. More people are slowly realizing that the coffee bean has so many form factors that they can’t, and shouldn’t be one single template way of enjoying the drink. Coffee doesn’t always need to be heavily roasted, and light roast beans go extremely well with other flavours — especially citric ones.

Specialty coffee players that have expertise in the end-to-end of the single-origin coffee bean have emerged in small numbers in metro cities. Fermentation of coffee seems to be quite an experiment that some of these roasteries are trying out their hand with. There’s Maverick and Farmer, that created a fermented brew with orange juice. They have 3 cafes spread across Bangalore and Goa. There’s Mumbai-based Subko, that offers a cup with notes of maple syrup, apricot, and pecans. This natural extension of the third wave is — a) focused on expanding the science of coffee by extracting the most out of coffee beans, and b) commercializing this science by taking it to homes. In the most ideal state of this phase, coffee is not associated singularly with bitterness or sweetness, specialty blends become more accessible to homebodies, and large cafe chains have much less of a hold.

The issue? Growth for such coffee is pretty slow. Vardhman says the same for BONOMI — that the move away from his sweeter flavours to more exotic ones is happening, but not as fast as he thought it would be. Maverick and Farmer closed their Gurgaon cafe permanently — proving that it’s tough to sell the idea of experimenting with coffee to a city that breathes on constantly moving for work, among other harmful substances. But notably, the idea of coffee being more flavourful also coincides with its health aspects. Post-CoVID, the most popular question Vardhman gets asked is regarding the calorie intake and sugar level in his bottles.

India is also trying to create a name for its beans globally. Blue Tokai has entered the Japanese market. Roasteries like Subko trying to sell their single-origin experimental brews sourced from their micro-estates to the world — like coffee with lychee candy. They’re also explaining why growing coffee at different altitudes is different, among other nuances. Coffee-based cocktails are quite suave, too, although beyond the occasional bar, there has never been an attempt to make them mainstream.

In a lot of ways, the stage for such artisan cafes / retailers has been set because of the advent of Blue Tokai’s transparency in its packets — what’s the origin of the bean, how bitter or acidic it is, etcetera. The move to specialty coffee will depend on how India’s income levels grow in time. Making your own batch of coffee at home can get fairly expensive. Even more so when you like exotic flavours.

But it may be safe to say that we’re getting used to cafes existing because they have more to offer than just their aura. And we wouldn’t likely be here if we hadn’t been graced by the funk that CCD brought. The best way to look at summarizing India’s journey and perception towards the beverage lies in CCD’s tagline. We went from “a lot can happen over coffee” to “a lot can happen around coffee”. For a country that had little knowledge outside of pockets as to how much we produce coffee, our graduation into coffee culture necessitated the precedence of cafe culture. Coffee culture is staying for the better, and is most certainly evolving.

Until next time :)

Special thanks to the following people who made this piece happen: Vardhman Jain, Sarthak Rastogi, Nikhil George, Anagha K, Ganapathi Ramanathan, Tejas Kinger, Prathiksha BU, Abhishek Shah, Ankit Kumar, Siddharth Vijayaraghavan!

I’ve been simultaneously sort of doing some groundwork on my next edition — I have known for a while what the December edition is going to be. It will be my most ambitious piece to-date, which also makes it significantly harder to pull off. If everything works out, I’d love to show it to you as soon as possible!

It’s nearly one year to Hot Chips, and I haven’t had any time to think about how one year of this newsletter has flown by. Life’s become pretty hectic, which might explain this delay. But I’m not complaining.

All I do know is I’m glad where it is going, what it’s been through, and I massively enjoy writing this newsletter. I think I can do this for a long enough time without feeling bored, or worrying about the motivation to write something big day in and day out. And I’m glad that to-date, 350 (!!!) folks have stuck around for this journey :))

That being said: this might have been the toughest piece I’ve done. I’ve been stuck at various points, because I have known the story in my head for more than a month-and-a-half. It had a beginning and an end, but a sketchy middle act. And I had a tough time deciding the song. I wanted this to be as thorough as possible, because I felt like this story could be deeper than what average internet-savvy person might give it credit.

But a few things, and people, clicked. I was able to get some insane insights about the creator economy in general, not just the story I wanted to write. I wish I could use all of them here!

I also needed a track that felt both genuine and ironic in its usage. I know, I know, “Why Drake??” But here’s the thing: he’s the (ew) superstar that embodies traits of both the main characters in this story. So there’s one track for each of these guys, tracks that best resemble them. The 2nd song will come up somewhere in between. They’re also some of Drake’s best, which is great, considering how trash he has been the last 4 years.

I’ll stop.

But I suggest you get a speaker, a can of Coke, and (ahem) a pitzah or borgir to read this :)

The last year or so saw the rise of short king spring.

Conventional societal knowledge states that it’s hard out on the streets of love for a man below 6 feet. Which is why a lot of guys love rounding off their heights to the nearest acceptable benchmark. 5’10” and 5’11” become 6 feet. And on meeting, it certainly feels underwhelming, but you can’t quite place why without a physical measurement scale. Hell, I’m a little short, but I wouldn’t go as far as to do that. If only I had been a basketball fan in my early adolescence instead of now.

But now? It’s hip to be short. What began as a meme song in 2019 from The Lonely Island-ripoff Tiny Meat Gang has materialized into something much bigger:

“Standing 5'8", voice 6'5""

Tom Holland is short, and he’s with Zendaya. TikTok is rife with the hashtag #shortking. Anthony Fauci is 5’7”, and he tried to save an entire country. The short-form video giant was rife with creators who couldn’t see over the dinner table. And the TikToks are about, well, interesting things: how to pose for a short king when you’re a tall queen, how to handle height differences in a relationship, and flexes of how that when God made short kings, they forgot a few inches.

But I suppose no one embodies that last line more than two guys who originally became big on TikTok, measuring a bit above 3 feet, who had the internet in a chokehold by going toe-to-toe against each other.

If He Dies, He Dies

As a region, Russia has its fair share of citizens suffering from growth hormone deficiency (GHD), so much so that hormone therapy for the children who suffer from it is funded by the state. As of 2016, for every 100,000 children in Russia, 1,438 suffer from GHD. Prevalence of GHD also depends on sub-regions in Russia — in some places, it’s really high. GHD doesn’t just affect height, but the three-dimensional growth that a normal homo sapiens goes through, as well as the bone mass.

But not that Hasbulla Magomedov cares. Hasbulla was born in 2003 in a Russian village called Aksha, before moving to Makhachkala. He suffers from a form of dwarfism which has limited his body and voice development. But his position is that his likeness with the most famous (and arguably most talented) GHD victim of all — Lionel Messi — exists beyond just sharing the condition.

He’s 3’3”, and harbors dreams of making it to the UFC. If he couldn’t be as big and laterally quick as his idol — Khabib Nurmagomedov — he was going to imitate him in style and spirit. So he started making videos of himself shadow boxing, imitating UFC fighters, punching his crew and getting away with it slyly.

Since discovering that he has the advantage of looking too innocent for a 19-year old (now 20), he created content around pulling pranks on his friends and crew. And, of course, doing random things on the street. Like bossing the dust around on an ATV, playing with a monkey, and wielding a gun like a gangster. One look at his Instagram might make one concerned as to how much he loves guns. Russian gun laws are wild. On the other hand, his social game also involves functioning as a cat stan account. One of his most popular clips is from last year, of him cutely mispronouncing “pizza”. The original clip got 8.4M views in a month, and got memed to oblivion.

Before you knew it, he was clicking pictures with Khabib, who has pretty much taken Hasbulla under his wing. His favorite past-time is throwing jabs at pro MMA fighters. Khabib, Daniel Cormier, Alexander Volkanovski, everyone has been a a victim.

But all things aside, Hasbulla created a unique image of himself in front of the world. One that is often described by many as “cute but dangerous”, “adorable but intimidating”, “spirited but ready to throw a punch”, and “a player of the highest order”. There’s a Twitter page (@HasbullaHive) dedicated entirely to posting photos of Hasbulla with the corniest of captions about how he’s a ladies’ man. “He’s about to steal yo girl”. Note that HasbullaHive is not run by Hasbulla’s team. It’s a fan account with more than 660K followers. TikTok is full of Hasbulla fan pages that have followers even in the hundreds of thousands. His own is at a 1.3M, while his Instagram crossed the 3M mark only a few weeks ago.

Fan pages, not the actual one.

Before April 2022, not much was known about who he is as a person, until he did his first public interview with Barstool Sports. And, well, he pulled no punches. He annoyed the heck out of the interviewer (and punched him), called him unintelligent, talked about his cat who he wanted to bring to Dubai. Hasbulla has dreams, which may or may not involve holding a pistol on either hand. But he originally wanted to be a trader or a truck driver, only to eventually get into car business.

He claims to have learnt boxing himself. You know what they say about violence: when your guns fail, only your hands can save you. He wants to be the Minister of Internal Affairs for his district, Dagestan, so that he can make his haters parade around the city with him. And remove all speeding limits.

But above all, he will beat up Abdu Rozik till he bleeds to death.

Tajikistan’s Very Own

A piece of the ancient relic that was the Soviet Union, Tajikistan has its fair share of health deficiencies among its citizens, especially women and children aged between 6 months and 5 years. Children were especially susceptible to growth stunts due to chronic malnutrition in their early years — in 2017, a national health survey concluded that 18% of under-5 children suffered from stunting. This is a more critical issue in Tajikistan’s rural areas.

Abdu Rozik was born a year after Hasbulla, in the Panjakent district — the kind of rural area where you would expect to have see such health hazards. He will turn 19 this year. It may not be too far to assume that the two of them meeting could probably be destiny. Abdu had a humble beginning. He too suffers from dwarfism, and had a phase of rickets as a child. He was grossly underweight, much like a fair chunk of Tajik children. His parents, who are both gardeners, weren’t rich enough to afford treatment for him at the time.

However, Abdu had one trait that few people do: an angelic voice. He used to sing in bazaars to earn money, and he tried his hand at shooting videos to see if popularity embraces him. And in that effort, he was discovered by a Tajik rapper named Baron, who took him under his reins to the capital city of Dushanbe, under the label he was part of — Avlod Media. Baron provided financial assistance to him and eventually brought him to Dubai.

Abdu was born to be don the hat of a singer with a forlorn love. And his first tryst with internet fame was a track named “Ohi Dili Zor”, which was published under Avlod. While there’s not been an attempt to translate the lyrics of the song, one look at his emotiveness should be enough to give away the possible theme of the song. Short, adorable king who can sing? Hallelujah. 10M+ people also think the same.

But Abdu’s global appeal came when a clip of him cutely mispronouncing the word “burger” surfaced. He got called the borgir kid. The memes were relentless. He had achieved the status of viral sensation, with 3.7M followers on Instagram to-date.

Abdu’s Instagram immediately pops out — sometimes he’s doing the most adorable things, like standing headfirst on a snowy ground (and tumbling), going to fancy restaurants, doing funny impressions, dancing, singing, and meeting every celebrity he can. For the longest time, his dream was to meet Cristiano Ronaldo — which he also accomplished this year. He’s met everyone — Ronaldinho, Paul Pogba, AR Rahman, Munawar Farqui, Salman Khan, Sadiq Khan. He’s endearing, photogenic, seemingly very approachable, and full of life. In 2021, he became the youngest person from Tajikistan to receive the UAE golden visa — which gives him 10-year residency.

While both Abdu and Hasbulla seem to have had similar come-ups to fame, their external brands, and the way they both present as captivating, could not be more different. Besides boxing, the only other thing common to both of them is that they’re both fairly religious. Hasbulla gives off the vibe that he doesn’t have two shits to give about fame or celebrities. He’s naughty, cunning, sometimes a bit sinister. Most of his pictures contain a grumpy face of him. He embodies the “I’mma get rich and get my homies rich, by hook or by crook” mentality, and that’s all there is to the game for him. He doesn’t care who’s in front of him, or what setting he’s in — they’re all getting a punch when they least expect it. He couldn’t care too much about being a superstar, or being likable. He’s just himself.

Which is not to say Abdu isn’t himself, but it’s almost as if he was always meant to be a blockbusting entertainer — who are, by nature, the subject of a lot of love and adulation. He understands how to capture audiences, how to generate mass appeal, and how to churn hits. He wants to dress and look fancy, live fancy, and have some jolly good fun and laughter while he’s at it, while gripping the world in a chokehold with the supposed innocence of his heart. And unlike Hasbulla, he has no qualms chilling (and making cute reels) with lovely women. He might be more emblematic of short king spring than his slightly-older rival.

But in May 2021, both personalities came to a clash that clasped the internet in a vice. It was the fight to end all fights. Step aside, superheroes and sportspersons, here’s the showdown of the century. It’s “pitzah” vs “borgir”:

Hypebeast Mode

It is entirely possible that both of them are just playing characters. But it doesn’t matter: Hasbulla and Abdu Rozik are aces at building hype around them. So it’d only make sense for them to find ways to monetize their popularity.

The catch is that there’s virtually very little on the internet regarding how both of them are going about brand-building. An attempt to take a stab at it took me to a few interesting places, doing some piecing from their socials, and a lot more enlightenment regarding the journey of a content creator.

I spoke with Avantika Gupta and Rayees Shaikh, two folks from the influencer marketing and social media division from the music label Big Bang Music. A chat with them led to listing down factors that we thought evoked certain kinds of feelings from each account. An analogy that helped frame this was Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan: both popular among masses, but known for very different things tonally.

• Body language — Hasbulla is almost always stiff. His face is often grumpy, and it feels like he’d rebuff you if you approached him for a selfie. Even if he smiles, it feels like he has something up his sleeve that he wants to surprise you with. Abdu Rozik, however, is extremely expressive: he loves using his hands, and his facial expressions have the range of a Marriott breakfast buffet. His smile feels warm, and he seems very emotive. He’s playful, but not in a sly manner. You can ask him for a selfie, and he would probably agree.

  

• Dressing sense: Hasbulla is the influencer version of rap Drake. Never mind that I was listening to 21 while writing this: Hasbulla has tons of photos where he is actually strapped. And except for when he has to tend to prayers, he’s wearing “I don’t give a fuck” clothes. He is the start of 6 God.

  

  But Abdu Rozik has a suite of suits. He has something for every occasion. He wants attention. He’s pop Drake, he makes songs like Nice For What.

  

• Company: A quick look at who either of them hangs out with gives you distinct impressions. You could replace Mickey and Rocky with Khabib and Hasbulla chasing chickens and it would still be a great movie. You won’t see Hasbulla with any women, ever, even though he gives you the idea that he has that ladies’ man touch. But Abdu is a meet-and-greeter of the highest order. He thrives as an extrovert. Men, women, non-binary people, they all love him.

Andre Agassi might not agree, but image is everything. But a character? You believe in a character, even if its smoke and mirrors. Hasbulla and Abdu Rozik are the main characters in a world where short-form content is commanding authority and attention. PR is king in world-building around a character, and it can be ever so deliberate. As a character, BeerBiceps is someone who the average listener would associate traits like humility, learning, positivity, health, and now entrepreneurship. You could play a drinking game everytime he says he’s humble. But it’s sheer lengths to which his team goes to maintain that character. There is never a content piece that’s not manicured by him. His angel investments in startups (which are fairly recent) make quite some noise — most notably, his cheque for consumer tech company Nothing. If cricketers and Bollywood stars can hire PR, why can’t influencers?

Neither Hasbulla nor Abdu Rozik has had to deal with particularly bad PR yet, but the brands of both these people look so deliberately controversy-free. It’s just two people from humble backgrounds and a couple of physical shortfalls living their dreams, devoid of real-world politics or social issues.

Chasing Bags

And the dreams are tall. Both of them frequent/live in Dubai, and flex to the point where you ask yourself whether there are any dreams worth more than money. How much the net worth of either influencer is, is yet to be known. With the diverse revenue streams that an influencer may have, your guess is as good as mine.

Both of them surely make money from running ads before, during, and after content on TikTok, Instagram, and in the case of Abdu Rozik — YouTube.

Ideally as influencers, brand deals should come fairly naturally to both, given their following is in the order of millions. But here’s the kicker: Hasbulla, at the very least, is rarely shown doing a single brand deal on his Instagram. The man is pure gangster. There’s no question he must have brands chasing after him every other day. But he’s clearly very selective about being a sellout.

Abdu Rozik, on the other hand, goes to new restaurants every other day, or so say his stories — often to eat burgers. He has no qualms about calling a restaurant that will obviously pay him well for his endorsement the best dessert shop in a given country. Which might raise the question: “Why hasn’t a McDonald’s or a Burger King approached him yet for a borgir deal? What’s the hold up?”

Going by this digital marketing website tracking the world’s most famous Instagram accounts, Hasbulla went from 810K+ followers in November 2021, to ~2.7M in July this year, with a 9% engagement rate — at any given time, at least 230K engage with his posts. He might charge an average of $5K for an image post, and $10K for a video post. The same stats for Abdu Rozik are not public, but considering he’s a contemporary, the costs for him should be fairly similar — maybe a little more, seeing as how he has the ears of some of the biggest celebrities in the world.

However, both Hasbulla and Abdu Rozik would have a more secret source of income: private events. David Royce, a podcaster (link here) and industry operator who operates out of Dubai, tells me that the average amount highly successful influencer charges for a private event is $100,000. And it checks out: Dubai has more than enough propensity to pay to have an influencer entertain them in the dining room.

I had a chat with the official Instagram account of IFCM — the agency that now manages Abdu. They were vague regarding his brand deals, and explicitly refused to reveal any financials. However, the nature of the relationship between Abdu and IFCM was made a little clearer — IFCM doesn’t look at itself as an agency. In its own words: it has no clients, but rather it tries to fund those who have talent but no means to reach. Basically, this implies some sort of financial and networking assistance, beyond its general services I’ve mentioned above. However, what is unclear is if this sponsorship also has an underlying contract with certain conditions as to revenue-sharing, disclosure of deals, and so on. IFCM finds a mention in many of Abdu’s stories and reels, and he repeatedly thanks the agency for his fortune in his posts.

Hasbulla has readily taken up merchandising. An official Hasbulla tee would range in the $40-60 range. It is unclear whether there is actual inventory for his apparel or if there’s some sort of dropshipping involved, but it exists, and it has worldwide shipping. He also has a dedicated subreddit (r/hasbulla), which loves keeping track of every single thing he does — like a shoe line with his name on it that cost $25K. Abdu, however, hasn’t taken merchandising super seriously, yet.

Both of them have also been quick at embracing some newer, more advanced forms of minting money. Earlier this year, both influencers announced their own NFT projects. Hasbulla’s NFT airdrop is an attempt to create an enviable community around him that gets exclusive access to him — both in-person and online. The project is in its 2nd phase (out of 5), and currently, only 2000 of these NFTs have been minted. The end goal is to launch a crypto token in his name, and launch a metaverse game where the NFT holders can play to earn Hasbi tokens. Many NFTs are designed in a way where Hasbulla’s likeness is transposed to that of famous celebrities, characters, and avatars. Holder benefits also vary depending on how many NFTs one owns. It grants one discounts, invites, free flights, and deals with partners — like Khabib, Shaquille O’Neal, Logan Paul, Barstool Sports, and LAD Bible (of all websites).

Abdu Rozik’s project also seems to be similar. His socials mention an “abduverse” — hinting at a play-to-earn metaverse game as well, much like Hasbulla. The larger community roadmap, however, does not seem as well-outlined yet as that of Hasbulla. The first phase will have 5,555 hand-drawn NFTs minted of Abdu Rozik in his different outfits and avatars.

These NFT projects are coming in at a time when creator interest in the web3 world has reached a high. Creators are investing their time in building a strong, high-paying community that can earn from owning a stake in that creator’s journey. Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriends project is a solid example of a successful creator-led NFT project. Of course, the success of a project like this would depend on a) the creator’s social currency, b) the community and how active it is, and c) the NFT’s utility. The creator interest in web3 is also part of a wave of influencers (at least the very sizeable ones) trying to find new ways to monetize their brand. New product lines, equity deals, affiliate programs, NFTs.

Come, See, Conquer

This diversification of bag-chasing probably doesn’t make it too much of a surprise that Dubai has become the preferred choice of place of operations for both of them. Hasbulla has mentioned it numerous times as a city he loves. — here is him chilling with a Dubai-based influencer while facetiming Logan Paul. Abdu practically lives there. Why does the city have that kind of pull, besides the obvious lifestyle improvement it has to offer? Is it an influencer haven of some kind?

One starting point to answer that question might be the Nas Summit which was held this year there. Influencers from all over the world, including a significant number from India, headed over there. It had some venture capital backing — including from GSV and Lightspeed. Companies like Snap, LinkedIn, and for some reason, Barbados Tourism attended the 3-day fest. Clearly the summit was great exposure to many.

But the UAE itself wants more people to adopt the country as home — which is why it has some of the most convenient visa policies in Asia: both for tourists and potential businesses. David mentions that you can legally register a business within 3 days of getting a license. The UAE government believes that influencers have the power to promote Dubai as a possible expatriate destination. So it has people like Abdu Rozik promoting some of its biggest attractions, like the annual Dubai Expo. I spoke to Pranav Panaplia — the founder of an agency called Opraahfx, who refers to the popularity of the #VisitDubai campaign. You can tell what influencer posts are sponsored by peeping that hashtag.

The city became an unofficial influencer capital last year itself — at the height of the second CoVID wave. Hotel chains like Radisson are chipping in, featuring travel bloggers on their ads. Some creators have decided to permanently move to Dubai as well — like MoVlogs and SuperCarBlondie. Indian creators feel the Arab heat too — like Dubai-based Ritu Pamnani, who has cracked a Cosmopolitan cover, among a number of deals in fashion. Influencers on Dubai billboards aren’t uncommon either, as David tells me.

The world has adopted influencers into the mainstream. They’re not just online personalities anymore, but rather people who you might end up seeing on large billboards and TV advertisements. Some people get deals from BBC. Some get deals from Spotify. Some appear on TV commercials — like Awez Darbar and Nagma Mirajkar on McDonald’s. Some like Prajakta Koli get Netflix shows. Big brand deals are one signal of becoming more colloquial, and why not? Brands feel that influencers are more efficient conversion-wise, while charging less than what a conventional celebrity might, and ensuring better Gen-Z connect. This also explains why TVC spends on social media influencers have increased significantly as compared to conventional celebrities.

Some of the bigger ones pull a pivot so big that you forget they ever advocated for something problematic. Pranav gives me the example of Logan Paul — he went from being known for filming a suicide victim in Japan to now being on the same stage as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the same IG live as Drake, and the same frame as the guests he interviews on his podcast — Logic, Mike Tyson, Kevin O’Leary, Triple H, to name a few. It’s also the diversity of what he’s doing that has made his brand strategy so successful. “No publicity is bad publicity” — it would have been pretty easy for Paul to fall out had he continued being edgy after that controversial video.

This sort of mainstream attention is also aided not only by the ability to be forward-thinking, but also enter new markets; sometimes switch to new ones. In the case of the latter, Logan Paul is a great example — his claims to fame have shifted across the years; from hilarious and edgy Vines, to matters more serious. So is Tanmay Bhat — who changed careers altogether in the quest for a successful rebrand where his current audience doesn’t resemble — in size or composition — what it was as a comedian. He’s now much better known for being an advocate of entrepreneurship, personal finance, and deep conversations with accomplished people.

But when it comes to new market entry — if an influencer needs to expand their market to a location other than their home location, the easiest way to go about that market entry is to collaborate with the local influencer of the target location. One of Dubai’s most popular influencers is a man named Anas Bukhash — described to me as the BeerBiceps of the Middle East. He runs a YouTube channel called ABTalks, where he releases podcast episodes with celebrities — Max Verstappen, Masaba Gupta, Atif Aslam, Nora Fatehi. And interestingly, he has one episode with a very popular Indian dude who buys jungle land for a living. You might better know him as Sadhguru — who has been all over Instagram this year for his Save Soil Foundation.

Remember when he had a daily column in The New Indian Express? Me neither. Now he’s seen carrying Abdu Rozik in his arms.

Abdu is on track to being a superstar. He bagged the role of a gangster, in Salman Khan’s next Eid flick — very obviously boringly-named Bhaijaan. He’s driven his India market entry straight into 5th gear in the most explosive way possible — entering Bollywood. All the while, multiple Indian influencers, actors, comedians and bosses of music labels, create Instagram stories and reels with him. Of course, much of this may not have been possible without the network of Abdu’s “sponsor”, IFCM. Bollywood will ensure he’s in everyone’s minds rent-free after he’s on the big screen.

The production team behind the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Shamshera invited an entire summit of creators for promotions — proving that even an effective marketing campaign can’t save a bad movie. But more importantly, Bollywood stars are realizing the power of building an online presence. Some of the biggest Hollywood actors and sports superstars figured out early on that YouTube is extremely effective, and much easier than shooting film. Will Smith, The Rock, and now Varun Dhawan and Kartik Aaryan — who actually has more 200K more subscribers than Dhawan. Or Indian TV actress (and Kota Factory star) Ahsaas Channa, who got 3.4M followers on Instagram through dance reels, vlogs, and fashion and makeup tutorials. Are actors increasingly pivoting to being social media influencers? The answer is a yes, and the line between the two gets blurrier with time — more actors taking to social media influencing, more influencers trying to enter acting.

And this kind of mainstream attention was not really a goal for influencers in the beginning. The start was all about blitzscaling their content, and the process of making content. Siddhansh Agarwal, an insider in the creator economy (and whose Instagram account is quite the popper), says that going mainstream was only a by-product that eventually turned into a blueprint. However, that doesn’t underlie its importance to those who chase it. Influencing is not a traditional career path, and requires more than a little acceptance from society. Then what better way to prove that you’ve made it than on a front-page ad in a national daily? Or film?

But the mainstream also brings with it a fear of saturation. “The moment an influencer appears on a TV ad, they stop becoming an influencer”, says Avantika. The concern also comes with the perceived yield from sporting an influencer on huge advertisements. Diminishing engagement and conversion rates from macro-influencers, Avantika states, might force brands to re-orient their strategies a little. But if you’re on one of those huge screens, you might as well be a celebrity.

Hasbulla, though? Hardly any celebrities in sight when it comes to his mentions. He’s not concerned about popularity contests or new markets or any of this. He just wants what we call the bag. When asked about Abdu Rozik meeting Cristiano Ronaldo, Hasbulla mocked the Portuguese footballer’s style of play, and called himself a bigger celebrity. His most talked-about public sighting in recent memory is a trip to Australia, which was organized by a management company called The Hour Group. Their past arrangements include Kobe Bryant, Anderson Silva, Khabib himself, Jhene Aiko and Tyga. This year, they’ve called Hasbulla and Shaquille O’Neal, and I would have not commented on the certainty of their paths crossing. Until this happened while I was writing this piece. Even Kobe never got away with punching Shaq.

Maybe Hasbulla doesn’t just want to settle for something small. Literally and figuratively, he wants big men.

LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLEEEEEEEE

Much of Hasbulla and Abdu’s come-up boils down to, and also stems from, the clip that made both of them extremely famous. The prospect of an MMA fight between them has kept the followers of both on their toes.

But, um...what’s with all these influencers and MMA fights? And why does either person want a UFC fight with the other so bad? We’ll need to do a little rewind for this, because key to getting to the answer to the first question is understanding the hype and economics of a widely advertised mixed martial arts bout. Bear with me.

The UFC is the most well-known brand when it comes to MMA fighting. Right now, we often associate high-profile UFC fights with exotic locations, the world’s biggest sportspersons and celebrities showing up, and a ton of pre-fight press conferences. But there was a time when MMA fights were not accompanied by a lot of fanfare.

The first UFC event ever took place in 1993, and it was pitched as an 8-man single elimination tournament, with no weight categories or time limits, much unlike today. This took place in Denver — a city with no regulations around boxing. It drew more than 86000 paid viewers, pretty impressive for a first outing. But it struggled in the 90s, because of how it was perceived to be violent, and the fact that it started to face some political heat. One future presidential candidate called it “human cockfighting”. In fact, it was doing so bad, the parent entity, Semaphore Entertainment had to sell the “UFC.com” domain to some random company called “User Friendly Computers”. It had to strip itself of everything except the UFC brand name, and the infamous octagon where the fighters spar. More like octa-gone.

Enter Dana White — the current president of the UFC. White has seen some shit — including an alcoholic dad, a divorce, dropping out of college, and a supposed encounter with infamous mobster Whitey Bulger. He used to work as a boxercise coach. He started training under a Jiu Jitsu expert named John Lewis, who was also competing in the UFC. This led him to being connected to, and eventually becoming the manager of two fighters — Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell.

While managing them, White met Bob Meyerowitz — the owner of Semaphore Entertainment. Bob told him that he was looking to sell UFC, at which point White linked him with a childhood friend of his named Lorenzo Fertitta — who made significant money running casinos, and was also the once-chairman of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Lorenzo and his brother Frank purchased UFC under a parent entity called Zuffa for $2M in 2001. White was instated as president.

By 2015, UFC became a cash machine, making $600M in gross revenue. White explored and unearthed new fighters from regions outside America — arguably the biggest one of the 2010s was an Irish bloke named Conor McGregor. In 2016, when Zuffa got sold to Endeavor Group, UFC was valued at $4B — the largest ever valuation of any sports franchise at the time. In that new valuation, it saw 23 celebrities who put $250K each as angel money. White ensured that each major fight was backed by huge sponsors. Everyone from Kevin Durant to Donald Trump shows up at a major fight. Today, the annual revenue of UFC is around $1B. UFC is possibly singlehandedly responsible for the popularity of competitive MMA as a sport. And Dana White is the main driving force behind this outcome.

Why influencers started using competitive MMA as a tool to prove who’s better, no one can say for sure. What I can say is that one of the content creators who helped popularized MMA actually started off as a color commentator for the sport. He’s best known for his extreme reactions at knockouts, and taking in a drug called MMT. He also signed the biggest Spotify podcast deal ever in the Joe Rogan Experience.

But otherwise, the thinking around doing one is simple: there’s a lot of money to be made (which we will come to), and status levels to be climbed, in a standard fight.

Roll back to 2018. A British YouTuber named KSI challenged Jake and Logan Paul to a bout for the YouTube Boxing Championship Belt — an unofficial trophy that was minted for KSI after he won a fight against another YouTuber named Joe Weller. It was just bragging rights, but the fight was very real. The press conferences were brutal — families and girlfriends were proxy victims in a war of words, much like tours of real MMA pros. Avid fans of the YouTubers brawled with each other pre-fight. The result of the fight doesn’t really matter (draw), but this was the start of a trend where extremely popular content creators went gladiator-style against each other to prove who had bigger balls. YouTube numbers? Pfft. Old school.

Maybe a regulated fight is an acceptable way to have grown men use their fists, because KSI was serious about becoming a professional fighter. But MMA, like any other sport, isn’t easy. It didn’t stop influencers from going beyond their ambit — Logan Paul called on boxing legend Floyd Mayweather for a match. I need not tell you how that ended. More recently, the royal prince of wolfpack incels, Andrew Tate staked a Bugatti worth £4.1M for a fight with Logan Paul. And in case it isn’t clear already why — Logan Paul himself admitted that he would love to monetize the sudden rise in Tate’s popularity over the last few months.

The fight with KSI also worked. A quick look at the highlights of Google Trends in 2018 — the year of the fight — will be sufficient to say that, well, it was more than a huge success, at least for Logan Paul. He was on everyone’s mind.

The Hasbulla-Abdu Rozik fight, then, should come as very little surprise. But they have a lot more reason than just bragging rights. Hasbulla hails from the same region that Khabib calls home. His come-up to ~3M followers on Instagram partly involved posting funny clips emulating the legendary fighter. He is extremely passionate, possibly to a fault, about MMA as a sport. He is unironically putting in some serious time in the weight room. He makes regular appearances at actual UFC fights, and Khabib’s club’s events. The man in the clip where Hasbulla and Abdu traded punches for the first time ever was Hasbulla’s ex-manager, MMA fighter Asxab Tamaev. This fight has been more than a year in the making. Here’s an entire video of Hasbulla punching MMA champions:

It’s pretty vague as to where Abdu’s interest for MMA comes from. It is worth noting two things though — a) he’s listed as a brand ambassador for the World Boxing Championship, and b) IFCM — the agency that represents Abdu Rozik — stands for International Fighting Championship Management. Their service offerings are very much in line with what you’d expect from a talent management setup: paid celebrity meet-and-greets, original merchandise, event management (concerts, private events), et al. But true to name, this agency does one other thing that most others might not: sports events. The website only lists two other clients:

• Yousef Al-Matrooshi — a 19 year-old international-level swimmer, who also competed in the Olympics for the first time in Tokyo. He was the flagbearer for the UAE contingent, and his ambition is to become the first Emirati to compete in 3 consecutive Olympics.

  • It doesn’t make a lot sense for a swimmer to be represented by a talent management agency this early. For starters, he has 5200+ followers on Instagram — nothing in comparison to Abdu’s monster 3.7M.

  • But it may be important to set a little context. The UAE only sent 5 competitors from 4 disciplines to Tokyo 2020. 2 of those are not originally Emirati. Since 1984, which is their first appearance in the Olympics, the UAE has won only 2 medals — a gold and a bronze. Backing a 19-year old swimmer then seems like an early bet.

• Jad Hadid — a Lebanese model and actor. He has 370K+ followers on Instagram, has some TV appearances under his belt, and major collaborations: Quaker Oats, Reebok, Toblerone, Lipton. He also has a really cute Apple Music playlist dedicated to his daughter, who is plastered on what is otherwise the IG wall of a hot Arab man with a lot of motivational speeches in him.

Then what’s the hold up? One answer (out of two alternatives) might be, as you might have guessed it already, the moolah.

Fighters in UFC get paid depending on how popular they are. For any given bout, both fighters involved negotiate their contracts separately. This is a list of payouts for all fights under UFC 229:

There are three tiers of fighters in UFC. Someone like Conor or Khabib, who would belong to the highest tier, should get paid more than $500,000, ideally closer to the million mark. These fighters will pull in sponsors and attention for the pay-per-view event that will eventually get broadcasted. For example, UFC 229 has Conor vs Khabib as the headliner, or the main card. But paying a fairly hefty amount, like $80, doesn’t make sense for just one fight, even if it’s between the best in the world, and even if it includes some “yo wife” insults between grown men. The cheapest ticket for UFC 229 was $205. So other fights are lined up as part of the 229 card between mid-tier fighters.

One observation in the image is that all fighters except the top-tier ones get a win bonus, which is usually double the fight money. Top fighters aren’t generally privy to a win bonus (not that they need it). But these fighters have the ability to call shots on something more lucrative: a cut of the pay-per-view revenues. This also creates an incentive for the fighters themselves to promote the main card. If this means having some fun antics at press conference tours — some of which span countries — so be it. This also means that they can get some personal sponsors. Conor might have made $3M from the fight, but he made $50M overall from UFC 229, due to the blessings that are PPV money and brand endorsements.

Dana White has more than hinted at an interest to make something happen. Is that something a cage fight, we can never tell. But shop was talked. Reportedly, both Hasbulla and Abdu were offered only $1.5M each, which is likely not enough. Hasbi’s manager at the time, Asxab Tamaev, pretty much said that he got Abdu onboard, and shared what seemed to be Instagram DMs (they honestly seem fake) with Dana White. However, White has said in public that he thinks there is a lot of potential there.

Apparently, Dana White loves Hasbulla. Make no mistake: that out of all the people who can host a fight like this, Dana White is the likeliest. This is a video from Khabib’s official channel, where Khabib himself says that Dana wants to “sign him”, but there may be “doubts on his weight class”. For all you can surmise, Hasbulla wants to turn pro. If there’s one thing we know about him, it’s that he doesn’t want little nibbles of the pie.

In December, Hasbulla had a media appearance at an Eagle FC event. He said that while he’s in touch with White, no offer was made to buy their fight. And that Tamaev photoshopped his DMs. By this time, Tamaev and Hasbulla already had a fallout, and the he ceased to be his manager.

He also called Abdu a “singer”, as if that were meant to be an insult. Ice in the veins.

Interestingly, Hasbulla also said in the same interview that he doesn’t want the fight right now. But his public appearances say otherwise. In October, both Hasbulla and Abdu Rozik attended UFC 267. And they met each other. You can guess what happened next. This is 5 months after the very first clip.

And then there was a little Mexcian standoff between the two in February this year. It was mostly photos and smiles, but neither could resist trying to sneakily throw a jab here and there at the other. That same month, Hasbulla appeared on the Wafflin’ Podcast by Joe Weller (the same one who KSI beat), where, among questions of what true love means, he was also asked who the most famous contacts were on his phone were. He mentioned Dana White, only to say that the fight was unsure but a possibility. I think Hasbulla would benefit a lot by being in a nice little committed relationship. It is short king spring after all.

And then the Barstool Sports interview happened, where he talked about having Abdu "on sight".

But none of this is relevant, which is where the alternative answer to the hold-up applies: they don’t need it anymore. They might not have ever needed it. Both of them can continue to tease us with the idea of a fight without ever having to truly follow up. They can show up in the same place, look into each others’ eyes, but not crush each other, and the world will go wild. They have little against each other, and this could very well be just playing characters, sometimes at the risk of being too into the game. All it might be is mutually beneficial in increasing their ever-growing cult — like how Logan Paul admitted for Andrew Tate. I mean, here’s them smiling wide-eyed, in what looks like the same room where they had the first scuffle.

There may a few parties, like the Russian Dwarf Athletic Commission, that believe that a fight like this is unethical and exploitative; that it doesn’t draw attention to actual sports that dwarfs attempt to make a mark in. But of course, this is no legal regulation. Vegas would sell out twice over if this fight happened.

And if they ever decide to do the fight, they’ll earn bags of cash. But does either of them really want a fight right now, when they’re blitzing their cults in this world? At one point, it was debatable whether one of them wanted the fight more than the other. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Hasbulla has been associated with, and asked about this feud way more than Abdu. Hasbi has been the man who’s talked to Dana White, and hung out with Khabib and other MMA stars. Abdu is just a bus rider, a “bum”, a “singer” to him.

It’s likely because Hasbulla harbors ambitions to be a pro, or a true MMA insider, and NOT because he desperately needs this fight more than his arch-rival. He’s busy boating with Shaq, creating NFTs, riding the fly-est supercars, punching superstars, and being a real one.

And lets’s face it: he has a much better chance than KSI at turning pro.

I doubt Abdu could care less either. He’s slated to enter one of the biggest film industries in the world, alongside the biggest Eid-day superstar in the world. He’s passionate about his musical career, and meeting his idols. He’s an extroverted charming multi-hyphenate who truly rocks whatever he wears, and he’s comfortable in his own skin. For him, making fun of Hasbulla as a all-talk-no-shower is just a side thing he likes doing when he can. He’s enacting skits with other influencers, eating at (and endorsing) the fanciest restaurants, all the while being grateful to all his well-wishers. And creating NFTs, of course.

No one expected either of them to make it big, but at 3’3”, their heads stand above the clouds, while their feet are firmly on the tallest accessible floor of Burj Khalifa. Did I say spring? I really meant cruel summer. They’re on top of the world, and we’re just NPCs in their video game.

KO.

A note of thanks to the following people who helped make this piece happen: Saumya Saxena, Aditi Singh, Siddharth Rao, Rasleen Grover, Nicaia D'Souza, Siddhansh Agarwal! Getting gem quotes/insights from people in the industry, and becoming an MMA fan overnight (thank you Sid), were only possible because of them.

I will be taking a break from Hot Chips for now: I have a reading backlog that needs clearing, among other commitments. I sincerely believe that reading makes me better at writing, and there are a couple of books and more than a few newsletters I’ve had my eye on. I haven’t read anything new and meaty in a while and it’s high time I get out of this slump. I will be back in November, with the first piece of the second year of Hot Chips.

Meanwhile, don’t feel too shy about sharing this piece, or my newsletter to your friends, family, family friends, partners :)) If you have thoughts about this piece, I’m @pranavmanie on Twitter, where I’m a little too active for my own good. I respond to messages fairly quickly, except creepy stuff or scam invites.

Until next time :)

So I think it’s a good time to talk about what he’s done in the last 10 or so years. Mostly this year. And what that means for his (insane) legacy. Ever since 2017, he’s been a part of my life I can never forgo. The piece will not accompany his latest album, but instead: a curated playlist from me that contains my favorite tracks by him. This is also an INCREDIBLY short piece by my standards, and frankly, an excellent exercise on structuring and crisp writing for me. Happy reading :)

I have a confession. I used to have a WordPress back in high school.

I am not sure if you can find it, but I’m certainly not going to shoot myself in the foot by handing it to you on a platter. I don’t even remember what I named the blog. Every high-schooler’s WordPress blog is a very fancy name that they think only they get. Musings of a Musketeer, Momentous Oblivion, Hallowed Portal. You get the gist. It was a very corny time to live life in.

Anyway, as part of my WordPress blog, I wrote, sigh, poems. I prefer never going back to those writings, because they’re terrible. When I was 17, I used to think that my poems were a cut above the “standard crowd” because of how I made them rhyme, and inserted the occasional double entendre. And where do you think that hubris came from?

17 was, in general, a very coming-of-age age for me. I discovered this dude called Kendrick Lamar. Two first names, huh? The fuck is up with that? He released some album called DAMN, all caps. I thought that was pretty cool, but this was effectively going to be my introduction to his repertoire. In general, it was going to be the start of a journey called being a hip-hop head.

And then my entire life changed when I played DNA.

Since then, I have devoured his music. My attention span for listening to albums in whole is pretty bad, but Kendrick was a huge exception to that. If there was so much as a single where he was a feature artist, I grabbed the nearest pair of headphones. He became an important lens into American politics and society for me — thoughts, opinions and ideals that also eventually helped me process my opinions about India. He had an enviable way or thinking and writing that helped keep a random Indian high-schooler’s WordPress afloat. I doubt I would have written as much as I did back then if it weren’t for listening to him. I owe much of my writing to him.

And now that I’ve had time to think about it and remove any potential of recency bias — his latest, Mr Morale and The Big Steppers, came 1885 days after DAMN. As I listened to his album, one thing was clear. It was the deepest recess of his CoVID-era diary entry. A lot of people say that the political is personal — a statement that I believe in. Listening to Kendrick’s work in the last 10 years is like looking at a shift from talking about the flaws of society, to talking about the flaws of the self. And how those two are interlinked. And what it takes to not shirk away from being responsible for your own mistakes.

You know how college kids enter college all feisty, having lofty ideals about the world and what’s right and wrong about it? At least at the start of that phase, they never know how to balance it with individual empathy. For most of us, it was just another way to display intellectual superiority, instead of genuine feeling for your fellow human being. But as they grow into seniors, they grow mellower, more introspective, more self-aware of the idea that for quite a while, their opinions were only ever used in debates and not self-debates. They realize that many of their mistakes — small, big, honest, dishonest, conscious, subconscious — were not in line with their own ideals. Only later they realize that political words are meant to as behavioral as they are verbal. Something I guess I’ve been through (and still am in many ways), and I’m sure many others I know also are.

One of my favorite shows of all time is Mr Robot. The show (which at one point was on Amazon Prime) was widely advertised with the tagline “Fuck society”. The first season of the show was all about one man trying to reset order by taking down a fictional behemoth tech giant, while also battling some very personal demons. Most of us might remember the first season because of this very popular monologue known by a two-word phrase:

"Oh I don't know, is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit; the world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money.

I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards."

By the third season, though, you find out that these personal demons are not very benevolent when it comes to how that one man thinks. To the point where he realizes that by virtue of what he pulled off because of his "fuck society” vision, he probably worsened society itself. This is a spoiler-free zone, and in my opinion, a better monologue than the one above:

“I didn’t start a revolution. I just made us docile enough for our slaughtering. I can stand here and blame Evil Corp and every conglomerate out there for taking advantage of us, and I can blame the FBI, NSA and CIA for letting them get away with it, blame all the world leaders for aiding and abetting them, and blame Adam Smith for inventing modern day capitalism in the first fucking place, and blame money for dividing us, and blame us for letting it — but none of that’s true. The truth is, I’m the one to blame. I’m the problem. This was my fault. All of it. I did this. Fuck me.”

The evolution of Kendrick’s discography feels eerily similar. He started by rapping about his neighborhood, and all the factors that influence the constant cycle of death around him. He criticizes the American state machinery that flooded his streets with guns and cocaine. He talks about feeling the need to take up violence against the state as someone who’s oppressed, evoking emotions similar to that from greats like NWA and 2Pac — his spiritual (or real, in case of Dr Dre) mentors. He expertly deconstructed how every level of American society has suppressed Afro-Americans. All the while telling us stories from the hood of how he’s been driven for most of his life by grief and revenge.

But he has also not been extremely vocal about his personal life. Fans have to dig through the tiniest snippets of tabloids just to see a spotting of him. In all seriousness, though, that’s generally a good thing. Kendrick came to hip-hop with a unique way of being honest. He never sugarcoated anything, and he had songs that hoodwinked you by the end and it would take you more than a few listens to realize how he did it so subtly. His bluntness was one that other rappers of his age reciprocated: Tyler The Creator, Vince Staples, Earl Sweatshirt, to name a few. But Kendrick carried the torch passed on by the grand old men of West Coast rap.

Section 80 was about telling stories of his friends who were sucked into the hard life of living in Compton. Good Kid/M.A.A.D City was about how Compton shaped Kendrick’s most important years in life, and his relation to his home after everything that has transpired. To Pimp A Butterfly was a radical look at the need to organize his race as one, and take over America — sometimes by force, if need be. In DAMN, he spoke about death, love, loyalty, pride, and faith. He seemed in control of his feelings about those abstract concepts. However, it always felt like there was more he wanted to tell us, but he wasn’t ready yet.

Not in Mr Morale and The Big Steppers. It’s very clear after listening to this album why he took 5 years to make it. It was evident what he didn’t tell us in DAMN. He struggled with being a hypocrite, issues by virtue of his lineage, his supposed falling out (and possible infidelity) with his fiance, materialism as a cure for all else, a feeling of general emptiness, and acceptance that he might need therapy. It’s as if he decided to look at himself in the mirror and confront himself about all his flaws. CoVID probably didn’t make it any easier for him to do this either. Not while he is raising a child, anyway. Certainly not while he’s expecting a second.

Because how can he expect himself to be a good father when he still hasn’t gotten over the problems his own dad passed on to him? He ties this back all the way to the fact that black men were always forced to suffer. He knows it’s no excuse, because he still has no right to cause hurt to others because of his own. While this is a message that has featured heavily in his other albums, they always seemed to focus on the finality of life. That this trauma causes death. Hurt is different. You have to force yourself to live through it, or cope with it.

“I come from a generation of home invasions and I got daddy issues, that's on me
Everything them four walls had taught me, made habits bury deep
That man knew a lot, but not enough to keep me past them streets
My life is a plot, twisted from directions that I can't see”

(TW: mentions of sexual assault follow)

Which makes it imperative for him to escape that generational trauma, by hook or by crook. He’s fighting with himself on whether he needs therapy, and makes sure us listeners hear that internal battle. He questions if he was once touched inappropriately as a kid. He recalls when his mother was sexually assaulted. He’s telling the grown men he knows to stop asking to be mommy-ed by the important women in their lives. He wonders why he’s been flexing his masculinity all his life, when he could have just been open.

And because he wants to stretch how far he can go with this line of thinking, he wonders if R Kelly would have been such a monster if he himself didn’t have a history of sexual assault. In the lead up to the album — The Heart Part 5 —he ponders about Will Smith’s slap, Kanye West’s bipolar disorder, OJ Simpson’s entire legacy. He’s doing all of this without letting them off the hook for their actions. All people that he, as a black man in America, once looked up to for becoming successful in a world that’s unfairly designed to be hard for his people. He’s done it before:

“The yam brought it out of Richard Pryor…”

But not as deeply inward as he’s done in this album. He asks, “Why us?” But where he used to ask this of external oppressors in his earlier work, he is now asking this in a moment of self-reflection. In the track “Savior”, he says:

“Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not your savior”

He’s not. He can’t be one, either. The voice of God isn’t God himself, and even if it were, God has been for long floating in his own head in his own hubris. He’s telling you that he thinks cancel culture has gone too far. Back in 2018, he threatened to remove his music from Spotify if they took out music from abusers like R Kelly and XXXTentacion. His argument for that might have been more to do with censorship than anything else. But more extremely, he believes that it’s okay to give Kodak Black — a rapper with a history from some years ago of serving time for sexual assault, battery, gun charges — a chance at reformation by featuring him in the album. And I (and a lot of other people) can’t agree with a contradiction like this, but Kendrick doesn’t want to make that peace for you.

“Like it when they pro-Black, but I'm more Kodak Black”

Kendrick is right and wrong. All black people can’t (and shouldn’t) have the same thoughts, so the moment there’s a non-progressive black person, the solidarity goes out of the window. But using Kodak Black as a vehicle to convey the same is….not a great idea. Does Kendrick acknowledge Kodak’s history of sexual assault in other tracks in the album? Yes.

Does he do them adequately? No.

Does this self-awareness make this album better? Not in the least, but Kendrick seems more than okay calling this a situation of “agree to disagree”. And it’s because he genuinely thinks forgiveness is the best way to allow society to transform into a better version of itself — to the point where he’s okay with forgiving whoever his killer might be. While that’s not how reparations work for everyone, Kendrick is genuinely (mis)guided by this belief. And it’s not the best (or fair) because there are people who’ve been victims of assault who are also fans of Kendrick’s material. In a way, the message for them is also to accept that he does believe in this sort of reformation.

The album has left nothing spared in terms of painting Kendrick Lamar as a man of vulnerabilities and weaknesses, forcing him to look inward. It’s a journey from fearing dying, to fearing killing, to being unafraid of dying because his work will be immortal. It’s about setting an example for future generations to not repeat the same mistakes their fore-people did, while continuing to being all banger. I’ve felt like I’ve always grown with his music, and it’s no different with this album either. It’s a different kind of growth this time around, because it’s less about the mind and more about the soul.

And I’m 100% sure he’s going to send a lot of dudes to therapy because of this magical album. But now that we have met the Kendrick Lamar who has made questionable decisions, both personally and artistically, it’s a call for us to go above and beyond. To balance vulnerability with a firmness for ideals.

To truly define what we understand as growth.

Edit: I made a typo while saying that Kendrick threatened to remove his music from Spotify if the platform did not de-platform XXXTentacion and R Kelly. It’s really the other way round — if they did de-platform such artists, Kendrick would have pulled his discography.

I apologize for the weird hiatus. I had intended on taking a much shorter break than this, but a few personal things came up. The last month and a half has not been particularly great for me, and that’s where I sort of learnt what people mean when they say that doing content, especially longform, is tough. It’s consistency that I’ve had trouble maintaining in times like these, especially when I constantly feel like I need a break. And, of course, I won’t lie when I say I’ve been a little scared of maintaining the kind of quality I expect from myself. But I guess if I don’t fail at THAT endeavour, I’ll never learn either. So screw being afraid, I guess?

I do love writing. It’s just the act of getting up to it that’s half the fight, and I think I’ve had my first taste of that struggle. But anyway: I’ve been meaning to write something about sports. Somewhere along the line of all this research, I realized that I’d love to write another story on a certain sport in India. Which is why this has been fun: it’s allowing me to get new ideas in terms of sequels, or new narratives. And I get to talk to people who tell me mind-blowing things that I think you should know, too.

I’ve been struggling to find a backing track for this piece. But, instead of digging through all of Spotify to find something suitable, I found my pick from my own all-time Favorites playlist. A track that, when I first listened to, I knew I’d heard something that I’d listen to forever. As always: if you love reading with some background noise, I think this will do the trick! Happy reading (and watching The Boys :)) this weekend, and I’ll see you folks with another edition of Hot Chips next month, as usual!

Indians like busting balls.

Sure, I should probably tell you something new. But I mean it pretty literally. We love sports. Kicking and hitting balls is an activity we cherish no matter how old we are, where we are, and how much we earn. It’s therapeutic on a bad day, and extremely joyful on an average day. Some of the nation’s most united moments involve a ball. Sometimes a pole vault. Sometimes an air pistol. Hockey sticks occupied a lot of our history. It’s safe to say that we love sports.

Which makes it pretty disappointing that for most sports that are, on some level played globally, we don’t have a smooth structure that allows budding sportsmen to flourish. Besides cricket, hockey, chess and sometimes badminton, there’s little driving encouragement of budding talent in these other sports. At best, it’s a wobbly ladder with missing steps. At worst, it’s a depressing dead end.

And while that’s pretty evident when we see Olympics medal tallies, one might also direct attention to the people who find greener pastures outside the country to try and make it big. Or make a decent living from it, if nothing else.

Only the top 2-3% of the country made more than 10 lakhs a year. The richest of them tend to live in metropolitan cities: places with access to the best sports facilities that the country can offer. This class of people understands that India’s population is 1.4 billion and it grows 1% on average every year. That is a lot of competition, but more importantly, we are making kids at a rate that is massively outpacing how much we invest in sports. So they look outward. And this trend has only just taken shape.

But before we get to the crux of this piece, it is important to understand the overall journey of your average budding sportsperson in this country. Sport in India — be it team or individual — generally has a pretty standard structure at its core. Ideally, one begins at the inter-school level, moves up to district, then ideally play under-15/16 tournaments, get a shot at state, and then at some point, nationals. However, nuances lie in a) how the governing body structures ranking systems, b) how club systems factor into this standard framework, c) how talent gets scouted for each sport, and d) the pipeline to representing your nations.

For example, cricket mostly follows this standard system. As a school student, you begin playing in local tournaments as part of a cricket academy. This academy should ideally be connected to a wider cricket association — that pertains to a certain region (like Bhubaneswar), and organizes tournaments between academies. These cups are eye candy for selectors of the district team, as part of which you play inter-district tournaments. Many districts are grouped together into divisions, which have their own teams and scouts. Post-this, you play national-level tournaments like the Ranji Trophy, or the Duleep Trophy. And if you’ve hit it out of the ballpark at one of these, you could be on primetime television.

Except that structure has also slightly changed with the advent of the Indian Premier League. Now cricketers who have played a minimum number of domestic matches are eligible to sign up for the IPL auction. Of course, IPL is a much shorter, more commercialized format of cricket. But it also serves as a refresher for talent scouts as to who they can continue looking at. And being essentially a league run by owners of a private nature, players get paid more than what they would if they stuck to good old domestic cricket. Of course, a lot of these tournaments will also have an age caveat: like under-15/19.

However, it’s a little different for individual sports. Tennis is governed by the All India Tennis Association (AITA), which requires all players in the country to register with them. Unlike in cricket, where you have a shot at being scouted for something bigger, much of development in tennis is self-driven, because your standing depends on your national ranking. It holds 4 kinds of tournaments, all of which are worth different ranking points:

• Talent Series: a regional tournament for only players that are ranked by AITA, usually hosted in a tier-1 or tier-2 city

• Championship Series: a tournament open for all — including unranked players.

• Super Series

• National Series

• Nationals, which is essential for selection into junior teams (and eventually, the Davis Cup team)

Of course, the road beyond this is international, wherein one has to register with the International Tennis Federation (ITF).

But this pipeline hasn’t yielded a lot of great results for a sport like tennis. The last, and only Indian female tennis player to break into the top 100 singles ranking in the world is Sania Mirza. India hosts only one ATP 250 Tour, and depending on the circumstances, that’s hosted in Pune or Chennai. By the end of 2021, we had no one in the global top 150 of male tennis players. While CoVID made things worse, a lack of widespread infrastructure for tennis was always prevalent. That’s also true for a lot of other sports. We have had only one player get drafted into the NBA. Our best finish in the Olympics 400m hurdles continues to be PT Usha’s 4th in the finals heat. That was 38 years ago. Discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur became only the 9th Indian ever to reach the finals heat of any individual track and field event.

And it goes without saying that without public or private funding, the wallet fells heavy when you’re travelling as a tennis player.

In fact, sports scholarships in India are few and far between. In the last 4 years, the government has been putting its might behind the Khelo India program, for kids aged 17-21. In Q1 2020, the Sports Authority of India released ~Rs 8.3 crore as part of an out-of-pocket allowance fund for nearly 2800 athletes across 21 disciplines. In units, you could say that each player was entitled to 30K a quarter — Rs 1.2 lakh a year. Apart from this, another Rs 5 lakh every year is spent on the training and residence of each of these athletes at Khelo India centres, but that is not cash in hand they can use. Besides this, however, there’s little dough for barter. There may be state government initiatives — like Delhi’s Mission Excellence, providing ~Rs 4.4 crore to 77 athletes. What is unclear is if this is all cash. Meanwhile, Punjab pays Rs 12000 annually to Olympic athletes who apply for the scheme. Haryana pays Rs 84000 for the whole year to gold medal winners in international events. Not every state in India is equally blessed to prioritize a bag for sporting.

Which also brings us to how much the Centre spends on sports in any given year in India. The annual budget for India this year set aside more than Rs 3000 crore for sports — a ~10% increase from last year. But what’s more interesting is how that allocation has been historically split, as displayed in this chart courtesy of a few sources:

How is SAI different from Khelo India? I had the same question as you did. Khelo India’s primary offering is that of its annual Youth Games held between all the states and union territories. Work seemed to have begun 2015 onwards, but the first Khelo India games started in 2018. While SAI received an allocation of upward of Rs 650 crores in each of the last 2 budgets, Khelo India eclipsed the same by at least Rs 300 crore more. SAI is supposedly responsible for training national teams, developing sports infrastructure, equipment and coaching personnel development, scouting, and implementing schemes under the Ministry of Sports. Like Khelo India. Which, in its website, has quite the overlap with SAI’s mission. Overarchingly, it wants to inculcate fitness and activity in the youth of the country. But its marquee offering continues to be the games, and the allowance it provides to its athletes.

These schemes are also subject to the condition that athletes meet all eligibility criteria year after year: in no way is this meant to be a stable income stream. The Target Olympics Podium Scheme (TOPS) gives its athletes an out-of-pocket of Rs 50000 to its core Olympic athletes, and just Rs 25000 to its developmental athletes.

However, without a recognition of the possibility of its harmonious coexistence and eventual integration with the (extreme) pressure of education, Khelo India may not achieve the impact it wants to. Indian education and employment have a very messy relationship. Convention states that the best route to a well-paying job in India is a top-tier technical degree, or an MBA if need be. Managing a sports career with performing well in a gutting exam like the JEE (or CAT) is brutal, to say the least. The alternative option to that is looking for educational quotas in both public and private institutions. Colleges in Delhi University have a separate quota for student athletes: usually 5% overall. However, sports seats are unevenly spread across departments, with in-demand courses like economics being much choosier. And within Delhi University, which is not known for its technical prowess, well-paying jobs are only split within the top few colleges in North Campus.

Lastly, some private institutions offer their own versions of sports scholarships. Apparently, 10% of the Indian contingent at the Tokyo Olympics last year was from the Lovely Professional University. It so happens that LPU provides a sweet kicker to each of its Olympians: full ride, free stay, free food, and supplements. The institution has a point system for its athletes on scholarships. And not only have they been building some envious sports infrastructure, but they also bagged a project worth 9 crores from the European Commission to lead a group of institutions to research sports education in India. LPU was also the leading private university in terms of medals won at the Khelo India Games 2020. One of those 11 athletes won a gold medal, too :))

Another route to a job (that might have been popularized in a cricket biopic or two) is getting a government gig through a sports quota. Applications for it may even often require just matriculation results. However, entry level government jobs don’t pay well. Below is a snapshot of a certain kind of post in the Indian Railways. While explaining how pay bands and grade pays work will take up unneeded space, here’s a spoiler alert: it’s not great, especially for someone who will likely have represented India internationally in a junior competition. Your starting gross monthly pay as a 12th grade pass in a Railways team could be somewhere in the Rs 15000 bracket. With a graduation degree, it might be just a little more. As a hawaldar in, say, Pune Customs, it’s Rs 25000.

When it come to corporate, few India-based corporations and PSUs have dedicated sports programs as part of their CSR. Sports occupies anywhere around 1.5% of the total CSR budget of an Indian private limited company — this was less than Rs 300 crores in 2020 for all companies combined. This may not be evident in the cash awards these corporations hand out to winning sportspersons after major events as reward. Or the sportspersons they sign on as brand ambassadors. They may love to pick the fruit, but they haven’t show determination in nurturing the seeds. Even within companies that do have some semblance of a sports budget: the easier route is to fund sports excellence (in the form of funding potential medal-winners) instead of sports development (in the form of grassroots initiatives). This is also because it’s easy to quantify the impact of the former in CSR reports.

• One of the most notable of them happens to be Reliance. The telecom giant has two marquee programs: the Youth Foundation scholarship (for football and athletics) and the IMG-Reliance scholarship (for tennis, football, and basketball). The latter usually takes 11-15 students and sends them to the famous IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida — which has given us Andre Agassi, Serena Williams, multiple NBA drafts (including Satnam Singh — India’s only NBA draft to date), and many players in the US Women’s soccer team. [Side note: Would recommend Open — Agassi’s autobiography. He had a very, very tumultuous time in Bradenton.]

• Both Tata Steel and Jindal Steel have been devoted to not just funding sports excellence, but also building its own facilities.

  • Jindal built the 42-acre Inspire Institute of Sport in Vijayawada, for training athletes in 5 disciplines, and opened a nascent institute for sports management studies in the country. And, of course, it has 3 franchises in 3 different sports: Bengaluru FC, Haryana Steelers, and Delhi Capitals.

  • Tata Steel had known all the way that sports was the future, launching the Tata Steel Adventure Foundation in 1984. It trains 2500 kids every year in 19 different sports at the JRD Sports Complex in Jamshedpur. It has built centres for football, hockey, and most famously archery — giving us a few Olympians in the latter.

• There is Indian Oil pays 12K/month as part of its scholarship for 3 years to kids who are 19 or younger.

• The GoSports program, which is sports-agnostic, has a 5-stage selection process. Its latest cohort took in only 26 athletes.

The best way to describe the grand landscape for sports in India is that it grows too slowly. The lack of a holistic vision, a collaborative effort between the state and the corporate, a stable and respectable income stream, and integration with education leave sports development broken. India has always wished to use sports as a means of soft power, but it grandly falls short of any sort of flex at events like the Olympics, or other global tournaments. Something about not asking what one can do for India, but what India could do for them.

The Indian market for abroad education has only been growing every year. RedSeer estimates that 770K Indians were studying abroad in 2019 — a 75% increase from 440K 3 years before it. Although the number of student visas issued was halved from 2019 to 2020 due to CoVID, the growth story of Indians going abroad to study has bounced back like it never left.

And within that market, there exists a niche but interesting subsection of student athletes who are looking to North America and Europe as destinations for their careers.

It’s no surprise that these kids belong to the top 1% of families in India. They reside in metropolitan cities: most commonly, Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai. They will have access to the best training facilities that India could possibly offer, and even that would not be enough.

I spoke to a Mumbai-based admissions consultant who works for a well-known firm primarily specializing in general abroad admissions. Their take was that even though their firm only received a handful of applicants who want to take the sports route to going out of India, the trend has been increasing in the last few years. Canada, US and the UK happen to be the most popular targets. For the US, one ideally needs to be eligible to register with the National Collegiate for American Athletics, or the NCAA. Like most sports leagues, the NCAA is 3-tiered, and depending on what institution you play for, you could be a Division I, II, or III athlete. Nationality is not a bar for eligibility. It’s also why someone like Somdev Devvarman actually won the NCAA Divison I tennis championship in 2007 AND 2008, as a student in the University of Virginia. This is a huge deal by American (or any) standards, because at least in college tennis, it places him in the same board as John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, each of whom have won it once.

And contrary to how most student-athletes in the US make their way to college: Devvarman’s schooling was in Madras. Here’s some low-res evidence of how he took Isner for a spin in a final with a tiebreaker. I might want to look at collegiate tennis as a new obsession:

In fact, some of India’s best athletes are products of the sports route to a good education in the US. Jeev Milkha Singh, arguably one of India’s most successful golfers, studied in a Division II institution named Abilene Christian University, and also won the Division II gold championship. In the same vein, Shiv Kapur studied in Purdue. Grand Slam winner Mahesh Bhupathi was part of a NCAA Division I tennis team named the Ole Miss Rebels. The one glaring pattern is that these athletes are most likely to be found in sports most associated with a lack of affordability or mainstream attention in India: golf, tennis, basketball, and from what I’ve been told — swimming and squash. And very evidently, more likely than not, it would be an individual sport.

Of course, consultancies that specialize in exactly this kind of admissions exist. CASE’s forte lies in guiding their kids with the entire process of becoming a student athlete, especially in the US. They boast of their clientele having been admitted to places like Purdue, University of Michigan, Boston University, King’s College London, UBC, University of Toronto, and McMaster, among others. It was founded by an electrical engineer named Vikram Anand, who was fortunate enough to experience US education and decided to make it easier for others from his country to avail the same.

Prep for an Indian kid aiming for the sports route usually begins from 9th grade, by which time they would need to at least be a district-level player, if not yet state. Unless one is a national-level player, good grades are a bit of a pre-requisite. The college you may be headed to expects you to be a multihyphenate and make use of both your brain and your brawn. Kids approach college coaches in the US by sending them videos of their trials. If the coach likes the kid, then they make a case (not necessarily a guarantee) for them to the admissions team of the respective college. Of course, the kid still has to go through the whole 9 yards of submitting a college application: the essay, the SAT/ACT score, the school transcripts, and so on. But the coach’s backing is holds a lot of weight: sometimes by way of pitching you for a scholarship.

Besides general academic counseling, CASE primarily provides two kinds of services:

• College recruitment: which begins from 11th onwards, and covers every step — reaching out to coaches, helping you create trials videos, shortlisting colleges, essay consulting

• Athlete development: which starts much earlier, ideally from 9th grade. In this package, CASE helps you manage your academics and sports together through mentoring, scheduling — basically being a one-stop shop for junior athletes until they get their admits by the 12th grade.

Among Indians taking the sports route, to absolutely no one’s surprise, STEM and business management degrees are the most popular degree choices. Well-paying jobs are relatively easier to find in the US. However, the real question is if the degree is just another backup option, or if it takes priority at some point over a career in sports. The funnel to becoming pro gets dangerously narrow — to the extent that only 1-2% reach that highest level. Combined with the fact that at many places, your scholarship does not depend on you succeeding levels (though you may need to play collegiate), students from India are obviously more tempted to rely on getting a stable 9-to-5.

Naturally, there is another barrier to getting a 9-to-5: the ability to get a work visa. Each of these countries has a stay-back option post-completion of the degree. It’s now easier to get a work visa in the UK or Canada. But H-1Bs from the US are a different story altogether. The ones that come back to India usually end up joining the family business if they have one.

And is there anyone who even decides to play for India after an education abroad? The answer is that it’s not unheard of. For example, Dalima Chhiber, a defender in the India women’s football team, did her masters’ at the University of Manitoba in Canada — after turning pro. If student athletes do come back, they’re likely to have played football. They come back to participate in the I-League or the Indian Super League.

CASE started 5-6 years ago with a very limited clientele. While the Great Indian Dream continued to get bigger at ~20% every year, the sports route did not see a similar inflection point. However, a reassessment was made due to CoVID, during which CASE started handling a clientele 4x what they used to 3 years ago. They charge anywhere between 1.5L to 2L per student per year — well beyond the budget of anyone not in the top 5% of India.

It’s interesting that CASE saw a bump during CoVID and not after. What could have possibly been the rationale behind taking a risk like that? For one, training facilities in India were in complete lockdown. That in its first few months, the government was inefficient in the way it completely disrupted activity while handling the pandemic, must have played an important role in such a decision.

Bangalore families give them the best business. Bangalore provides some of the best sports infrastructure in India, thereby providing a massive prop-up to metro-going students. This is followed by Delhi, Mumbai, and then interestingly: the UAE and Singapore. CBSE schools have a considerable presence in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, owing to the perennial inflow of Indians to the “Gelf”.

Students of CASE usually have a template decision tree. They have dream schools, target schools, and safety schools in the target destination(s). But besides that, there will be some options in India that they may want to weigh against their targets and safeties.

The best institutions in India are public. However, getting a seat in one of them is notoriously difficult. For this market, getting into Delhi University, or even a top IIT for that matter, does not take priority. The reason is simple: the effort that would take them to get a 99% in boards, or a top percentile in the JEE, would be better invested in being better at that sport. And a fair amount of preparation can net you more than 90% in the boards (except state, of course). In fact, for these kids, the better alternatives in India are private liberal arts institutions — that are modeled after the dream destinations of these kids. Ashoka, Krea, Azim Premji, and the like. Both counselors that I spoke to mentioned Ashoka as a considerable prospect: even better than Delhi University.

This is a video from their YouTube channel. There’s not a lot to it, and there are barely 50 views. It’s 2:21 in length, and it’s not promotional in any way. All it is, is one of its client’s pitch videos, from his time at the Indian division of legendary Argentinian club, Boca Juniors. Yes, the club that Diego Maradona once played for has a training academy in Bangalore.

College fees in the US fall in $45K-$85K annually. CASE helps that number drop by at least $20K with a scholarship. And this excludes financial aid, which is need-based.

While, of course, it’s obvious, the athletes who get to go abroad to avail themselves of the best opportunities possible, are in the same position with regards to India as well. It’s just that India’s best is not enough, and we’re way behind their counterparts in other nations.

I spoke with a player (who we’ll refer to as S to keep anonymity) who has represented India U-19 in basketball. His natural path was supposed to make it to the senior national team, but circumstances and CoVID unfortunately derailed some of those plans. He had a very poignant story to tell. He met Kenny Natt, who served as the assistant coach for the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2004-07: basically meaning that he coached an 18 year-old LeBron James. Most notably, Natt was once the coach of the Indian senior team. A Chinese parent asked Natt how his 10 y/o kid can make it to the NBA, to which Natt essentially said that it’s too late for the kid to even think about it.

One of the key factors I’m told that doesn’t help budding sportspersons in India is the lack of the ability to sustain one’s career with stable income.

“If I’d played this much cricket, I’d have been making a lot of money by playing the IPL”.

And he’s not wrong. People who’ve played the Ranji trophy can get an in into the IPL draft. Here’s someone who represented the country U-14, U-16, and U-19, captained his respective state, but is currently unemployed because of circumstances out of his control. I’m told that for a given roster of 12 players on the men’s national hooping team in any given year, only 3-4 have jobs. Brand deals don’t come easy for these folks, or for folks not playing cricket. And sports quota vacancies for jobs in the Central/Western/Southern Railways, Customs, banks, or the Armed Forces are very few. National-level medal winners from 64 sports have to compete for spots that would likely be a tenth (or less) of their numbers in strength.

The alternative is relatively less explored. Becoming local coaches could be a viable option for them. Many decide to go to the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala, administered by SAI, in order to get a coaching certification. While the certification (achieved after a 1-year training program) makes them all eligible for government jobs in sports management, not all of them get those. They may get first preference for the job of a District Sports Officer, but that’s it.

They may choose to open private coaching centres, which may be a good way to earn money, and is certainly gaining more popularity as a career prospect. But a) basketball is not too mainstream a sport in India, so coaches may not be able to charge a premium to attract kids, and b) there’s no incentive to open a coaching centre in rural areas. It’s why grassroots programs are few and far between. It’s why IMG-Reliance stopped sponsoring basketball players every year.

S is someone who holds two degrees from a top college in India, has represented India internationally in a sport at some level, was one step away from the biggest stage of his career, but is now unemployed. His passion for the sport he plays is very real. He mentions that in his hometown (which is not a tier-I city), his family runs an academy that trains kids free of cost. Because they believe that kids from their area shouldn’t be limited by problems of affordability. It’s this kind of passion that we fail to incentivize and reward.

And he’s just one person. Imagine others like him, languishing in other disciplines we don’t pay enough attention to, and who don’t have the resources to look beyond borders for training. We hear glorified stories of archers using bamboo sticks, or sprinters relying on their uneven fields to train in their villages. The fact that we continue to hear them in such magnanimous yet empty says a lot about how much better it hasn’t been for them in the last few years.

Whose world is this?