Ashok Dixit
Hip-hop is a genre of music that has gained popularity in India. Known also as Desi Hip-Hop, this genre of music and culture has emerged as an alternative to Rap and even Pop music as is understood in the US and Europe.
Hip-hop is aimed at uplifting and creating, educating people on a larger level, and making a change. It highlights the brilliance of pavement poetry. In the recent past, we have heard of popular rappers like Apache Indian (UK artist of Indian origin), Baba Sehgal (Hindi Rap artist) and musical bands like Roll Rida, Noel Sean, Machas with Attitude, Hiphop Tamizha, and Street Academics.
By and large, the Indian version of hip-hop, including graffiti and b-boying, has been confined to big metropolitan cities like Delhi and Mumbai; but now Kashmir too has a young rap artist creating inspirational waves on the musical scene, especially in the online streaming space.
Meet 22-year-old South Kashmir rapper Raja Muneeb, who goes by the stage name RmB Kash. Muneeb was born in Srinagar and raised in Anantnag. As a boy, American-Pakistani rapper Bohemia inspired him, and he started writing himself.
“When I listened to rap music, I could relate it to me, be it sad moments or happy moments; felt that music was about me. I started writing rap music in 2013-14. Those days, I was not able to express my feelings fully through my music. Gradually, my lyrics improved and I recorded my first music in the studio – The Beginning, which was on Kashmir’s landscape,” Muneeb told Inspirational India.
Unlike many contemporary rappers, Muneeb dwells on social issues, through storytelling mode.
“I plan to do projects on issues facing the youth and more on social issues. I mingle with the youth of my age to take a sense of their feelings,” he said.
After The Beginning, he came out with his second track titled The Dark Side, which further cemented his foothold in the music industry.
Some of his latest songs include Zindagi, Afflicted Saint, and Love Scars, which have got considerable traction among the digital audience across various platforms because of their focus on the emotional and motivational themes of love and hate.
Muneeb has written over 40 raps and released 11 video songs on platforms like Spotify, Jio Saavn, Itunes, Youtube, Amazon Music, etc.
So far, Muneeb has done his musical projects single-handedly through self-financing. But for the last year, he started working with a Srinagar-based music group – Kash Rap.
Forty-six-year-old Ramon Magsaysay awardee and Carnatic vocalist, writer, and social activist T.M. Krishna, who has acquired a well-healed reputation for musical innovation, sums it up when he says art in any form has the power to heal.
His comment in recent times that “All over the world, it is only the communities who have been pushed to the margins who ask difficult questions through art, and that’s what is happening in India right now” is in itself an inspiring thought.
No musical genre has caught the popular imagination in India in recent times as rap has, with popular songs gaining tens of thousands of views in a matter of days. Rap in the modern Indian context may be seen as a paraphrased expression of John F Kennedy’s famous 1960 inauguration speech, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” It wouldn’t be wrong to say that rap in any form challenges the listener to think and express.
Image Courtesy: Raja Muneeb