Music
Why India's gully rap scene is liberating the country's youth
The story behind gully rap's rise and rise, and why stars like DIVINE, Naezy and the Swadesi crew are liberating India's underprivileged youth and helping them find their voice.
When he was a kid, Indian rapper MC Mawali (Aklesh Sutar to his family) would hang out with his friends at Aarey Colony, a lush, forested suburb of Mumbai. “I learnt how to swim in the lake there, I saw alligators, I grew up there,” he says. Today, though, that space is under threat, with environmental activists trying to stop it being turned into a construction site. It’s a fight that inspired one of this year’s best gully rap songs.
After meeting prominent Adivasi activist Prakash Bhoir at a protest there a few years ago, Mawali decided to get more involved. He brought in Swadesi, the hip-hop crew he co-founded in 2013, to learn more about Adivasi culture and their plight, and after initial conversations with Bhoir, they met up every week to learn about their music and art. In January, Swadesi released Warli Revolt, a protest song featuring Bhoir singing traditional folk melodies.
This mash-up of regional cultures and politics neatly sums up what Swadesi are all about – a sprawling multilingual crew of MCs, a DJ, breakdancers and graffiti artists with a heavy socio-political bent. Everyone, it seems, has a voice. Mawali flows in a unique dialect of Marathi, while other members rap in Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Mumbai's slang Hindi.
Watch Gully Life: The Story Of DIVINE here or in the player below
“Since childhood, we were all ‘backbenchers’,” says Mawali, whose chosen rap name loosely translates as ‘ruffian’. “We were sick of being part of the machinery. We’re all on the same page, we see how things are. I grew up as a street kid. We learnt the street lifestyle, the ghetto life. People don’t have money or jobs; people are getting manipulated. So how do we get justice? What is poetry? What is freedom of expression?”
Swadesi are one crew in a fast-growing homegrown Indian hip-hop movement christened gully rap. Although it draws heavily from US hip-hop and UK grime, its MCs rap in slang-infused regional languages and dialects, each with their own theatrical cadences and quirks. And with an emphasis on socio-political issues, and pride in where they’re from, these MCs rap about life on Mumbai's streets and the troubles facing everyday people.
Gully rap first caught the attention of a wider audience in India in 2015 with the release of the Stormzy-approved Mere Gully Mein by DIVINE, featuring Naezy, and produced by New Delhi producer Sez On The Beat. The track captured the imagination of Mumbai’s youth and spread like wildfire across social media and YouTube. The song established DIVINE and Naezy as the movement’s two brightest stars.
Naezy had already tasted success with 2014’s Aafat, while DIVINE was responsible for the popular Yeh Mera Bombay track. At the time, a grassroots hip-hop movement was beginning to take root in Mumbai thanks to early crews and rappers like Mumbai’s Finest, a crew that DIVINE was once part of, veteran rapper Tony Sebastian and his crew DopeadelicZ, Dee MC, Emiway Bantai, MC Altaf, Kaam Bhaari and more.
DIVINE rapping with Ranveer Singh
© Ali Bharmal/Red Bull Content Pool
But it was Mere Gully Mein by DIVINE (real name Vivian Fernandes) that kicked open the floodgates, helping the genre reach music fans previously only exposed to Punjabi hip-hop – a more commercial style rooted in pop music and with a focus on material excess. Just as grime resonated with UK youth, who helped shove it into the mainstream, the gritty reality of gully rap gave Indian kids something to connect with and believe in. DIVINE's rags to riches story – a street kid from an abusive, underprivileged background who found solace in hip-hop – was totally relatable. It's a tale that's told in the Bollywood movie, Gully Boy, and brand-new documentary, Gully Life.
This hasn’t happened overnight. Gully rap started life years ago as a DIY movement inspired by desperate circumstances and exposure to Eminem, 50 Cent and later Kendrick Lamar. Evolving in local cyphers in random locations, rap battles, breakdancing and beatboxing events, and the subversive messages deployed in Mumbai's graffiti. Uday Kapur, co-founder of key hip-hop label Azadi Records, tells us that, in large part, gully rap was forced into existence thanks to the class divide in not just the music scene, but in society generally.
Underprivileged kids, without the sort of financial backing that a lot of independent rock and electronic musicians from India's metropolitan cities have traditionally enjoyed, wouldn't be allowed into pubs to see their favourite rappers. In New Delhi, says Kapur, b-boys would instead need to organise their own underground after-hours sessions in obscure locations.
“The thing I realised,” says Kapur, “is that these guys were going to be doing this whether we were there or not. The main reason for the growth of the scene is that there’s no formal training required. Everything can be done on smartphones. Those things have helped. Orkut in the early days, then other social media. Chinese smartphones and cheap data packs.” Kids would upload and watch music on YouTube to circumvent paid-streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple.
After learning about the fundamentals of US hip-hop, identifying with its spirit of rebellion, these kids saw rap as a way of channelling their own alienation and rage. Then came the realisation among these early gully rappers that rhyming in their own local languages would have a far greater impact.
“People can relate to the dialect,” says Mawali, who recently guested on a track by acclaimed US-born, India-raised, London-based musician Sarathy Korwar. “Words like ‘bantai’ [a colloquial greeting similar in tone to 'bro'] for example. Gully rap is about street life. People are able to relate, and they’re slowly understanding the value of political rap, too. They're exploring more things through hip-hop and their knowledge is increasing.” Mawali talks, too, about how gully rap has empowered India's youth, citing a workshop hosted by political UK rapper Akala as an important moment. “Lots of people went, and Akala said, ‘If you know rap, you know poetry, you know writing.’ Whether it’s an essay or a novel or a film script or an advertisement, you can write. There are lots of opportunities. And rap is a platform. Now, if you go to someone and say you’ve written a song, they’ll listen. Earlier, they’d have laughed, made jokes.”
Impoverished areas like Mumbai’s Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slums, have always been a hotbed of hip-hop, but the mainstream focus on gully rap and stars like DIVINE is helping transform these places. Sameer Inamdar is a young rapper from Dharavi who goes by the pseudonym Rapture and raps about burning socio-political issues. He tells us about the important role played in the area by gully rap pioneers SlumGods and Tony Sebastian, who mentor other young rappers. Hip-hop has, he believes, liberated the youth.
DIVINE onstage with the Gully Gang
© Ali Bharmal/Red Bull Content Pool
“Basically, DIVINE and Naezy’s rise was proof, hope for all the rappers in Mumbai,” says Rapture. “Like: hey bro, we won’t always be underground, people are listening, there is an audience out there, we just have to work hard enough to reach them. Brands are now conscious about rap, record labels are interested…”
Rapture has no time, however, for newer artists who've forgotten the roots of gully rap and the socio-political impact it can have. “Rap comes from rebellion,” he says. “It comes from a place of oppression, rage, emotions and struggles. Some people have started doing it because it’s trendy to rap about your struggles. If want to become a voice, then don’t pretend. But this happens to a lot of movements – they get picked up and the essence fades away.”
Whatever the future holds, though, gully rap is on fire right now. DIVINE is on the cusp of global stardom, while Naezy, after a brief hiatus, has made a comeback. There are new scenes sprouting up all over the country as kids discover the value of their words. Young India has realised that hip-hop is a weapon, a voice for the voiceless.
Swadesi: representing Mumbai
© Ali Bharmal/Red Bull Content Pool
