Gully Rap: India’s Answer To Hip-Hop Has Both Soul & Promise

[On 16th-19th January, 2019, Homegrown is throwing a first-of-its-kind music festival in Mumbai designed to celebrate the city’s vast and diverse music culture. Dive deep into a wide variety of dynamic workshops, exhibitions, curated tours, panels, pop-ups, performances and parties that promise to be inclusive of all kinds of tastes and people.

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For many years now, hip hop and rap have served as a platform for alternative creative expressions—an outlet for social and political injustices, and cultural issues capturing the spirit of the people through lyrical rhymes. Over time it has grown and evolved into a lifestyle, of sorts; a lavish, cool and modern identity in the commercial mainstream sense, but in many nooks and crannies of the world it continues to thrive as a mouthpiece for youth expression—it’s no different in India. Although Mumbai is considered to be the home of the country’s indie music scene, through the city’s winding, serpentine alleys, a new generation of home-grown rappers have taken it upon themselves to paint verbal images of what they call the ‘new’ India—one that has long existed in fact, but is not heard of nor seen in mainstream music. Some of the finest hip hop and rap acts have been born and evolved in the least expected corners of Mumbai. With the growing ease of internet access, hip hop made its way to the heart of a subculture that many have tagged as ‘gully rap.’

This musical movement, so to speak, has drawn in a variety of rappers, dancers and numerous artists who had little space to speak their mind nor the opportunity to explore their creativity and imagination. India has a rapidly growing underground hip hop scene, one among the forefront is Naved Shaikh, also known as Naezy (rhymes with crazy), and we got the opportunity to speak to him and get some insight into the “rap music of the Indian streets” that doesn’t follow nor express the usual “‘get rich or die trying’ sort of feelings, nor is it about money, fame and getting girls,” as he puts it. Their stories are about the Indian reality—about politics, social issues, crimes and injustices, that you never hear of in today’s pop music.

With flowing rhymes, catchy tunes and relatable lyrics, Naved has a distinctive voice that sounds out. His debut track Aafat! went viral on the internet and drew in the attention of a lot of people in the industry, and from then on there was no looking back for him.

Growing up in an orthodox Muslim family, a family of Urdu teachers and poets, Naved had an “adventurous childhood,” as he puts it, in ‘Mumbai sattar,’ referring to his neighbourhood Kurla’s pin code 400070. “I grew up without my father in Bombay’s central neighbourhood, Kurla. Life was full of adventures. I’d wander around with them ‘mean boys’ of the neighbourhood, jumping on cars, pulling, snatching, climbing, stealing and selling things; hustling, earning, collecting, and then finally spending like them rich boys. I’d roam around with bigger boy doing things like breaking mirrors and jaws, throwing stones, starting small fights which got bigger and then finally getting caught. Getting behind bars, we always had some guy from the hood with acquaintances who would get us out somehow,” Naved tells us. “But as I grew older, I understood what’s wrong and what’s right. I left that company, that path, but couldn’t leave the circle, the area, and things are always happening around me. If you’re here, being good doesn’t help and there are always circumstances and situations, but you have to be bold and raise your voice against what’s wrong, and you gotta survive.”

Naved used to memorise the lyrics of other rappers as a kid, performing for his friends; “They used to love it,” he says. “I liked the concept of talking to people through rap, conveying a message through lyrics on a beat with rhythm and wordplay. I also realised that hip hop is a medium to raise your voice and to bring about social change.” Getting deeper into hip hop music, he started doing cypher sessions at a tea stall in Khalsa college, Mumbai, with his crew, The Schizophrenics. He wrote his first rap at the age of 16 and released his introductory rap video in 2014 on YouTube. Inspired by Tupac, Kendrick Lamar, Muhammad Ali and Bhagat Singh, Naved believes that hip hop and rap can truly bring about social change if it’s done right. “I keep thinking of concepts, my heads always filled with rhymes. I mostly write about things which are happening around me or affecting me in a way.”

First free-styling on a beat, then setting a complex lyrical structure; add to that a catchy tune and the song flows—”I always make sure my lyrics are on point. I want to inspire the youth and change the mindsets of people in my community. I want to spark brains through my music and motivate people all around me.” His family has been supportive of his endeavour, they like the purpose and message that he tries to convey in his songs, he tells us, but not everyone in his community has been supportive. “Some people from my community have started telling them ‘what your son does is not right’ and it’s not allowed in our religion. They thought it’s my hobby and I’m going to stop making music at some point, they don’t want me to make a career out of this, but I’m a rebel.”

Life is a lot more disciplined now for Naved, in his opinion he’s become a more serious person, prioritising and staying away from the things that hinder his focus, spending his time on creating and learning. “People around me are always complaining. Some guys are proud of what I’m doing, while other are jealous,” he says. Naved has come a long way from being a hustler who filmed his first music video on an iPad, to a critical artist working for the betterment of his society in whatever way he can. But it’s not going to get any easier for him. Even though the hip hop music scene is finally getting the attention and appreciation it deserves in India, with artists like Naved being picked up by big labels and representatives, such as Only Much Louder in Naved’s case, any form of artistic expression in the country that is a bit left of centre, not falling into the cookie cutter music that’s popular tends to have a tough road. Bollywood music nowadays seems to have a very one-track mind about its content and lyrics, and musicians like Naved want to shift the focus onto the realities of the country; “I want to remove the bullshit and add meaning,” says Naved, commenting on the changes he’d make to the music industry if he could.

With songs like Aafat!, Meri Gully Mein, in which he collaborated with fellow rapper Divine, and Haq Hai, Naved’s definitely created ripples in the music scene, even having a packed show at Mumbai’s Blue Frog in the past. As the Indian hip hop and rap culture continues to spread and gain strength, Naved is ready for whatever the world has to throw at him. The roots of the music may lie in the West, but with a mix of regional languages, local slang and subjects that affect the common man’s daily struggle to survive, Naved’s voice is only one in a growing number of artists who are challenging the state dictated narrative which we live and follow today.

Click here to watch Bombay 70, a short documentary on Naved Shaikh, edited and directed by Disha Noyonika Rindani. You can listen to more of Naezy’s music on his YouTube channel.