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There’s music you listen to, and then there’s music you hear. Vengayo’s latest single ‘Chikkama’, meaning free of troubles, is rooted in Tamil kuthu beats and gaana tunes, with clear hip-hop influences. The song is the artist’s first song after his debut single ‘Kilo54’, a year ago. What stands out about Chikkama is the aural and visual setting of the song. Where it starts and where it ends are worlds apart.
The song and music video directed by Paal Dabba, begin with cello and violin tunes, broken by phone notifications, that set an eerie tone for the video, with press surrounding a red carpet — all on a boulder floating in space? What follows is the arrival of celebrities, chaos and the eventual beginning of a bloodbath. Vengayo establishes that no one messes with him. The song is written like a story; an almost-biography of Vengayo’s life.
The artist takes us through his childhood, his indecisiveness when it comes to his hair, his troublesome school life and what the prerequisite is for his brain to work without lagging. The song and video, in some sense, also focus on fan culture and hero-worship — Vengayo is a very aware, all-powerful protagonist in the music video. There’s also some commendable work done on the subtitling for this song; very rarely do English translations carry the same cultural context and meaning that a regional language does.
With Paal Dabba’s classic absurdist storytelling, the song and video are a testament to a rising generation of Tamil hip-hop artists who are not afraid to root their art in the culture, language and music that represents them. Chikkama is also about escaping; escaping trouble, escaping stereotypes, and escaping normalcy. There’s even subtle commentary on corruption, caste discrimination and how Indian artists going global now. The song is a statement of intent that signifies one thing: Vengayo is here to stay.
