How Black Diamond Crew Is Shaping Hyderabad's Blossoming Hip-Hop Culture

Hip-hop is a genre of revolution. Since its origin in the 1970s as a culture and art movement in the Bronx, New York, it has spread like wildfire and become a refuge for self-expression. It has also greatly evolved in India in the last two decades. Many music producers and rappers here are reinventing hip-hop by integrating it with traditional and folk Indian music and Hyderabad is one of the cities where it has really taken root and bloomed.

Black Diamond Crew is a prominent name across Hyderabad’s hip-hop scene. Its members, Prozach, DoublEE and Tiger Keep Rollin’ formed the crew in 2019 and were followed by Yung Minar, Partawho, and MC Hari. They have been key figures in the community and have some of the best live-act performances in the city, a lot of them at The Moonshine Project, a popular Hyderabad venue.

Cypher Hours is a platform created to build a network of artists. It hosts events like dance-battles, rap and beatbox battles, dance photography contests and workshops. Black Diamond has been an active part of this platform and has been nurturing young artists for some time now.

Their music is multi-linguistic and vibrant with an old-school flow. Tracks like Bored in the studio and Armageddon are innovative pieces of work that span genres such as experimental boom bap, experimental old-school, and electronic boom bap. They also collaborate with producers and rappers across the city bringing new flavours to the music. Touching on subjects like religion, oppression, socio-political issues, history, and philosophy, Black Diamond aims to create art with absurd concepts and unique styles of production.

“We aim at breaking the existing notions of hip-hop and rap and to bring some newness and versatility to our art. We also challenge social issues that threaten our society today. We make art, that makes a difference.”   

Some of their upcoming tracks –– The greatness part. 1, Mic tho Badow, and Black Diamond Community Cypher are exclusive new projects that can be found here.

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