Gujarat rappers find their voice in cypherspace | Ahmedabad News
There’s a moment in 2019 that MC Parshuraavan still remembers with absolute clarity. The young rapper was at a protest in Rajkot, and his songs were blasting from speakers nearby. A police officer confronted the crowd and asked: Who sang this? “I said I did,” Parshuraavan recalls. “They detained me for one night.” The 29-year-old didn’t stop making music after that night.That experience changed his approach. The defiance stayed, but the delivery softened. It is typical of Gujarat’s version of rap. This is not Mumbai’s gully rap story. It is not Delhi’s battle culture. Gujarat built its own sound, one that mixes devotion and protest, folk melodies and modern beats, small-town isolation and viral reach.Cable TV lit the fuseFor many young Gujaratis, rap didn’t arrive through the internet. It came through cable television, playing in living rooms before anyone understood what they were hearing.Parshuraavan traces his story to a single song: Karmacy’s “Blood Brothers.” “I heard ‘Kevi Rite Jaish’ and told myself, this is called rap,” he says. Years later, when he finally got a smartphone, he searched for it again.For the uninitiated, Karmacy’s “Blood Brothers” became an early reference point for Gujarati rap listeners, especially those who first discovered rap through cable TV and early internet sharing. That exposure planted something crucial: the idea that rap could exist in Gujarati, not just as translation but as home language.By 2016-17, you could find Gujarati rappers in different cities, but they didn’t know each other yet. Then 2019 arrived with “Gully Boy”, making hip-hop feel suddenly mainstream. And just as that door opened, the pandemic slammed everything else shut.The lockdown did strange things to a generation that had never been forced to pause. Streets went quiet. Colleges closed. But the silence didn’t last. It just moved inwards. Across Gujarat, young people sat with their anger, their faith, their family pressure and their ambitions. And when they finally spoke, many chose the language of rap.Devotion meets bass dropsIn Ahmedabad, a group called Aghori Muzik was asking a question that would have seemed absurd to most hip-hop purists: could Gujarat’s folk traditions and devotional music actually live within hiphop without becoming a gimmick?“Our first song was ‘Jai Jai Shiv Shambhu,’” says KDeep, 30. His bandmate Kruz, 29, explains the thinking: “If we want to represent Gujarat and bring hip-hop to the mainstream, we have to connect it with folk and devotion.” They researched figures like Jogidas Khuman.They built sounds from scratch and created “original compositions” that listeners often mistake for re- Pooja Jha mixes. Hard D, 25, talks about their most famous track with a mix of pride and frustration: “Our Sorath theme song was written and composed by us. People think it’s a remix of an old folk song.”The beginnings were makeshift. They built a tiny recording booth—just PVC pipes holding up blankets for soundproofing, roughly 5 feet by 5 feet. “We had a cheap desi mic and a borrowed laptop,” Kruz remembers. From that cramped setup, they built something that now tours internationally.For four years they’ve been performing shows across India, the US, Australia and Canada. Hard-D adds: “Our shows g o houseful. We don’t perform at weddings or parties.” Tracks like “Mata Na Pagla” and “Jhamkudi” have become the kind of hooks people sing without knowing who wrote them. Cruise recalls the backlash when a lyric referenced chilam as prasad. “People said we promote intoxication,” he says. “But our intention is worship.” Their manager, Devarsh, keeps the band’s stance clear—no religion-politics debates, only music that connects.Building a communityAn artist named Siyaahi, who moved to Ahmedabad from Bharuch, was invested in solving a different problem. In 2017, he says, Ahmedabad had “1520 rappers” but “no community to connect them.” His stage name came through an accident. “My song featured in the Top 10 in a beat challenge held in 2018. When they announced the winners, they got my name wrong and called me Siyaahi instead. I just kept it.”Then came the harder task of convincing individual artists that a rap scene was even possible. “We made a community called ‘Ahmedabad Hip Hop’ and starte d c y phers,” he says. Slowly, the infrastructure Siyaahigrew. “Ahmedabad’s hip-hop circle now includes over 50 people. Siyaahi talks about “meter” with the calm of someone who wants the craft to be understood: BPM, bars, hooks, verses — the math that lets emotion land on beat.He and others started an event series called AMD Live. “We’ve done four editions. For individual shows, we can sell 300-500 tickets,” Siyaahi says.That’s not stadium numbers, but it’s proof an audience exists. Sponsorship remains the barrier.“A majority of artists come from villages and slums. We don’t know how to pitch to corporates.” Siyaahi credits Aghori Muzik for teaching newcomers how to record. Having rapped extensively about Ahmedabad and its rich heritage, he believes that the more one loves their city, the more their city loves them back.Why rap mattersDhanji operates with a different energy. He does not talk much about building the scene; he talks about why rap matters. He calls this India’s golden age for rap, comparing it to the 1990s boom in the US. He says rap’s audience cuts across class because anger and ambition are not exclusive to one neighbourhood.He is direct about language in lyrics. “Abuses are society’s reality, but they should be used as a literary device.” He is as direct about his own past work: “If I promoted intoxication in my songs, I accept that mistake. I won’t do it going forward.” “My goal is to become the country’s number 1 rapper,” he says bluntly.Hukeykaran is a civil engineer who started rapping at 18 after hearing American rap. He wrote in college, mixing Gujarati, Hindi and English, recording his first track with a hands-free mic because that is what he had.His family pushed back. They wanted him to get a stable job. But once he started earning and building an audience, the objections stopped.“Earlier, people didn’t understand what I do, but today everyone appreciates it.” His songs are about the struggles poor families deal with. His new album releases on Dec 28.The girls have arrivedPooja Jha, 19, is pursuing a company secretary course alongside BCom. “Having hundreds of expectations and getting myself a financially secure future makes it hard to focus on music sometimes,” she admits. But when she gets on stage, the noise in her head settles.“That is when I am myself.” It was her English teacher who honed her poetry skills. Soon, poems made way for shayari and took the form of rap. “The day they call me the ‘best rapper’ rather than the ‘best female rapper’ is the day I’ll be satisfied.”Her mother, Shruti, started with assumptions. “I used to believe that only frustrated people sing rap,” she says. “But when Pooja started singing, I understood rap has deep meaning.”Rupa Gill, 17, raps about herself, society, discrimination and gender inequality. She raps in Hindi, English and Punjabi, and is learning Gujarati. Her parents, both teachers, are her cheerleaders. Her father, S S Gill, draws a hard line against vulgarity-as-fashion, backing her because her songs are “critical of wrong things”.Singer Bansari, a gold medallist in Indian classical music and now Aghori Muzik’s lead female voice, turned bhajiya — Gujarat’s monsoon emotion — into an anthem. She rose to national attention with “Khalasi” alongside Aditya Gadhvi.Small towns, big reachSnappy Kaal, 22, started with shayari in 9th standard, dropped out of B. Com, and now pushes Gujarati rap in a market dominated by Hindi and English. “Rap gives freedom to say whatever you want without filters,” he says. Recently, he shot an album with his father— “Thakkarnagar Styleee”— proof of how family dynamics shift when art speaks back. Shaitan, 20, wrote about Covid during lockdown and uploaded it to YouTube. “My elder brother said, you write well, go ahead,” he recalls.Snappy Kaal and Shaitan met at a cypher in 2022, still working private jobs while dreaming of listeners beyond Gujarat.“Even if people don’t understand Gujarati, they should still listen for the vibe.” They reject stereotypes. “People think all rappers are addicts. Rap shows reality; it does not automatically promote it,” Shaitan says. Far from the Ahmedabad-Rajkot axis, Kutch tells its own story. Tanuj Sanjot, 29, son of dailywage workers from Bidada, started as a poet in Class 8. He wrote for a Kutchi movie, tried short films, made comedy videos. When the 2019 wave hit, he released a Gujarati rap track. During lockdown, game-based songs brought millions of views.“Evenings belong to music,” says Sanjot, an instructor at Mandvi ITI. His album, “Kutch Se”, mixing Hindi and Kutchi dialect, went viral. He even collaborated with folk singer Muralaala Marwada. While he is not connected to the wider hip-hop circuit, he has built a small studio at home anyway.In Rajkot, RJ Akash released “Rajkot Na Loko”, which became hugely popular. He holds a BAMS degree and also lends his voice to Gujarati commentary during the IPL. In Gujarat’s hip-hop circles, the track is often cited as a marker of local pride — a runaway hit that reaffirmed how hometown-specific writing can still strike a powerful chord with listeners .Put these inspiring stories together and you see a state finding ways to speak in multiple registers at once.In Gujarat, rap did not arrive as a unified scene overnight. It arrived as dozens of people who decided that their voices truly mattered.
