MUMBAI: Indian-American DJ-Producer KSHMR who has recently announced the arrival of the third track from his much-awaited Indian hip-hop album ‘KARAM’.
Subsequent to the release of the trending track titled ‘Bhussi’, the new track titled ‘LEGACY’, in collaboration with Raftaar, one of the biggest rapper in the country. The track is really phenomenal, quirky and touching great numbers.
If you could tell us something about your album ‘KARAM’ and if there is a specific story behind it?
I started making my album ‘KARAM’ about one and a half years ago, I was really excited about the Indian hip-hop scene that was beginning to emerge and I wanted to be a part of it because I myself have my roots in India. So I went out to Bombay and I worked for a few weeks with so many different artists. I had a lot of beats with me and I left with the majority of the album recorded. There is a story in “KARAM” that tells about a young boy who escapes the life of poverty, migrating with his friends and they do crimes for money and eventually get bigger and become established. He loses his friends to the gang life and then he himself in an active revenge loses his own life. So, there is a very well defined story in ‘KARAM’ and it sounds like an old Bollywood movie, it has an original core, an original voice acting and it sets up each song. So, when I was working with the artists, I asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the main character and the moments of the story, so that they would have the perspective that not only gives inspiration for this song but works well in the context of the whole album. The result is so many different emotions, its a very diverse album, diverse sonics, diverse lyricism and subject matter and I am really grateful for the amazing artists who collaborated with me.
If you could talk about the track list and any of your trending tracks on which you could through light on?
I was really lucky to have recorded Haath Varthi with MC Stan and it worked out perfectly that he went into the big boss show, he won the whole thing, to everybody’s surprise and then on the final show where he won he performed the song which gave it this huge buzz and then we put the song out with the music video and it just did astronomical numbers, it was a big success. So that really set the tone for the album that was a great introduction to the album. Now we have Bhussi with Seedhe Maut, which are like my favourite lyricist at the moment into legacy with Raftaar who’s just a huge decorated star of the Indian hip hop scene also on the album we have Krsna, we have Ikka, we have Yashraj, we have Riar Saab who is enjoying big moment with his song ‘Obsessed’ right now, we have youngster and Talha Anjum, the PropheC, there is Harjas, there is Nas. Really so many artist that reflect the scope and diversity of the Indian hip hop scene here on the album.
Any future projects you would like to talk about?
The future projects that I have in my mind are getting back into dance music because it had taken a bit of time away to work on “KARAM” and after that maybe go back into the next Indian hip hop album because this one truly been so much exciting for me and let the new fire in me in terms of creativity and inspiration.