Kolkata duo Cizzy and Joe aka Streetfood Music just released their debut album “Uposonghar Noy (Infirmus)” in association with DesiHipHop.com. Being one of the pioneers of hip-hop music in Kolkata, this album is bound to move the crowd. The multi-lingual album caters to the Bengali audience more. Thus opening doors to Bengali rap for folks across the globe.

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“Uposonghar Noy (Infirmus)” is an album comprising of 8 tracks, each one better than the previous. The whole album has been made by Cizzy and Joe from the scratch including the production, writing, composing, mixing etc. A beautiful abstract music video for one of the tracks also awaits the audience. You can watch DARIPALLA here.

DesiHipHop.com connected with the duo to know firsthand about the story behind their journey making this album together. Cizzy and Joe provided some deep insight on how “Uposonghar Noy” came to be. So without further ado, let’s get to it!

Streetfood Music – Joe & Cizzy

What made you choose the name ‘Uposanghor Noy (Infirmus)’?

CIZZY – Uposonghar means ‘Moral of the story’ and Noy means either ‘9 (nine)’ or ‘Not’. We have 8 tracks in the album, the 9th song was supposed to be the moral of the story, which is absent, hence ‘Uposonghar Noy’. The album is a story of a journey, which starts with the storytellers and the city of joy itself. They depict a lost person as the central character. As the album propagates, the songs time jump between some important phases of this person’s life.

The album gives the listeners the freedom to fill in the blanks according to their own experiences in life, so the story may vary with perspectives. As the album reaches its end, the story of the dawn marks a new journey, Which brings us back to the first song, just as if a loop has been reset. That is why the album couldn’t fetch any conclusions and hence the name.

Productive vibe of the album is absolutely off the hook! Give us a little insight about the process of
making these beats.

JOE – Cizzy and I have been working independently for some time now and we first collaborated in 2014. Since then we both I guess realised that we were not just two more bricks in the wall. We both go for vibes and emotions more than technicalities and grammar. Usually it’s like one of us starts a composition and carries it to a perfect certain point after which we prefer to leave it to the other.  Usually I’m the one handling bass, guitars and percussions. I count on Cizzy to blend in his expertise in classical music. He is a master of melodies and I tend to prefer the heavier sounds.

Somehow we always seem to compliment each other’s work. Plus we both are very emotional people and we can only proceed with something if we dig it from inside. So we are habituated with giving each other a lot of freedom and it always works out. For this album we had to dig in very deep and every song has been a journey. From composition to recording, we had to give it our everything every time. I remember when we were working on Ghaam, it took us months to come up with the music. Nothing seemed good enough till we finally decided to put a switch in the middle. That decision proved to be the crux of this album and helped it escalate to the level it’s on now.

For the non-Bengali speaking audience, what do you think the album has to offer?

CIZZY – The vibe of music transcends beyond language barriers. Quite sure that the soul of the album will not require much translation. Plus we have separate artworks for each tracks in the form of a photo exhibition. You can just stare at them and play the songs and hopefully, you will be able to understand the story perfectly.

There seems to be a very interesting story-line connecting all the tracks – care to dig a little deeper?

The album is about a character whom we don’t know personally but we can recognise easily. We see him everyday. He is a regular person who falls in love. But his weakness for the worldly vices bring about his downfall. He spends a large part of his life trying to escape from nothing but himself. For the most parts he hates how he slowly subsides into a soulless living creature who badly wants to repent for his sins. Through the journey he comes across himself and as if via a divine intervention he forced himself to turn everything around. Going against the stream is never easy and he finds strength in faith and solitude.

Are there any music videos for the album tracks in pipeline?

CIZZY – The plan is to make music videos for all the songs. We will release one of them really soon. Rest will take some time, but we are already working on it. We have released one music video of the track “Daripalla – The Story of Missed Calls” that you can watch here.

How has the journey been for Streetfood Music?

StreetFood started as The Cypher Projekt band, with a huge success of ‘Mora Gaang’, which got them on BBC, NDTV and everywhere else. Then we did the ilaka rap campaign with the largest radio network of India, Red FM and produced all the tracks which received huge recognition. We have performed across the city of joy at various places and got supported by the Desi hip hop community from the start.

What more can we expect in future – also share your views on the future of Hip-Hop in South Asia.

The scene is improving overall at a great pace . Hip hop will reach even further when we all start focusing on the content. StreetFood draws inspiration from life and that is what keeps us going. If you know how and where to look you won’t run out of fuel. We believe in dreams and the whole scene should too. We all gotta work together and establish a new culture. If we say desihiphop, it can’t look like a budget version of American hip hop. India is really picking up and I guess in the next 5-6 years we will have artists the world would be looking for.