Indian Hip Hop started out with a few culture pushers coming together and building their ideas and bringing them to life. Raftaar is an early builder in the scene of HipHop in India. He started out during the early days of commercial hip hop but he is no stranger to the underground music scene. He was recently in the news with regards to an interview that he did. The clip was short and did not cover the entire picture of what his statements were during the interview. However, Raftaar is seen saying that Bollywood is India’s culture and hip-hop is an adopted one.
A lot of people took this statement in a lot of different ways, Raftaar was clearing out the air to each one of them. Fast forward to two weeks later, and he drops one of the rawest tracks that the mainstream media has ever seen or heard. And it was this time that all the doubters and critics came back around with words of praise. What is extremely surprising though, is the fact that this music video was released on the official channel of Zee Music company. A label which has been infamous for their various previous releases, depicting Hip Hop in a very crude and fake format. The track is called “Mantoiyat” and is a promo for an upcoming Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer film “Manto”.
For The Culture
The song lashes out at corrupt politicians, crooked cops and brings to light all the injustices that plague our country. Raftaar goes before bar and each line talks about a range of things. Be it dispelling taboos, talking about deep rooted issues are bringing to light the hypocrisy of the people and the government, Raftaar goes all in on this track. He proved that he has more than the ability to just rap it out, this kind of a move shows the power he holds. He has also been managing a roster of 10 artists on the side, pushing and promoting them wherever he goes. For anyone to call Raftaar anything other than a culture pusher, would be doing him injustice.
The beat for the track is also a raw, Grimy instrumental. He has kept it as real as it gets and placed hard hitting lyrics at the centre of it. Incase anybody was still doubting it, this song proves that he can still hold his own in the rap scene. It is an amazing thing when commercial emcees step up and turn the expectations of the Hip-Hop culture up in a grand scale. This track being used for a Nawazzuddin movie as promotion keeps pushing that sound higher and higher. And the acceptance for these kinds of sounds goes up, along with the reach. This is one of Raftaars best tracks yet, and we eagerly await for more of such sounds.