Mumbai rapper Divine’s hit track, Mere Gully Mein has garnered 2 million hits on YouTube. This is undoubtedly a milestone achieved by no other artist coming up from the underground. But what made Divine so successful among a pool of really talented artists? Desi Hip Hop is here to break it down for you.
Its a common phenomena currently for the young generation to be inspired by the peers. Everyone wants to put out music videos to let the world know of their existence as an artist. From the time when the underground movement was just in the budding stage, Divine worked towards building a team around him. The biggest advantage was having a talented filmmaker like JD on his side. With Sez teaming up, Vivian released back to back banger music videos that changed the phase of underground.
Undoubtedly, there have been other artists who have worked on giving quality over quantity across India. However, being in the city of dreams, which is the hub of the industry, gives you a certain advantage. At a time when not many rappers could gather resources to pull off large scale projects, Divine stepped his game up. To add the leverage he brought another heavyweight rapper Naezy on Mere Gully Mein. That rolled the ball for their current success as hip hop artists in India.
To be honest, there is no direct secret formula of being successful. Around the globe, the pattern has remained somewhat the same. Any artist who works on himself/herself as a brand more than just their talent will catch the eye of the big guns in the industry. Like the saying, you don’t want to go to the industry as an artist, you would rather have the industry come to you. Which was the case with Vivian as well. Things led to Mere Gully Mein being up on the official Sony India YouTube channel.
By dropping 2 massive music videos underground had never seen done before, Vivian caught the eye of the audience. The audience in turn spread the word like wildfire and soon the Gully movement began. Naturally, now the labels and industry top guns also came to know about this movement and jumped on the opportunity at the right time. All in its time we suppose! Mere Gully Mein is one of the meanest underground tracks to come out. Props to the whole team for putting out such quality content.