The Delhi boy, Raftaar is an inspiration to all the upcoming rappers. Many Desi hip hop artists see him as a mentor as he always supports and gives guidance to the upcoming artists. In fact, from commercial to pure hip-hop tracks, Raftaar can pull it off better than any other rapper in the scene. Heavy voice and a unique texture made him one of the best rappers in the country! Right? Also, we know for a fact that fans want to know everything about their favourite artists. So, DesiHipHop.com decided to write a piece on Raftaar. This piece will feature news and some facts about Raftaar that his hardcore fans would love to know.
1. Begining
Raftaar was born as Dilin Nair in the year 1988. He was born in Kerala and his ethnicity is Malayali. He is the only child of his parents. Raftaar is very vocal about his family. As a matter of fact, his father was a cleaner with the Indian Railway and his mother is a typist.
He has spent his childhood in the streets of Rohini. According to some sources, he also grew up in the gullies of Munrika before making it big in the Desi Hip Hop scene.
2. Professional Life
Raftaar started his career as a dancer and goes by the moniker of Max. He did his first reality show called DID Doubles with Manik in 2011. Throughout the season, you can witness his passion for rapping. Then, he formed a crew called Black Wall Street Desis with Lil Golu and Ikka Singh, initially known as Young Amli.
At that point, Raftaar used to spend his pocket money for the recordings and their travel allowances as he started taking classes at a dance institute in Delhi, charging Rs 150 per kid. They used to put their tracks on Orkut, a fast-growing social networking site at the time, that emerged as a platform for young and inexperienced aspiring rappers all over the country.
On the other hand, they got a call from Honey Singh and he mentioned, “People didn’t know his face at the time, but knew his name for a couple of hits. We figured that this guy has cracked the way of making rap accessible to the Indian audience, by mixing Indian percussion and melody.”
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Raftaar did many songs with Honey Singh and one of them was “Dope Shope” which was a chart buster track. This track led to the creative differences between the two and Raftaar mentioned that, “I wrote most of Dope Shope and was promised that I’d be given my due. When the final product appeared, Honey appeared all over the video, even singing lines that I’d sung.”
In the year 2012, Raftaar parted his ways to begin his solo work. Then, in the very same year, he did “Bottle” with Deep Money which led to his entry into the mainstream scene as a rapper and he did most of the tracks on the album Bornstar. Recently, he also won the Indian Rapper of the year award.
3. ACHIEVEMENTS
After his split, his friend Ankit Khanna who manages DNH firm introduced him to RDB, who later signed him to their label Three Records. He was introduced by RDB in a track called “We Doin It Big”, which was a tribute to RDB’s late member Kully. After the split, Raftaar joined Manj and the rest is history.
His first major success was “Swag Mera Desi” with MTV Spoken Word which created a stir in the music industry. The line “Ab yeh karke dikhao” was the centre of attraction as it was pointed towards Honey Singh. Also, “Swag Mera Desi” won Best Urban Song at the Britasia Music Awards in 2014.
4. Collaboration
Apart from his single tracks, he is also collaborating with the singers of Punjab as well. He also did a track with the legend A.R. Rahman. Last year, we saw Raftaar in a couple of Punjabi tracks. He did tracks like “Saroor” and “Lakdi Ki Kaathi” and did some Bollywood projects as well. Raftaar also did a title track “Dhakkad” for the movie Dangal. His songs have been hughe hits and loved my Desi hip hop fans all over the world.
Apart from this, he is working on his album Zero To Infinity and released few tracks from the album as well. Recently, he dropped a brand new track from his album Zero To Infinity called “Gall Goriye” that features Maninder Buttar.
5. Family
Raftaar got married to Komal Vohra last year. Komal is an interior designer by profession. Raftaar met Komal through a mutual friend five years ago and the two have been in touch ever since. One of Komal’s brothers, Karan, plays the male lead in Zee TV’s Zindagi Ki Mahek, while the other one, Kunal, was a part of the supernatural show Brahmarakshas.
