Poverty, corruption and crime: how India's 'gully rap' tells story of real life

2016-05-16T12:38:00-04:00

beneath the surface of the city, a new sound has begun to emerge, one which refuses to airbrush poverty, illiteracy and police brutality. Driven by a similar sense of disenfranchisement that characterised the development of hip-hop in 1970s New York, a new generation of musicians is creating India’s own homegrown rap scene – labelled by some as “gully rap”, slang for gutter or from the streets.

“The popular rappers in Bollywood just talk about girls and booze and parties, they are only talking about glamour and trying to sell a fake dream. I wanted to make music that spoke about fighting, and the murders and the violence that were a part of my life growing up – and is the same for millions of others living in ghettoes across India.”

The roots of his music may lie in American hip-hop, but Shaikh and others in India’s burgeoning scene have made gully rap their own. Shaikh’s lyrics, a mix of Hindi and Urdu, speak in the street slang of India’s slum areas and address everything from police corruption and brutality to his song Bombay, which is about “the everyday struggle to survive”, directly challenging the government for making fake promises.

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Poverty, corruption and crime: how India's 'gully rap' tells story of real life