Hanumankind: The rapper from India topping global hip-hop charts

In a short while, Indian rapper Hanumankind has quickly risen as a standout within the nation’s burgeoning hip-hop scene. His observe Massive Dawgs not solely topped world charts but in addition briefly outpaced Kendrick Lamar’s diss observe Not Like Us. The BBC explores the rapper’s meteoric rise to fame.

Within the video for Big Dawgs, 31-year-old Sooraj Cherukat, also referred to as Hanumankind, exudes boundless vitality.

Shot inside a maut ka kuan (effectively of loss of life) – a jaw-dropping present the place drivers carry out gravity-defying stunts inside a large picket barrel-like construction – he stomps across the pit as a bunch of motorists zip previous him.

The track, a collaboration with producer Kalmi Reddy and director Bijoy Shetty, has earned over 132 million streams on Spotify and 83 million views on YouTube since its July launch, catapulting Cherukat to world fame.

On the skin, Cherukat’s music follows the hip-hop template of delivering hard-edged tales of road life by way of specific lyrics and uncooked prose.

However a better inspection reveals a rapper, who makes use of his music to straddle his distinct identities.

Born within the southern Indian state of Kerala, Cherukat spent his childhood crisscrossing the world – principally due to his father who works with a number one oil firm – and has lived in France, Nigeria, Egypt and Dubai.

However he spent his youth in Houston, Texas – and it was right here that his musical profession took form.

Not like the well-known East and West Coast rap rivalry within the US, Houston additionally has a particular hip-hop tradition that stands out in its personal proper.

In Houston’s hip-hop scene, cough syrup is the drug of alternative. Its dizzying impact led to the creation of the “screwed-up” remix, the place tracks are slowed all the way down to replicate the syrup’s affect.

Cherukat has typically talked about how his music is an implicit nod to Texas hip-hop legends comparable to DJ Screw, UGK, Massive Bunny and Venture Pat, who he grew up listening to.

Though their affect is obvious in his rap, his model developed additional after he returned to India in 2021 after dropping out of school.

He earned a enterprise diploma and labored at companies like Goldman Sachs earlier than realising it wasn’t for him. That is when he determined to pursue rapping full-time, a ardour he had beforehand solely pursued on the aspect.

Very like his private life, Cherukat’s music additionally displays his effort to shed his cosmopolitan id and reconnect along with his Indian roots.

His songs typically boldly discover the struggles of southern Indian road life, mixing hard-hitting vocal supply with catchy rhythms. Often, tabla beats and synthesisers complement his verses.

“We bought points in our nation trigger there’s events at conflict,” he sneers in a track known as Genghis, which was shot within the lanes of Bengaluru, the place he lives.

In Massive Dawgs, Cherukat provides a substitute for the bling and opulence related to mainstream rap by ditching flashy vehicles and selecting to give attention to small metropolis stuntmen, who come from poor households and are a part of a dying art-form in India.

“These are the folks which might be the actual risk-takers…These are the large canine, for actual,” he told Complicated web site.

However though the combative vitality of his music has managed to show heads, he has obtained criticism too.

Some really feel his songs are much less impactful for Indian listeners. Not like many friends who rap in vernacular languages, Cherukat sings in English, which can restrict his resonance with non-English-speaking audiences.

Others criticise him for mimicking Western artists too intently and adopting a tokenistic method to his Indian id.

“His track solid Indians and South Asians as critical gamers within the Western rap scene which is nice,” mentioned Abid Haque, a PhD scholar in New Jersey.

“However he sounds an excessive amount of like an American rapper lifted out of context into the Indian scene. Whereas the Massive Dawgs music video relied on an Indian aesthetic, the lyrics and music really feel divorced from an Indian actuality,” he added.

It is a duality that is, arguably, additionally present in Cherukat’s personal understanding of his work.

On one hand, returning to India has been a method of navigating his sense of belonging: “I believe it actually moulded me as somebody who by no means actually had a spot to name residence… and that type of formed the best way I understand music, folks, and tradition,” he informed Complicated.

However he additionally insists on viewing himself from a wider vantage: “I’m not an Indian rapper, however I’m a rapper from India,” he is mentioned in earlier interviews, explaining that he locations himself outdoors of the nation’s thriving hip-hop scene.

The rapper has confronted a barrage of racist feedback on-line for his distinctive model. Some worldwide listeners wrestle to just accept that he’s from India as a result of he would not “look or sound” like their expectations. In the meantime, his Indian viewers pillories him for a similar causes, wishing he conformed extra to their picture of Indian id.

However it’s this precise placelessness of his work that followers have come to like a lot.

To them, he’s a genre-hopping road poet who took the outdated hip hop traditions he grew up with and injected it with contemporary social commentary.

“He isn’t attempting to cater to an Indian viewers, which exhibits in his music and he’s unapologetic about it,” mentioned Arnab Ghosh, a psychiatrist based mostly in Delhi who not too long ago found Hanumankind by way of Massive Dawgs.

“Once I hearken to his music it may be from wherever on the planet. That type of universality is interesting to me.”

Overcoming expectations of what a South Asian rapper can obtain and establishing himself on his personal phrases is perhaps Cherukat’s best triumph – and problem.

As he as soon as mentioned: “You retain sure issues as your roots, but it surely’s as much as you to adapt to the surroundings and glide, so long as you don’t compromise on integrity.”