‘Malayalam will be the next Spanish’: How young ‘Kalyani’ hitmakers won Snoop Dogg’s nod, teamed up with Shreya Ghoshal and set sights on Dubai

Dubai: Interviewing the twenty-something crew behind Kalyani, the Malayalam viral hit with more than 97 million Spotify streams and a rather unexpected fan in Snoop Dogg, feels less like a conventional celebrity interview and more like gatecrashing a wild boys’ road trip.

They are all squeezed into a moving car in Kerala, passing the phone around as I struggle to keep track of who’s speaking. Faces disappear, voices emerge from the back seat, Malayalam and English fly around, and the internet occasionally abandons us.

It’s a logistical nightmare ; part group interview, part family WhatsApp call, with the added challenge that everyone is in a moving car.

Somewhere amid this chaos are ARJN, KDS and FIFTY4, the voices behind Kalyani, along with producer RONN (Ron Vinod) and their co-writer and manager Suhaas Moideen. The phone keeps changing hands, faces vanish from the screen and voices arrive before I can establish who they belong to. But perhaps this is exactly how I should be meeting them: collectively, chaotically and with nobody holding the spotlight; or the phone; for very long.

Kalyani may be this insanely popular Bollywood remix featuring Shreya Ghoshal, millions of streams and the ultimate pop-culture flex of being shared by American rap legend, but there is still something endearingly unmanufactured about the young men behind it.

They interrupt each other, translate for each other, tease each other and, most strikingly, hype each other up with the enthusiasm of friends who remember exactly what life looked like before anybody cared about their music.

So did they expect 'Kalyani' to get Snoop Dogg's stamp of approval?

“Not really, but somehow it happened, and we are grateful for that,” says Arjn.

He describes Snoop Dogg's endorsement as “a cherry on top for us”, particularly because the recognition came for a song rooted in a South Indian language.

“For us to get globally recognised over Malayalam, which is great,” he says.

That last word, Malayalam, is important.

The clothes are global, the hip-hop influences unmistakable and some of the accents decidedly North American, but culturally these men are fiercely protective of where they come from.

ARJN's accent, in fact, becomes one of the first things I tease him about.

“Where do you get your accent from?” “I was in Canada for like six years,” he says. Six years? I joke that this is almost worse than people who transit through London and return with an accent.

He laughs. “I mean, it is me, so I'm just being me.”

Fair enough.

But underneath that Canadian twang is a Thrissur boy who is eager to make clear that his Malayali identity isn't something he recently discovered because it became fashionable.

“I was here in Kerala till I was 18, so I'm basically so rooted in our culture, so I know what's up,” ARJN says.

For him, the contrast is part of MVR's appeal.

“I think us having a Western influence kind of made a difference because the way we look, the way we dress, the way we talk and all that kind of stuff makes a big difference from other artists from South India.”

They are also quick to clear up one important detail. They are not a band called MVR. MVR stands for Money Verse Records, the independent label and creative platform they are building around their music.

Their plan is to use that label to help push Malayalam independent music onto a global stage, and they have absolutely no intention of treating Bollywood as the compulsory stop along the way.

“No, we're gonna stay local,” ARJN says when I ask whether Bollywood is their next destination.

Really?

“Yeah, 100 per cent.”

So isn't giving Kalyani the Bollywood treatment; even with the superbly talented Shreya Ghoshal; slightly contradictory for a collective so fiercely committed to its Malayalam identity? I give them a hard time about it.

Here’s my beef: I loved the original Kalyani. Some songs simply shouldn’t be tampered with, I tell them, so why mess with something that was already working?

The question travels around the car.

Their defence is that Kalyani was already connecting with listeners who didn’t understand Malayalam.

“They knew no Malayalam, but they were enjoying the beats and the flow but without understanding the lyrics, per se,” one member says.

The remix also gave them something the original didn’t have: a woman’s perspective.

ARJN, meanwhile, isn’t buying my Bollywood argument. Ghoshal, he points out, has sung extensively in Malayalam.

“We can’t really say Shreya is outside because she has sung more than 200 songs in Malayalam already, which kind of makes her a Mallu [Malayali] at this point.”

More importantly, they insist they didn't mess with the sections people already loved.

“Me, KD, Fifty4 portion is still same,” says ARJN. “We made sure we kept it real.”

The original audio had already been circulating for months, and simply releasing a music video containing exactly the same track seemed pointless to them. They wanted viewers to get a surprise.

Shreya Ghoshal became that surprise.

Bollywood isn't the prize

The remix’s success doesn’t mean Bollywood is next.

“Malayalis are everywhere,” ARJN says, pointing to the diaspora across Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Dubai. Staying rooted in their language, he believes, is more important than chasing a Hindi audience.

“If we make songs about ourselves, our language and all that kind of stuff, that would help Malayalis in general instead of us going Bollywood.”

He wouldn’t rule out acting in a Bollywood film, but musically their loyalties are clear: “Nah, it’s always down south. Malu people, all the way.”

His friends agree. “We have the same vision.”

For them, Malayalam isn’t a launch pad to something bigger. Making Malayalam bigger is the point.

Friends, music and a dangerous business proposition

The friendships behind Kalyani go back years. ARJN and their manager-writer Suhas knew each other from childhood tuition classes, while KDS and FIFTY4 have been friends “from the womb, basically”, ARJN jokes. Canada brought others into the fold, with music eventually becoming their shared obsession.

“Music is like a thing that we cannot live without at this point,” ARJN says.

I remind them that mixing best friends, money and business isn’t always a winning formula. Fame and ego have broken up far more established acts.

“More like family at this point,” ARJN counters.

The affection is obvious. Asked to name each other’s strengths, they don’t hold back. FIFTY4, for instance, is immediately crowned their “lyrical genius”.

“He's good with his pen,” ARJN says. “He sings too. He raps too. He does everything.”

KDS is the “business mastermind”, the man who understands the money.

Suhas is their connector, the person who knows “what to do, who to contact”.

Then I ask about ARJN.

His friends don't hesitate.

“He's the creative head of the gang,” one says. “He's the most creative guy I ever met.”

The fact that these young men can celebrate one another without appearing threatened by somebody else's strength may be one of the reasons the arrangement works.

Before 97 million streams came five years of waiting

The success of Kalyani looks sudden only if you begin the story with Kalyani.

Some members moved to Canada in 2019, where they studied and held down jobs while making music on the side.

“We were working that full-time job,” one member says. “Then the music was like side. We were investing the money from the job to music.”

That last part understandably worried their families.

Money was coming in from their jobs and going straight back out on music, while the promised breakthrough stubbornly refused to arrive.

None of them came from established musical families either.

“I'll be the first in my bloodline to do this stuff,” ARJN says, adding that the others were in similar positions.

For years, their families saw plenty of spending and not much evidence that the grand plan was working.

“They didn't see no result for five years,” he says.

Now the awards, streams and recognition have altered the conversation.

“Now they are happy,” ARJN says. “They are the proudest.”

Their greatest fear is being average

Interestingly, the boys don't appear particularly interested in turning those difficult years into tragic artistic mythology.

“Even when we went to Canada, we could have just talked about all the tough days and dark days that we had, but we chose to talk about the stuff that we want to do, the manifesting and all that kind of stuff,” ARJN says.

“Instead of the negativity, we focused on the positivity, and we just manifested it.”

When I ask what actually drives him, his answer tells me considerably more about their mentality.

“Scared of being average.”

He also has little patience for the idea that success should arrive on a convenient schedule.

“Never, never look at the clock while working,” he says. “Stop looking at the time. It's gonna take years, maybe like 10 years, 20 years, or even more.”

Football taught him that lesson.

ARJN once dreamed of becoming a footballer and spent years attending camps, but believes he never gave it absolutely everything.

“I still have the regret of not putting the 100 per cent,” he says.

He decided music would not leave him with the same question.

“When it comes to music, I made sure I would never have a regret of not trying the fullest.”

So what do these rappers actually do for fun?

There is another revelation from the car. They don't drink, they don't smoke and they don't use drugs.

At which point I have to ask the obvious question: what exactly do they do to unwind?

“What's fun?” ARJN asks.

His version of a good time involves the gym, football, spending time with the boys, making music and talking about what they want to accomplish over the next five years.

“Making music is fun,” another member adds.

Then ARJN reveals his unexpectedly old-school romantic streak.

“Everyone should be a lover boy at his heart,” he declares. “You can never disrespect a woman, no matter what.”

He believes in “old-school love”.

I point out that these boys look young enough to struggle to commit to a burger, never mind eternal romance.

ARJN laughs, but insists love is bigger than girlfriends and relationships.

“You gotta love the money. You gotta love the life that you live. You gotta love your family,” he says. “I love music. I love making music. So that's why I got here.”

“Love yourself,” another member calls out.

Dubai could be next

The boys may soon be passing that phone around a car in Dubai instead.

“We are actually planning to move there to Dubai,” ARJN tells me, although the timeline isn't firm.

The team recently spent eight days in Dubai, where they also shot a video, and the city clearly made an impression.

“I fell in love with the city. I'm not gonna lie,” ARJN says. “It's calm, peaceful. Safety-wise, it's good. Culture-wise, it's good.”

For Kalyani, Dubai-based filmmaker and producer Len Prasad got the ball rolling and got them acquainted with the UAE.

“We kind of love that fast life, bougie, luxury, condos and all that kind of stuff,” says Arjn.

More importantly, Kerala is a short flight away.

“Dubai will be like a proper base for us. It's like four hours from Kerala.”

Their larger ambition is to help create for Malayalam independent music something approaching the ecosystem Punjabi music has built, where artists can retain their language and cultural identity while becoming global acts.

“We need to bring a shift like Punjabi,” ARJN says. “We need to make a shift, and hopefully we can do it too.”

When Hanumankind enters the conversation, ARJN respects his success but believes MVR is chasing something fundamentally different.

“I respect Hanumankind for what he's doing, but he's doing English though, and we are doing Malayalam,” he says. “Different game, different leagues.”

‘Malayalam will be the next Spanish’

By the time we wrap, the phone has travelled around the car almost as much as the conversation. The connection has been choppy, everyone has had their say, and the teasing and mutual hype have made one thing clear: Kalyani is a collective win.

For friends who spent years studying, working and pouring their salaries into music, its success is validation — but hardly the finish line.

“Step one is done,” ARJN says. “Step two, then three, then four, then five, and then it's on top.”

His bigger prediction is even more audacious: “Malayalam language will be the next Spanish thing. Trust me.”

As a teenager, ARJN listened to Spanish music without understanding a word, so why shouldn't Malayalam travel the same way?

“If I can vibe to Spanish songs, then Spanish people can vibe to Malayalam songs too.”

It is a bold ambition for a bunch of friends passing a phone around a moving car in Kerala. Then again, Kalyani has already travelled far enough for Snoop Dogg to press share.