Indian rap is seeing more women step behind the mic

In the past decade, Indian rap has grown from being a niche space to today’s trending beat. But while movies like Gully Boys and songs by Badshah and Raftaar made rap more mainstream, the real surprise is in the young women from across the country embracing rap as their own.

Indian women in rap is not a new phenomenon — Raja Kumari, who created songs like City Slums and the Jawan title track, comes to mind. But what we’re seeing now is an increasing number of young women taking up the mic and putting out tracks on their own, leveraging social media and building up organic networks, collaborations and audiences independently.

From Daiaphi Lamare aka Reble and Meba Ofilia moving mountains from Meghalaya to Agrita Dhawan aka Agsy breaking the glass ceiling from Faridabad, women in Indian rap are here to stay.

“Hip hop is the voice of the people, the voice of struggle, which everyone has in common, so it is always going to be around,” says rapper Irfana Hameed.

Her work has featured in several Hindi and Malayalam films, while her latest remix of A.R. Rahman’s classic Kuchi Kuchi Rakkamma with Emmy-winning producer Aakash Ravikrishnan is steadily climbing the charts. “In India, the growth of hip hop is a natural evolution of culture, especially amongst the new generation,” Hameed adds.

“So, for women to blow up in this genre was only inevitable.”

Gone are the days when getting signed by labels was the only way to become a prominent artist. Today’s bevy of rappers is bringing authenticity to the table, which not only means fighting lyrics but also a disdain for whitewashing socioeconomic conditions and anglicisation.

For example, Param, the 19-year-old rapper from Punjab who went viral with her debut That Girl Last Year, performs in Punjabi and shot in her village with her neighbours. Lamare’s latest Praying Mantis was similarly shot in Shillong, while Mumbai-based Saniya Mistri Qayammuddin aka Saniya MQ often puts out videos rapping in front of trash piles around her slum home.

And significantly, more and more artists are using native tongues in their tracks than attempting to rap in English or Hindi alone.

“One of the biggest inspirations for me to start rapping was because I was not taken seriously due to my poor English language skills when I was younger,” says Ashwini Hiremath aka Krantinaari.

The Mumbai-based musician, who now runs several projects to empower women around India has a trilingual aesthetic, rapping in Hindi, English and Kannada.

Several young artists are also subverting stereotypes as they produce powerful social commentaries. For example, Saniya MQ, popularly known as the girl in the hijab who raps, has taken the streets by storm with her raw storytelling and hard-hitting lyrics.

There’s also 30-year-old Hameed whose musical agenda is to lift women up. “I like to express themes of empowerment so that if women listen to and rap along, they feel good in their skin,” she says. “I like to evoke courage.”

In a country where there are a handful of female rappers as opposed to a mass of men, social media has not only helped to bring women closer together, it’s also a beacon of hope for aspiring artists.

“There’s been such significant growth in young girls coming out as rappers on social media, which wasn’t the case even two years ago,” says 18-year-old Marathi rapper Devanshi!, who released her debut Tarana Trap in May. “And it feels good to know that such artists exist even if they’re not right in front of me.”

Community has also played a massive role in helping women to pursue hip hop and rap professionally. For instance, parents are going out of their way to enable so many of the younger rappers.

“My mother helps me write my rap songs being a poet herself,” says Devanshi!

Veteran artists like Aklesh Sutar aka MC Mawali mentor upcoming rappers, Hiremath being one of them.

In fact, it was lack of community that had inspired Hiremath to not only make her music but also create an ecosystem that enables other artists to grow. Her Wild Wild Women (WWW) collective, as well as the Sound of Women project where she travels the country in a mobile recording hub and mixes local folk with hip hop have been significant in helping female artists find their footing in a fiercely competitive industry.

“It always bothered me that none of us were solving the problem of less women in music,” says Hiremath. “WWW was my first experiment of building a community of artists together and now we perform around the world. And Sound of Women made me realise that it’s women who drive societies on every level.”

Through touring with local musicians, distributing their music via Bandcamp and sharing tracks with electronic music producers around the world, Hiremath ensures that these projects generate income for every single musician involved.

And it’s revenue generation that remains a serious issue for most female rappers. While Devanshi! points out that women are grossly underpaid next to male artists even if the burden of work is the same, Sutar adds that converting social media views to a consistent audience is hard.

“Performing live is a very different ball game,” he says.

For now, however, the future looks bright. Whether it’s patriarchy, misogyny, climate change, political repression, bigotry or poverty, India’s female rappers are tearing through every evil with wit and grit. ■