- I was just feeling good about myself.
It's because I got a Nas co-sign.
I've been in the game for like 10 years,
and I've been doing this since I was 18.
Me being one of the first generation rappers from the city,
I had to put this out the Mount and had to make sure
that every track is what I wanted
to always do and always put out.
The title track of the album is called Kohinoor.
Kohinoor means Mountain of Light.
I was in New York, I met Peter and the whole team
of Mass Appeal when I was there.
And he put me in the studio with iLL Wayno,
and he played me a couple of beats.
And then when I was playing all those beats,
this is the one that struck me
is because I'm a person who
grew up to New York hip hop, and I love New York and pop,
and that's why it resonated with me so much.
And I was like, this is the beat just 'cause
it has the horn in the back,
and it sounds like a train is running.
And that's why it just went well with my style
and the city that I come from, it's very busy.
And that's why I was like, this is the beat
that I want to do the title track on.
It literally means a rose that grew from the concrete,
it's a Tupac poem, and so I wanted to start the album
with the Tupac line.
The next line came in, one for the history books,
all my dreams are coming true.
We represent loyalty.
We are always attentive.
We represent a team which is always about each other.
Then again, this name came from a song that I did in 2014.
It was called "Mere Gully Mein",
it literally means in my hood.
Hip hop has always been that,
it's always talking about your struggles,
where you're from, what you represent,
and those lines came to me is because
I always wanted to rep where I'm from
and be proud of where I'm from,
and that's what hip hop taught me to be proud of who I am
and what I represent.
I started doing hip hop and I am still doing hip hop,
it's because of my friends, they always back me up.
And I thought it was only right
for them to be a part of this song.
Until there's flowers on my grave,
I wanna grind and I'm gonna shine.
It's because hip hop is the only thing that I know,
and this music thing is the only thing that I know.
There was no plan B that I had,
so it was only right that I put it out there,
that I'm gonna do my thing no matter what.
And that that's what those lines mean.
The right people who are not famous,
and the people who are famous don't use
their skills properly, don't use their platform properly.
Make sure that you use it properly,
like I have a label now, and I try to promote
the younger guys and the guys who I are talented.
And it's necessary for us and for me as an artist
to actually do this so that a lot of others
can see that and follow it.
- So there were three characters in the movie
named MC Sher, Moen, and Murad,
and then I have three friends, JD, Bugs and Julius,
so I just connected them that my absolute friends
will always back me up.
The sun and the moon are doing rituals according to me.
That's one line that, that comes from Delhi.
We don't say the word gedhi, so I took that as
because, you know, I have a couple of friends
in Delhi and they always, whenever they took me around,
they always said, "Let's go for a round to gedhiyan,"
and then it stuck with me and I used it.
And I think that we should use each other's slangs
because it makes the game more interesting.
Like how Drake does it, like Drake will do
like a UK flow, then he'll do like a, it's crazy.
'Cause then he's paying homage and people think it's copy,
but he's paying homage and it's also making
the scene very big for him.
Yeah, it's the same thing, I suppose, in the videos
they act like another person, like they're not this person.
It's 'cause I've met a lot of rappers
who are from my scene, who I know, and then real life
they're not that, not those guys, they're not,
And that's why I put it out there,
and Great Khali was a good reference
just 'cause he's a popular wrestler
who went to America and he was acting there.
In real life he's such a good guy.
It's basically a juice, it's a juice
that is based off of ice.
But they call is Pepsi so that it could sell.
And it's the cheapest thing you could get.
just means I have
seven friends since the seventh grade
and we are still together.
That line is basically a metaphor and simile.
Even when I wrote that line,
when I first heard that line in my head, I was like, "Wow."
It's cause sometimes when you write your lines,
you just don't realize that you just did a triple entendre.
(rapping in foreign language)
There was a time when hip hop was not out there.
We were not getting booked, we were not getting shows.
Our songs are not getting monetized.
The brands were not coming in, and it was very important
for the brands, like it's a balance, you know?
And it should go is coexist just because only then
the game can get bigger and there'll be quality in the game.
And it's only right that we go outside of India
with our sound, and for that to happen
we have to get together.
And I think that line means that finally hip hop
has attention, they are booking me for shows,
we are making money off shows,
and finally we're getting the stages that we deserve.
Kohinoor means mountain of light,
Kohi means mountain, and noor means light.
It also means a diamond.
We are still here, they cannot break us.
We won't bend down for anything.
So that line came about,
It's a reference from the movie "Gully Boy" again.
There's a character names Safeena,
who's a real Bombay girl, and the way
the director showed her was perfect.
And I use that reference is because
I grew up around hood girls.
I grew up around girls who are really out there,
and this whole wave of models on Instagram
doesn't inspire me, it doesn't get my points.
And that's why I had to say those things
and put it out there.
The whole second verse came in like 15 minutes.
And it's straight flexing about Bollywood coming to us
and coming to the Bombay scene finally.
It's cause Bombay never had a sound of its own.
And with hip hop and rap, we always had Bollywood around us,
but as an independent scene, I think hip hop
made the most noise from Bombay.
The Bollywood scene is coming to the underground scene,
and we are making money and I'm showing
you guys how to do this.
Me being one of the first generation rappers
from the city, I had to put it out there
and I had to make myself feel good too.
There are so many guys who just copy what they see,
and I think that it's natural you get influenced.
It's bad to just copy the whole thing
and just put it out there as it is.
a lot of the guys were doing it
is because there were like three or four guys
who came up from the scene with me
who were really doing good,
and everybody were copying those three or four guys.
Eventually they will find out their own style
and their own flavor of that.
When I started rapping, I was just trying to sound,
or I was just trying to write raps,
like I literally used to take a rap song
by hand the lyrics, and then say
the same things on another beat.
It's cause I just wanted to sound nice.
Now the game is it's so competitive
that you need to sound like you and not like anybody else.
My mom was working abroad, and when I first told her
that I got a deal, she was like, "What is this deal?"
She just thought that it was just another flex.
She was not ready, and she was not informed
that there was a scene, there was a big scene,
there was a thing called hip hop,
which has blown in the city, and I'm a part of it
and I'm one of the forefront guys in the scene.
I'd really like Swizz because, you know,
Swizz is something I grew up too, and Pharrell,
that's my dream collab.
If I ever had a beat that I could take,
I would take a beat from Pharrell.