MUMBAI: 101India.com is planning to launch a web series on the flourishing Indian underground hip hop scene called Hip Hop Homeland.
The first six episodes will be released on 20 January, 2016, followed by the next five episodes on 27 January, 2016.
It is a series of raw, gritty profiles about a fast emerging youth trend, which cuts across gender, class and geography, and makes powerful statements of youth identity and voice.
Talking about the show, 101India CCO and MD Cyrus Oshidhar said, “Our team panned out to different parts of India to discover talented rap artistes. The new trend in hip hop is coming through the slums and the chawls, and the rappers covered in the Hip Hop Homeland series speak in a street ‘bhasha’ that draws on local languages in a quest for authenticity. The sugar-coated romance that we see in Bollywood might have takers but there is also an audience for the angst and rebelliousness these boys express. These are voices worth listening to and their words are being amplified across the internet to a broader audience.”
Hip Hop Homeland begins in Mumbai and travels to Kashmir, Shillong, Punjab, Calcutta and finally South India. The first leg of the series will showcase 11 videos of six - seven mins minutes featuring various artists such as TodFod, Mawwali, Voctronica, Kinga Rhymes, BobKat, Ace, Zake (graffiti artist) Beast Mode (the crew), Shawty Pink, Flying Machine (Arif), DMC.
One of the artists Aklesh Sutar aka Mawali, the Marathi rapper from Swadesi says, “We got the kind of love and reception in our mother tongue that we didn’t in English. Because of the internet, you can be sitting here rhyming in Bengali and finding your audience in Kolkata. It doesn’t matter where you are.”
Rapper Dharmesh Parmar aka TodFod a part of rap crew Swadeshi adds, “Hip means knowledge. Hop means movement. Hip Hop is the movement of knowledge. The reference here is to the larger sub-culture within which it falls. Within hip hop comes not just rap, but also other forms of self expression from music to dance to visual art, and ultimately, for these boys, a philosophy.”
