If you are an admirer of desi hip hop music, you would be familiar with the name of Rapper Raftaar. However what many of you might not know about the rapper, lyricist, producer, composer and dancer Dilin Nair, better known by his stage name Rapper Raftaar, is that he hails from Kerala and he is a Malayali.
According to an interview given by him he says that he grew up in a hostel in Haryana. That’s the reason behind his fluency in Punjabi, Haryanvi and Hindi and enjoy rapping in these languages. He adds that Being a rapper, you have to be good at improvising, like you give me a word and I have to rhyme it quickly and then make sense out of it. That is the main reason he changed his name to Raftaar. After Malaika Arora Khan revealed that he is Malayali on the sets of Indias Got Talent thats when the world came to know about this fact.
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Raftaar was a dance choreographer who rose to fame through Dance India Dance before joining Mafia Mundeer. Then after that he joined RDB and now he is with Manj Musik. However, Raftaar’s journey in the music industry wasn’t all roses. He had a lot of differences with his fellow rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh which initially led him to quit Mafia Mundeer. It all started when Honey became popular and he didn’t allow him to feature in a song called “Dope Shop” from album International Villager.
In an interview given to Deccan Chronicle he says that Mafia Mundeer was like my family, but, like the classic group fallout story, we all had our differences. Badshah, J-Star and I are still tight. Honey, however, has forgotten his roots and often forgets to give credit to people who have actually done the work. I worked with him for two years on many projects and he gave a statement to a newspaper saying he only met me once. He adds that, I don’t have any personal grudges against him. But, he is not the true hip-hop artist that he claims to be and that’s why I challenge him.
Another Raftaar songs are like Whistle Baja (Heropanti), Swag Mera Desi, All black in his kitty and lend his voice to many Bollywood songs and is doing great for himself.
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The journey of Raftaar was not easy at all. He worked really hard for it, he terms it ‘zero to infinity’. We wish him with more success with his upcoming projects and hope that he carry forward the desi hip hop culture and continue to inspire upcoming rappers.
Watch Raftaar new song “Gall Goriye” here: