{"id":479,"date":"2016-05-02T17:16:13","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=479"},"modified":"2016-05-02T17:16:13","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:16:13","slug":"badshah-honey-singh-eminem-bollywood-india-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"Lose Yourself to Badshah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span>t\u2019s been pretty crap week.\n\nThe news this week has triggered a gamut of exhausting reactions ranging from tongue-biting rage to hair-pulling despair. The army was attacked by terrorists in Kashmir, a bomb in New York gave Donald Trump more ammunition for the shit cannon he calls his mouth, and Bollywood rapper <\/p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/music\/i-don-t-find-anything-special-about-eminem-s-music-badshah\/story-6mUhnuqPz4ix79q57mGQFN.html\" target=\"_blank\">Badshah<\/a> declared that he didn\u2019t find \u201canything special\u201d about the music of Eminem. (These facts are presented in descending order in terms of impact and magnitude, and ascending order in terms of direct importance to me.)\n\nYes, clouds of war loom ominously on the horizon and a madman creeps closer to the post of Leader of the Free World and I\u2019m more concerned with a performing artist who doesn\u2019t share my opinion on \u201cSlim Shady\u201d. That\u2019s just a symptom of our times though. Priyanka Chopra\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/disarre\/exclusive-priyankuh-chopruh-steals-the-red-carpet-at-emmys-2016-priyanka-chopra\/\" target=\"_blank\">Emmy<\/a> outing and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/culture\/is-it-hip-to-hate-coldplay\/\" target=\"_blank\">Coldplay<\/a>\u2019s November carnival get as much, if not more, attention as Watergate 2.0 \u2013 The Cauvery Crisis \u2013 so I\u2019m not going to apologise for being hooked up on the Badshah\/Eminem news. I am but a product of my time.\n\nSo here\u2019s what Badshah said: \u201cI know the entire world is crazy about him [Eminem] and his music, but for me I never thought it was anything special. That\u2019s because I can never really relate to the lyrics of his songs and I am sort of not really into that kind of music.\u201d\n\nMy instinctive reaction: You talentless twat! What would you, who came out with \u201cDJ Waley Babu\u201d<em>, <\/em>the kind of earworm that burrows into your skull and takes up residence, defecating all over your better taste, know about music?\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\">Badshah has captured the imagination of India\u2019s youth at a time where daaru, swag, and raat ka plans are often the top priority.<\/blockquote>\nThe Black Sabbath-listening, Edgar Allan Poe-reading part of me had anyway been in rebellion against the Hindi music industry ever since \u201cChaar Bottle Vodka\u201d became an anthem, but so enraged was I at this sacrilegious shade thrown at Eminem that I had no choice but to set out on the warpath against this \u201cmusician\u201d who said he grew up inspired by the Backstreet Boys \u2013<em> without a trace of irony!<\/em>\n\nBut first I had to prepare.\n\nI snapped on my headphones and set sail in the world of \u201cBaby Ko Bass Pasand Hai\u201d. Through my headphones came song after song, with subjects as varied as checking out girls at the club, drinking a lot of alcohol, and how awesome Badshah is, as a rapper and an O.G. gangsta. That is to say, not very varied at all. But as I listened on, seeping through my disdain, however, was a tinge of admiration. This music moved. The lyrics were a putrid mess of misogyny, classism, and machoism in a mix of Hindi, Punjabi, and Haryanvi but the man could rap. In three languages no less.\n\nMy headphones were still plugged in when \u201c2 Many Girls\u201d came on. I expected to groan out loud, but strangely, that never happened. After all, if Badshah wants to escape to a world of popping bottles and girls in short skirts through his art, who am I to judge? And some of the best rappers ever have stuck to a limited range of topics and crafted impressive legacies. I don\u2019t remember an N.W.A. song that didn\u2019t reference the \u2019hood and the gangsta lifestyle in South Central LA. 2Pac mainly rapped about being black and marginalised, and made some of the best music ever.\n\nMaybe Badshah, with his Delhi as his hometown and his inspiration (his words, not mine), genuinely didn\u2019t get Eminem. I took a second look at his statement, and this sentence\u00a0stood out: \u201cI can never really relate to the lyrics of his songs.\u201d\n\nGrowing up, I was the English nerd in school. What drew me to Eminem was how he was like a spoken-word ninja, innovating with the English language to craft lyrically complex pieces. Why should the mastery of English be of any relevance to a rapper who performs in Hindi, Haryanvi, and Punjabi?\n\nBy the time \u201cTake Your Sandals Off\u201d started playing, I had stopped judging Badshah for his taste in music and accepted him for what he was \u2014 an artist who doesn\u2019t make challenging music that causes you to think, but one that creates massively popular feel-good tracks that become the soundtrack to house parties and weddings across the nation.\n\nGreat or small, our idols and cultural icons are chosen by us. Badshah has captured the imagination of India\u2019s youth at a time where daaru, swag, and raat ka plans are often the top priority. The beach isn\u2019t a pristine spot on India\u2019s coastline. For them, it\u2019s the backdrop to the fantasies of debauchery they\u2019re intoxicated on. They\u2019re not torn at the state of the nation, fighting a war or in the grips of an idealist fever. They want to party, and Badshah is the Pied Piper leading them to the Promised Land. It\u2019s not a comment on him as much as it is on us.\n\nSo it\u2019s not been a total crap week after all. I got over my dire hate for Badshah and overall levels of hate around the nation seem to have abated (or then simply drowned out by the returning monsoon) and we don\u2019t seem to be heading to nuclear war. Those are all good things. Now all that remains is for Donald Trump to shut his mouth for a while and maybe open it when he has something sensible to say.\n\nWho am I kidding, that last one\u2019s never going to happen, is it?\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So enraged was I at Badshah\u2019s sacrilegious shade thrown at Eminem that I set out on a warpath against him. After the disdain, came a tinge of admiration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[725,141,726,727,728,19],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-badshah","tag-bollywood","tag-eminem","tag-hip-hop","tag-honey-singh","tag-india"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Lose Yourself to Badshah<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So enraged was I at Badshah\u2019s sacrilegious shade thrown at Eminem that I set out on a warpath against him. 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