Photo courtesy of Lilly Singh.
Scarborough-native and YouTube celebrity, Superwoman a.k.a. Lilly Singh just released a music video for “IVIVI,” a grimy tribute to the 416 with famed rapper Humble the Poet over a thumbi-infused dancehall beat produced by Sikh Knowledge. The song celebrates Toronto’s youth and diversity, which Singh, who splits her time between Toronto and Los Angeles, doesn’t take for granted. “Out of all the places I’ve been to, Toronto is the most multicultural,” she said. “If I’m walking around a shopping mall in the USA and I see a turban or a hijab, it’s still a ‘wow’ moment, but in Toronto you never feel that. You take that multiculturalism for granted.”
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After amassing over five million subscribers on her YouTube channel and trending globally on Twitter with her hashtag #asksuperwoman, Singh is turning her act into a world tour. Taking place during the month of May, Singh’s tour will take a team of back-up dancers to perform comedy, music, and dance to select locations in India, Australia, Singapore, and more. In addition, she is also planning on filming a documentary and the “IVIVI” music video is, in her words, kind of a preview. “Humble said to me, let’s make this song about the world, because we’re in Toronto and everyone in the world is in our city. We see these people everyday. This song is important for me right now, it’s like a preview for the trailer of my documentary,” she said.
Her videos and Vines have her playing herself and different characters. From Punjabi mothers to the Caribbean youth and others who she grew up in the Malvern area of Scarborough, where 61 percent of the population are immigrant “New Canadians” and four out of five residents are “visible minorities.” While Malvern is one of the most impressive examples of Canada’s policies on immigration and multiculturalism, it was, for a time also associated with violence and police crackdowns on gang activity. However, despite how rough she may have grown up, Singh’s brand is very PG-13 or Nickelodeon. Her Twitter biography describes herself as a “unicorn/entertainer,” and she tackles issues like ex-boyfriends, getting dolled up, and period pains in a quirky, self-deprecating way that falls just shy of being crass.
The Superwoman channel she created also commands a global demographic of girls between the ages of 13-25. What started as a following of mainly South Asian girls living in the west has exploded into an audience that spans continents. And part of her universal appeal has to do with her Canadian-ness. While other South Asian comics in the USA or UK are wary of being “too ethnic,” Singh has no qualms about going from universal subjects to ones that resonate with a diaspora audience. “When I was touring in the UK, other brown comedians would be perplexed that I would make videos where I talk about being Indian, they’d say, ‘That’s so weird,’” she said. “I never thought it was weird, probably because when you’re in Toronto, you can talk about your background. It’s not something with a stigma or thought of as weird. There’s no right or wrong here, regarding that.” Singh is sick, however, of Canadians assuming she’s from Brampton. “It’s such a pet peeve of mine that people assume every Punjabi person is from Brampton,” she said. “I’m really proud of being from Scarborough.”
She was also one of the early adopters of YouTube as a creative platform. “I uploaded my first video 2010, and when I first started it wasn’t as known you could make a living off of YouTube,” she said. Toronto rapper Humble the Poet, who appears in many of Lilly’s Vines and music, was a connection she made digitally. “He was doing stuff on YouTube before me,” she said. “He was one of the first people to recognize what I was doing, and then we had a conversation on the phone. We actually didn’t get along the first couple times we met.” Other popular YouTube personalities like, Edutainment Torontonian YouTubers, ASAP Science, also make an appearance in the video for “IVIVI”, along with the beat’s producer Sikh Knowledge.
Sikh Knowledge’s compositions mirror the makeup of the city, incorporating dancehall rhythms with Punjabi samples, going from spacey and dubbed out, to full blown chutney. Between Singh, Humble and Sikh Knowledge, you can get a good idea of the strong backbone of culture that underlies Toronto without ever setting foot in the city. Noisey caught up with Lilly Singh to talk about her trajectory from Scarborough girl to paragon of unicorns and cute shit.
Noisey: Your music video for “IVIVI” has a different tone than your more comedy-oriented videos, was your approach different?
Lilly Singh: When I make music, I try different things. I want to be layered in my approach. I like comedy elements, I think I’m naturally a comedic person, but I want to do music like “IVIVI.” I don’t necessarily want it to be as comedic. I feel like my fan base has expanded a lot and is more accepting of me doing different things. When I first started, my fans was mostly Indian girls, but now at my meet-ups I’ve realized the audience is really diverse. My demo is still 13-25 girls mostly, which is a powerful demographic. But I don’t want to make everything comedic. I have different layers.
How would you say your creative output is influenced by being from Toronto?
A lot of my branding is that positive, happy unicorn type-vibe. I live half in LA, and half in Toronto. People in LA always say, “Oh my god, you’re really nice,” and I respond, “No, I’m just Canadian.” That brand was nurtured in Canada.
“IVIVI” is a celebration of Toronto’s diversity. Is there ever a danger you’re glossing over issues that affect people of color there?
To be honest, one of my philosophies in life is promote what you love and don’t bash what you hate. I don’t address certain issues, I’ll rarely discuss a specific news story, or a problem. I try to focus on more universal issues, like self-esteem. Of course, there’s racism everywhere—but the song celebrates what’s going right.
A lot of your fans are still in high school, what was that time like for you?
In my high school I was one of only ten Punjabi people. It was predominantly Tamil and Canadian Caribbean—so I was a minority in my school, but it was still a school filled with brown people. It was considered a problematic area, at [Lester B] Pearson. We had security in our halls. But I’ll always be grateful for being from Scarborough, it gave me that twang or flare I have. People always ask me, “Why are you acting so ghetto,” and I just came from that. So if I’m making references to Soca music or speaking in patois it comes from my upbringing.
I feel like a non-Caribbean person speaking Patois would be considered objectionable in the United States. We’re still pissed about Iggy Azalea.
To be honest, I wouldn’t publicly speak Patois or Tamil, if I wasn’t an entertainer that has to play different characters and situations. Speaking patois reflects what I grew up with. I grew up around a lot of people from Trinidad or Guyana, so it’s a way of connecting with my audience.
You also got into a little controversy on social media for wearing a native-styled headdress on social media, I figure you’d have a pretty good defense of that.
I initially wanted dreads in my hair, and my hairdresser was like “I can’t do that last minute.” The thought process behind it was, we need a hairstyle that whips a certain way when we shoot this in slow motion. The feathers were inspired by a magazine shoot we saw. People need to understand that there has to be context—this is not a video where people gain something from something they’re not. We tried to include people in the video, I’m saying salaam, “wha gwaan” in it. It’s clearly a message of one love.
Another criticism I heard was for a video that’s supposed to represent Toronto despite there being an absence of black people in the video.
An absence of black people? There’s two black people in the video. We tried our best to make sure every type of person was represented, that’s how we cast. We had two black people, a bunch of brown people, there was one Islamic. We tried to hit all the corners of it. We were also working on a no budget situation.
Do the criticisms off of YouTube ever get to you?
There’s always some that get to you. The comments that get to me are the ones where people see things in a one-dimensional way, comments like “You’re supposed to be of a certain religion, why are you saying or acting like this.” If they criticize my humor or talent that’s one thing but those types of criticisms get to me because it’s not about my art.
Speaking of one-dimensional, people do come at you about your “Indian accent,” which truthfully sounds like a non-Indian person’s impression of an Apu-esque Indian accent.
The first thing I have to say to that is that the characters I use are not based on my real parents. The dad, the mom, the valley girl character, I try to use exaggerated stereotypes, like that auntie you see at a party. A lot of it is functional, when I play my mom, I cover my head even though my mom doesn’t, because it makes me look less like Lilly. If I’m putting on an accent, well why not. I have 5.5 million subscribers on YouTube and I’m trying to make it okay to speak in an accent. To be fair, I don’t have an authentic Punjabi accent, I was born and raised in Toronto. Even when I speak Punjabi its literally me trying my best. I also didn’t grow up with a lot of Punjabi people in Scarborough.
Have you ever dealt with racism?
In person, and being in Toronto, I can’t say that I’ve experienced any racism. Everything I experience like that is online, but in person not so much. In the States though, I feel like Humble the Poet does. People will want to take pictures with him because they’ve never seen someone with a turban before.
How did the collaboration with Seth Rogan come about?
Well, YouTube is a phenomenal company. They really put together great opportunities for their creators. Sony Pictures came to YouTube about promoting The Interview, and wanted to shoot with YouTube creators. They accepted my pitch, and flew me to LA, where we had a lot of fun with it.
Photo courtesy of Lilly Singh.
Do you have any artists or actors you’d like to collaborate with?
Musically, definitely Nicki Minaj, or M.I.A. For film, probably Kevin Hart, or The Rock. The Rock is my biggest inspiration, I just met him the other day. He is my number one idol of all time. He hugged me and kissed me it was the best day of my life. In all my videos I’ve made references to The Rock and I’m still very obsessed with him. Everyone freaks out when he tweets me. We became texting buddies a while ago. He told me his daughter is a huge fan. We’ve been trying to meet but it never happened. We met at the MTV Movie Awards recently, and he orchestrated a hang out between us two. And he told me how he’s seen my videos and he’s a huge fan.
Is there anything else you would like to say about your upcoming Superwoman world tour?
My tour is going to be… well, for years I’ve been performing other people’s events, doing a stand-up act. I really want to do my own show and control the messaging from the beginning. My show is my channel coming to life, my comedy, my parent characters, there’s going to be music and dancing. It’s going be a bigger production than any of my fans think. So far, I’ve been to Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, and India, and I’m always surprised. Australia is a huge, huge market for digital consumption. When I went to India, they knew all the YouTubers there—you could say they consumed this content more than people in North America. What I do allows me to reach everywhere in the world. People ask me, when I’m on tour, if I’m excited to go back to Toronto, but now it feels like I don’t have a home. I travel so much, I feel like a global citizen. I have no home.
Basim Usmani is a writer living in Boston with a band living on YouTube. – @bastroti