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"Hip-hop is one of the fastest growing cultures in India. B-boy and b-girl crews are emerging from the shadows of the oppressed and what is known as India's slums, uplifting the young with social change," wrote Vijaya Supriya Sam, an assistant professor at the Loyola College in Chennai, in her paper True to Words: Hip-hop and the English Language. "This is hip-hop's true form, as a vehicle for social change in an oppressed society."This is certainly true for the members of South Dandies Swaraj. Bose, for instance, grew up in Dharavi, among the world's largest slums in Mumbai where over 600,000 people, packed in or on top of thousands of tenements, run small businesses selling clay pots, snacks, trinkets, and embroidery, generating approximately $650 million each year. His address has been a source of both inspiration and irritation, providing the experiences that define his music but also the frustrations of being labeled "slumdog.""I'm not concerned about this place at all. I'm alone with my music. I'm rich and wealthy from my heart and will always be," he said.Bose has a light goatee, a triangular chunk of scanty hair that extends below his chin, and when he raps his new song "Kacheri Vibe," he wears an expression so focused and so measured, it conveys nothing at all.On Bose's left, there is Ranjit Shankar, or Kushmir. He tells me he's chosen the name because "kush means marijuana"—a name fit for a hip-hop artist—even though he doesn't actually smoke it himself. He's a short man with a muscular upper body and a Llyod Banks beard, who taps his thigh and fuses in and out of the song. Shankar's day job is load control management at the international airport.Beats Beyond Bhangra: Ten Rising Producers from India You Should Know
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When a Hindu devotional song began playing from a speaker behind the celestial nymph announcing the opening of the fairground, the Dandies snuck past empty ticketing counters with signs that said "India is Great," high-fiving, cracking up.The Dandies are inspired by 2Pac, Jay Z, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, MIA, Eminem, Michael Jackson, and the Indian composers A. R. Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja, Shankar told me. But the group is also about celebrating their ethnicity with vernacular lyrics, classical beats, and issues they cared about: Mumbai, gangsters, rag-pickers, rape, and the Tamil Tigers, the militant group that fought for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka between 1976 and 2009."We're not talking about babes and bitches," Shankar said. "We're talking real stuff."We're not talking about babes and bitches. We're talking real stuff. – Ranjit Shankar
Meet Priya, a comic superhero fighting the social stigma of rape in India.
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The Dandies fund themselves with their day jobs: Shankar manages load control at the airport; Prasad keys in data on incoming and outgoing cargo; Bose DJs. "There are only few people who understand real hip-hop," Prasad said, climbing into a rainbow-colored ride that resembled a giant saucer. "We are teachers who are educating about any small and big issues. Change can happen this way also, people need to see that."That's why they wrote "Respect Hip-Hop":Money, power, fame, ain't you wants dis/Keep the music real, just keep it real high/Respect the chase like we praise the God, AmenIn India, Prasad said, hip-hop ought to come with some morality. "They think that if you do dope, you get crazy ideas for lyrics," he said. "We don't drink, smoke, or anything, but young kids get attracted to wrong things. If I do some crazy noise in front of a kid, he will not understand but he will like it. He'll say, 'That guy is dope.'"An indigenous hip-hop culture is growing in Indian and the South Dandies Swaraj are an important part of that, but Prasad believes it will take at least another ten years for hip-hop to fully take off in South Asia. In the mean time, the Dandies will continue to lay the foundation for the next generation of India's MCs by staying true to the core essence of hip-hop and their culture.Follow Mansi Choksi on Twitter.