Mumbai: This duo release a hip-hop banger

Aditya Alamuru aka Malfnktion

Monday dawns. The working week begins. We expend our energies on getting ahead, since falling back isn't an option. The days pass by in a blur, like a comet shooting across the sky at night. And suddenly, the weekend hits. Two days. That's what we have to pack our social lives in. Some take it easy, re-energising themselves before the cycle starts again. But others who are more hedonistic party it up like there's no tomorrow. They hit the bars. They burn the dance floor. And sometimes, they take drugs as well.

That's the sort of club culture that an unlikely duo has addressed with a just-released hip-hop banger called Charlie. The title is a synonym for cocaine, and the duo are Aditya Alamuru aka Malfnktion, a Bengaluru-based electronic producer, and Shayan Roy, a video producer who's rekindled his childhood love for rapping. The lyrics are a hat-tip to substances. Sample what they say about MDMA, or molly - "Molly got me fallin', got me feeling great/ Calling home like, 'Mommy maybe I'll be late'/ Nookie-ing, but I don't need to fornicate/ 40 J's down I make no mistake." But there is - despite the shake-a-leg tempo of the beats - an underlying feeling of loss and sadness, which is often a catalyst for drug use in the first place.

Shayan Roy

This pathos might have come from a failed relationship. Or, it could be an existential crisis triggered by the rat race. Either way, the song is more of an admission than one that advocates the use of narcotics (Roy sings, "I can't condone it/ But I need to eat it to keep it real"). Most importantly, though, it's a leap forward for straight-up English hip-hop in the country. Roy tells us, "I'm actually not sure if there will be a big market for English rappers in India… But that's what I am comfortable with. So, I feel it would be disingenuous on my part to try and rap in a regional language just because that's what's selling."

Which is just as well, because with all the brouhaha over an upcoming film, some attention needs to be diverted away from the gullies. And English, despite what certain politicians tell us, is anyway as much a lingua franca of this country as Hindi is.

Stay tuned

Roy and Malfnktion collaborated last year for a track called Vincent Chase Slippin. The duo have a few more offerings up their sleeve, which will see the light of day in an upcoming EP.

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