Deep inside the mind

Tabia, the title of Prabh Deep’s new album, is an Arabic word for a chess move. Pic/Arsh Sayed

SAB kuchh ho sakta hain. Haan, mara hua insaan zinda nahi ho sakta. Lekin baaki sab kuchh ho sakta hain [Anything is possible. Sure, a dead person can't come alive. But anything else is possible]." That is what Prabh Deep's father used to often tell him when the hip-hop musician was a child, growing up in East Delhi's Tilak Nagar area. The words have stayed with him. They reflect in his new album, Tabia. It's a full-length 15-track record that tells the story of how the artiste fed off that piece of paternal advice, emerging as a more self-assured person after going through a period of inner turmoil.

Material temptations were a large part of his mental conflict. Prabh Deep tells us, "I used to buy a lot of shoes and clothes. It was one sort of temptation that I got sucked into, where I was losing money and time shopping every day, going through things online. That suddenly stopped." But it wasn't just that. "When it comes to women, I now understand that I need to be with one person to be a better man."

Those are the psychological aspects of the album explored in the lyrical themes. Musically, for the listener, it's like a kid walking into an amusement park that's full of rides. There's a rollercoaster of jazz. Drum ‘n' bass elements take the tracks further up and down. The rapping see-saws between being fast-paced and being slower, with a more melodic tone. "I have no professional training in music," Prabh Deep says, adding, "But I have people around me who have been trained, and I learn from them. It's always interesting to have no rules, because I haven't been taught anything [formally]. If you look back in time, there were like 10 different genres of hip-hop, New York-style, LA-style or whatever. That's what I want to be like. I want to have fun."

It's easier to have fun when you have peace of mind, and the 26-year-old seems to have found more than a modicum of that, based on his reflections over the phone about the difficult period he had. "It was basically like [pressing] a switch that made me see things differently. I realised my mistakes and understood that I can't fix them because I can't go back in time. But what I can do is not make those same mistakes again," the rapper says about the mindset he had while creating Tabia over two years, adding that he is still in the process of truly detaching himself from all his emotions to understand who he really is. And every time he feels that he can't do it, he goes back to his father's words - anything is possible apart from a dead man coming alive.

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