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Naezy: Through hip-hop, as a Muslim, I can express how I feel
Updated On: 16 February, 2019 02:35 PM IST | | Shunashir Sen
Hip-hop star Naezy opens up about his bond with his grandfather, his conflict as a Muslim rapper and apprehensions about Gully Boy
Naezy with his fans at a live performance
The last scene in Gully Boy, released two days ago, shows the lead character Murad's father teary-eyed with joy while watching him debut as a rapper on stage, as an opening act for Nas, the American hip-hop legend. And this one image itself should dispel any notion of Murad — played by Ranveer Singh — being a true-to-life cinematic avatar of Naved Shaikh, aka Naezy. He isn't. Yet, when we were walking into the hall to watch the movie, we overheard a boy saying, "Yeh toh woh DIVINE aur Naezy ke life pe story hai, na?" "Haan," his companion answered. But she'd got it wrong. The plot is only a "shout-out" to the two musicians, and the misperceptions doing the rounds have made Shaikh jittery ever since his name came to be associated with the big-ticket Bollywood film.
But before we get to the reasons behind his apprehension, let's clarify why that scene reveals how this movie isn't a biopic. Let us place Shaikh in his Kurla home in his childhood years. Here we have a boy whose father left for Dubai when he was only eight months old. His granddad, thus, assumed the role of the male parental figure. "I used to follow everything he did, and saw how he always raised his voice against injustice. There was this typewriter he had on which he'd write a letter to the corporator if, say, a water pipe burst in our gully. And he was also the guy who sent me to a convent school and taught me Urdu at the same time. So, I'd say my music became possible only because of him — I'd listen to all these English rhymes and then have the ability to translate them to fit our own culture," Shaikh says sitting at the mid-day office, adding that the politics in his verses, too, are a result of his grandfather inculcating the habit of reading newspapers like Inquilab in him.
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