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Chinthy
Interview by Black Dog Bone

All the 3 wheel taxi drivers really like you. They are crazy about Chinthy.

Mostly because I rap about weed. They love that.

How did you get into making Rap music?
I’ve been listening to Rap since I was 8 or 9 years old. I used to listen to NWA, Eazy E, Dr Dre and all those great people. Ice Cube. I grew up listening to West Coast Rap.

What I’ve noticed is that Sri Lankan rappers have been influenced mainly by West Coast rappers. A lot of artists I interviewed said they like a lot of West Coast Rap.

That’s true. We don’t listen to too much East Coast Rap. I think the West Coast music blends well with the Oriental culture. The weather in California is closer to the hot weather in Sri Lanka. Especially in LA it’s very hot. Also it’s multi-cultural in California. We can relate to it.

Do you consider yourself more as a producer or a rapper?
I’m more of a producer. When I hear African American rap, I feel I have a long way to go before I would call myself a rapper. I love Rap, but I don’t have the ability to rap like them because I was born in Sri Lanka. I can rap in Sinhalese.

That’s what people kept telling me, that Chinthy raps in Sinhalese. To me that’s the way people should be doing it here. Why try to rap like an African American when you’re a Sri Lankan?

We don’t have the African American experience. I don’t call myself nigga, so I can’t say that in a song. Some rappers in Sri Lanka, they call themselves niggaz. It’s not right to me. That’s a name Black American people use for themselves. I love and respect these people. I love the rap and poetry in their music. What I do is, I can’t rap in English so I rap in Sinhalese.

That’s the only way we will come into our own sound. If we rap in our own language we could have a unique style of Rap.

Yes. And some day I would like to call myself a rapper. Now I’m a producer, but I put my albums out and I go on stage and perform.

On your albums do you rap?
I rap and I sing. It’s 75% Hip Hop. It’s like R & B and Hip Hop. I just released my first album in 2006 and it was very successful. I sold out on the first day. You have to consider this is Sri Lanka and you’re not gonna sell a million copies in one day. It’s not possible here. Still, compared to other albums it was very successful.

You produce the music in your own studio?
Yeah, right here. It was my attic, so I call the studio The Attic. I work there.

When you make music do you start with the piano?

I start with piano. Sometimes the melody just comes to my head and I go and play it; then I come up with a beat. Sometimes I just make beats. I just think of a beat and I go an play it. It depends.

What made you decide to rap in Sinhalese when so many rappers in Sri Lanka are using English?

When you go around you see it’s mostly in Colombo and Kandy that people can understand English. And the people who can understand English, even if they’re really good in English they can’t understand Rap. So I wanted to rap in Sinhalese so everybody can understand. I’m going for the masses.

Did you find it easy to rap in Sinhalese?

It’s not easy. I think Tamil is easy to rap. You get time signatures in music like 4 quartered beats and compound duple and the Sinhalese language is mostly in 2-6-8 compound duple. That’s why we have that drumbeat. So when you rap in Sinhalese it’s a different kind of thing.

Your write all your lyrics?

Yeah, I do most of them. One man who really made a change in the writing of Sri Lankan Sinhalese Rap music is Wasantha Duggannarala. He comes from a remote area near Anuradhapura. And these Sri Lankan songwriters, what you called the Sri Lankan maestros—they were writing really deep kind of words and they didn’t want to mix it with any village dialect. What Duggannarala did was he just wrote his lyrics in common language, like village dialect. It’s different when you listen to it. It’s not even the lyrics that they write here in Colombo. That really hit big.

Most of the Sinhalese music is written in that higher language. It’s not the language that we use when we talk. When you listen to American Rap music they’re using the street slang, the ghetto language. That’s what rappers in Sri Lanka need to do, use the common language.

That’s what’s happening. Duggannarala wrote a song for me called “Sokary” that came out real good. It’s about a girl who came out from India. She was smoking weed and she made out with every Sri Lankan man, that’s the story. I didn’t understand it when I first read the lyrics. He explained it to me and that really worked for me. It’s bangin! He did another one for me called “Machan”. It’s like “homeboy” or “nigga”. It’s comin on my next album. It will be out maybe in April.

It’s great that you’re developing an identity that’s unique to Sri Lanka. Even in America each region has a different sound.

Even in my beats it’s like that. Some people say I’m taking my style from Dr. Dre. There’s an influence, I guess. It’s not the beat—I’m not taking anything. I made all my beats. I love West Coast Rap, so that comes into my music.

Do you get all of your drum sounds from the keyboards?
I’ve got samplers and my keyboard.

Have you ever tried incorporating the authentic Sri Lankan drumbeats into your music?
I used some beats on one song. I’ll be doing a remix of that.

How did you meet the songwriter, Duggannarala?
He’s a very famous person in Sri Lanka. He writes lyrics for everyone from Bathiya & Santhush to Iraj.

Doesn’t he have a book of poetry? On the cover he’s wearing a sarong and pissing on the wall. I’ve seen that book.

That’s his book. The songs are in there. Pretty amazing that he did a cover like that. He got a lot of criticism for that song he wrote, the “Sokary” song. In the back of the book the article is there about that song. And when he writes a song he writes it just for you. He knows the attitude you’re looking for. He gets the right feeling for your song. He knows how to get what you want it. He knows my image and he writes to suit that. You should talk to him. He’s a nice guy, like a real person from the village. Gamay-wagay (like a villager). He just wears the short sarong and sits by the computer. He’s amazing, really great. When I go see Duggannarala, we have a drink there and a smoke. We talk and he writes a song. I don’t go home until maybe 4 or 5 in the morning.

Where are you heading with your music?

I want to make music for all of these people here. I want to make beats for artists, that what I really want to do.

It’s good if the beats you make have a flavor that’s distinctly Sri Lankan.

Right. Not West Coast. That’s what Timberland has been doing. He goes and takes tabla samples, sitars and stuff, and puts them into the songs. I’ve done some of that with the Sri Lankan percussion sounds. I already did some songs with Yak-beray and Gatta-beray (drums from two regions of Sri Lanka). They came here and played and I recorded. I have the samples in there. If I want the top I can take the top only.

I think if you came with a production style based on the Sri Lankan music you would really stand out. People are always looking for something new. When they hear the Sri Lankan melodies, the Sri Lankan words, the tribal drumbeats—I would buy that album in a second. You got a good response for your CD. Who was buying your record?
The fans gave me love. First I did a video, but now when I look at it I know I could’ve done better. But at that time nobody had done something like that before. I just did a club show and made a tape. I took it to all the TV stations, they just told me to get out. They didn’t want to play it on national TV because they said it doesn’t go with our culture. But before that this song went on the net and I got so many downloads of the song. And I got good comments on the net and on youtube. Then Sirasa gave me a hand; that’s when I got my break. They started playing my video on TV and they played the song on the radio.

Your name, where did it come from?
I don’t know where it came from. My dad gave it to me. It’s my real name. It’s not a stage name, it’s my original name. It’s uncommon, I know. Maybe I got lucky!

Were a lot of people you grew up with into Rap music? How did you start doing music?

Actually I’m a composer. I compose music. My mom teaches Western Classical music.

You got into music through your mother?
Yes. I heard piano, Classical pieces, since I was small. I can’t read music because I heard it. I didn’t have to read. I can hear and play, so I just went to the exams and played. Anyway I loved Rap music, so I started making music.

Where do you think we’re heading with Rap in Sri Lanka?
It’s getting bigger here. When I first started making Rap music there was no one. I did my first Rap song in ’97. I was about 17, and there was no Rap music. When I gave my song to the radio station, Sinhala Rap, they didn’t like it, told me to get out. All of the radio stations I tried to give my demo, but they didn’t listen. Then I figured it’s not gonna happen, so I left for Australia for studies.
You went to school in Australia?
In Melbourne. I was a Hospitality student, but then I changed my campus and went to do some engineering. When I got back to Sri Lanka I saw Bathiya and Santhush on stage performing. Then the music was really spreading—not Rap, but Pop music and Raga. After 2 or 3 years I put my single out and it really worked.

You’re doing your music and running a studio full time?

Yeah. I work with different artists, recording, mixing their songs. Recently a group from asked me to do a CD, 10 songs. They had some old Sri Lankan songs and Hindi songs, and they asked me to remix it. Those are not my type of songs, but I do different things for people.

Do you rap on other people’s CD’s?
Not really, because it would mess up my image. Sometimes, but not often. I just did a song for a motion picture, it’s in theaters right now. It’s called “Heart FM”. It’s kind of a boring movie, but not the type of film that I would watch. It’s a very popular movie in Sri Lanka.

Do you do shows in a lot of clubs?

I don’t play in nightclubs, but we have concerts. They organize shows. There’s a concert happening real soon at St. Josephs auditorium in Colombo. It’s Bathiya & Santhush, me, and Iraj might come, as well as some other guys. The record company M Entertainment is doing the show. I’ll get you tickets, you should come.
What are you working on now?

I’m working on my new album. I did three videos now. I always wanted to do an animation, so I did one animated.

Who helped you do that?
Actually I like to do filming also. I was doing still photography when I was a little boy. I love photography. So I directed the video, and I got somebody to do the animation. It came out nicely. Have you seen Tupac’s animated video? It’s something like that. I did three videos—one I shot in Melbourne, Australia and another one here in Sri Lanka.

That’s interesting. Are there a lot of people doing animation in Sri Lanka?
Yeah, there are. You’d be surprised to see how they work! I didn’t want it in 3D; I just did it in 2D. That’s what I like. But I was the first person to do a video animated. Sad to say, it’s 2008 and nobody has ever done it. I wish that somebody had done it 20 years back. But here people are not really ready for that yet. It’s a new thing for them.

Are there a lot of other rappers in the Negombo area?

I started featuring two other rappers. But it doesn’t work like that. They can’t come up with game. It’s hard.

You use other people’s lyrics, but you also write lyrics. What do you like to rap about?

I don’t like to diss anyone. Some people have done some small mild disses, but I don’t diss them back because they’re not famous. I don’t want to give them the stage. If it’s somebody famous I’ll diss them back for sure. Mostly I just rap about partying, smokin weed and all that stuff.

Do your parents support what you’re doing?
They like what I’m doing, but not exactly the stuff that I say in my raps. They don’t understand that too much.

Do you have a big family?
I’ve got a sister. My father died in ’98 when I was young. I live with my mom.

Other than you mom, does anybody else in your family do music?
I’ve got two cousins who live in New York, they’re opera singers.

What music do you listen to?
I don’t listen to radio. I listen to Rap all the time. But I still have my NWA CD’s in the car. I love that old school NWA, sometimes KRS-One, and Cube.

Do you ever listen to Bay Area Rap, like E-40?
I’ve heard him on Snoop’s album, “The Blue Carpet”. He’s really good. I heard him on the song called “Candy”. So much Rap we don’t get to hear in Sri Lanka. Nobody knows about it.

 

 


Chinthy