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RANDHIR I’ve heard that you were one of the pioneers of Rap in Sri Lanka. Yeah. So they say. Basically when you were starting, what was going on in Sri Lanka as far as rap is concerned? Virtually nothing is the answer to that. What happened was around 1992, a bunch of school kids got together and formed a rap group and they were known as Rudeboy Republic. Were you a part of this group? I was not. They came way before I did. I think they were the people who actually recorded the very first hip hop single in this country. Rudetboy Republic had a strong hip hop/dancehall kind of influence. The lead singer wasn’t actually a rapper per se. He was more of a ragga artist. Like a Dancehall artist? Exactly, like an artist from Jamaica. It was him and another MC. They were around for a couple of years, then me and 2 friends of mine, we kind of jumped on the bandwagon as well. We were known as Brown Boogie Nation, and we recorded a couple of singles. Back in the day, things were pretty tough. Hip hop wasn’t as commercial as it is now. It was frowned upon. It was something so foreign to Sri Lanka, right? It was something very foreign, not like now. Now when we talk about pop culture, pop culture is basically hip hop culture, the baggy jeans, the music, the body language. If you would go to a remote village you would look like a foreigner? Exactly right. It’s quite funny because we do shows outstation and when I’m onstage and when I’m singing on of my tracks, I see kids in like slippers and torn caps break dancing. So it’s come a long way. Back in the day it was pretty bad in terms of English music. There wasn’t really anything original being played on radio. So my band, we recorded a couple of tracks. We basically knew how to produce hip hop. I mean there were lots of hip hop producers per se, but no one really understood how to get together a decent hip hop beat, and we didn’t even have any hip hop equipment either. We were dead broke, I mean we were still in school. How old were you then? Must have been about fifteen, sixteen. Basically what we used to do was we used to rip the instrumentals off singles and do the whole mix tape thing. Sort of spin some rhymes over that. The very first song I did with my band was, there was that song by TLC called “Creep”. There was a remix of that song and I just happened to get my hands on an instrumental of that. So that was the first song we ever recorded and it got played live on radio as well. You took the instrumental track and rapped over it? We rapped and sang over it. We made our own little version of it and that got played on TNL Radio. TNL Radio back in the day was the only station that was really supportive of local musicians. So I’m a mad respecter of TNL Radio. And when we talk of TNL Radio, there’s one man who we really need to mention. There was a DJ called Afdel Aziz. He’s in the UK now and he was the guy that actually took my band, a small bunch of kids and put us on radio. He did a lot to help us, and it was through him that we managed to record our first music video. I think that music video was the first hip hop music video in this country. It was a little controversial. The name of the song was “Lions and Tigers”. The story behind that is even funnier. Like I said, no producers, no help in terms of music production whatsoever, so what do you do? You go find an Ice T record, alright? And you rip an instrumental off that and you’ve got your first song, OK? And that’s basically the story behind “Lions and Tigers”. It was controversial. It was about the local ethnic conflict that’s still going on. You didn’t worry that it would backfire? You just put it out? Yeah I mean, the words were pretty harsh here and there, but at that time frankly no one really listened to rap music so no one really cared too much about what you said on a rap record. Then after that, this man Afdel Aziz, he put together a project. It was like a mix CD where a whole bunch of musicians got together and they’d contributed a couple of songs towards it. That CD came to be known as the “Colombo Tribe Project”. That was the first time in Sri Lanka that urban artists, R&B singers, rock bands, heavy metal bands actually got together and did something like that. It was a compilation CD? Yeah, and that CD got circulated across all the local radio stations and for the first time in the history of this country, people who recorded and sang in English, be it hip hop or metal or R&B, actually got a shot at receiving an accolade. That was a pretty defining moment. Who was in the band with you? There was me, there was another girl and there were 2 other guys, Their street names were Squareboy and Looney Toons. I was just myself. I started off being an MC but halfway through, I found myself drifting towards singing as well. Sort of an R&B singer and you’d find me on most of the songs singing the chorus and the backup harmony, while both of them would rap. Did Rude Boy Republic ever make an album? We never got the chance to manufacture an album as such. We had 4 or 5 singles and that was the end of that story. Because basically one member started working full time. The usual story you know, life catches up with you. How did you survive? You somehow kept doing it. It’s funny because at the
time we were kind of breaking up, Bathiya & Santhush had started work on a
second album and they needed a rap artist to feature on the album. Bathiya
first approached a friend of mine who turned him down and then he came over to
me. My band wasn’t doing anything much at that time, so I figured, why waste
time? Let’s just take this opportunity and see where it goes. I featured on one
of their songs. The song was an overnight hit. It was amazing. It’s on their second album called “Life”. It’s called “Siri Sangabodhi”. That song, even though three quarters of it was in Sinhalese, a lot of the radio DJ’s at these English stations agreed to play it and there again was another defining moment. That was the first time you actually heard a fusion song in this country. And it was a club anthem for a while. It was played in clubs, on radio, and people had it on their phones and stuff. And you were the one who was rapping it? Yeah, and that was a bit of a turning point for me as well, because with my last band, we were popular in Colombo. But Bathiya & Santush on the other hand were like island wide because they sang in the native language, Sinhalese. Because of that they had a wider reach. Through that opportunity a lot of people outside Colombo began to notice who I was and what I was capable of. Your lucky break. What happened to the other group Rudeboy? Rudeboy Republic, they kind of broke up as well. The members would come and go. The head man, he’s in Chicago right now. He’s a DJ. Rookie D, he’s doing well for himself. I think the only person left from that generation of rap in Sri Lanka is me. As far as musically, what are you doing right now? I’ve just finished my first album, my first Sinhalese album. You sing in Sinhalese? Yeah, that in itself was a bit of a learning curve, because I was in New Zealand for about 6 years, studying and working there. In 2004 Bathiya & Santhush asked me to come back, and in 2005 I actually wound up catching a plane back to Colombo. In August we sat down and started planning my album. One of the biggest bridges I had to cross was that I don’t come from a Sinhalese speaking family. I mean we do speak Sinhalese, but we don’t speak it to a point where we’re that fluent, fluent enough to sing it. So I had to basically teach myself to sing in Sinhalese. This is where Bhathiya comes in. Basically what he would do was he would just say ok when you’re singing in Sinhalese you need to sound less “White”. You need to sound like someone from the Gypsies or the local bands. He would teach me these different techniques, and that kind of worked out in the end. One year later, I’ve got an album with 14 tracks entirely in Sinhalese and they sound convincing. That would be interesting to hear, because there’ll be a little different kind of sound. Definitely. A lot of people told me that. Even when I sing in Sinhalese there’s still a slight twang, but then again because I use a lot of variations that people use in R&B music, it kind of sounds different. It doesn’t sound whack, it sounds like something that could work. You were born here in Sri Lanka, but you went to school in New Zealand? I was in the university there for about 3 years and I worked in the IT industry for 3 years. You came back to Sri Lanka to do music? Absolutely. Music is where my heart is at. I wasn’t really too happy in New Zealand because I tried recording and doing music there but it’s so expensive. Studio time and production time is very very expensive. You must be happy to be back, making music. Yeah. People ask me, what’s your dream? I say, I’m living it. That kind of thing. When is your record coming out? Next year. Even though the album’s ready right now, there’s a lot of promotional planning and other planning that goes into launching an album. I need to finish up my website and my album cover, all of which I’ll be doing myself because I’m a video producer by profession. That’s what I do. I produce videos. Is that what you were studying in school? It was. I was a media major, mass communications major. The last 2 videos that Bathiya and Santhush released were actually done by me. Your album is not really a rap CD, but probably has rap beats and a rapping on it. It’s a very urban-ethnic CD. I think that “urban-ethnic” is something you’re going to hear a lot more in the future because it’s like Asian R&B, but it’s not R&B. Who produced all the music? When it comes to music Bathiya helped me a lot, and I’ve worked with a couple of other producers. When it comes to programming, the scratches and drum beats and stuff, I do that mostly myself. Did you write the lyrics? The Sinhalese lyrics were written by different songwriters. I wrote all the rap lyrics. This album is a melting pot of different sounds. There’s Reggaeton, there’s Hyphy, there’s all kinds of crazy shit. There’s a bit of Salsa too. Do do you rap in Sinhalese too? I haven’t tried rapping in Sinhalese yet but a lot of people say, why don’t you? I’m still trying to learn how to sing in Sinhalese. We’ve got a lot of ethnic instrumentation in the music, but the backbone of it, the drums, the bass and all of it is hip hop. The music you’re doing could be marketed easily in America. There are so many rappers in America, people are looking for something different, but with rap roots. Look at Reggaeton: if Latin American people can come up with a brand of hip hop that draws from their own culture and language, I see no reason why we can’t do that in Sri Lanka. I actually feature a rapper who raps in Tamil in my album. You might not believe it, but Sinhalese and Tamil are brilliant languages to rap in. They’re very sharp and they’re very aggressive. The way they’re spoken, it’s not smooth, it’s very snappy, very rhythmic. I’m waiting for an album to come out that has rap beats but with Sinhalese or Tamil rapping. That would be phenomenal. But along with the Sinhalese or Tamil rap elements, you need something in terms of music that is uniquely Sri Lankan to support it. The roots of the beats could be rap, but played with our Sri Lankan drums and drum beats. They could either be East Coast, West Coast whatever, with the whole Sri Lankan element on top of it. After you went to New Zealand and came back, (you were there for 6 years) did you see a change in Sri Lanka? Had the interest in rap grown? Oh, hell yeah. It’s crazy because when I left, rap had just started up here. People were just starting to take notice of rap and when I came back, holy shit! They’ve taken notice. It’s quite strange because back in the day, if I’d wear a baseball jersey or a pair of baggy jeans or something, I’d get laughed at. They’d be like what the hell are those? I come back now and holy crap! Everyone’s wearing that. I mean everyone’s got a bloody Lakers jersey or something or other. I mean you’ve got a kid who probably lives in some far off village in Dambulla or Anuradhapura and he could tell you who 50 Cent is. And they probably don’t even realize that it’s actually hip hop culture. To them it’s pop culture. To them it’s what is cool. So as opposed to 10 years ago, hip hop is now popular culture. They probably don’t even understand the depth of the culture. For them they see a couple of guys on screen wearing gear and it looks good. In the past 6 to 7 years, hip hop has become pop culture. It’s no longer just Britney Spears and the Eagles. Now it’s hip hop. Hip hop is the pop culture of today. I don’t reckon hip hop is ever going to die out like disco did. Hip hop is a global movement. There’re people in different countries, in different cultures who’ve attached a lot of emotion and belief into the music. If anything, it will keep evolving into something different over the years. Rap is really modern tribal music. We are going back to our original roots. Yes, like you say, it is tribal music, community music, the common man’s music. It’s basically like your morphine, something to take the pain away. What were you listening in the beginning, around the time you started Brown Boogie Nation. The first actual hip hop album I listened to was “America’s Most Wanted” by Ice Cube. That just changed everything. I listened to Ice Cube and I started doing some research into him and that’s when I kind of traced his roots back to NWA, and I was like shit! NWA! This is crazy shit. When I first listened to Ice Cube, I was 13 years old. I was an angry teenager; that was “angry teenage” music. Here’s this man just swearing his life away, just telling it like it is. In your face, I don’t give a rat’s ass about anything. Like: I don’t like politicians, I’ll call them what I like. I’ll insult their mothers, it’s no big deal. It was cool. It was brilliant. I’ve noticed that the rap that really got popular in Sri Lanka is West Coast music. It was the West Coast rap that actually began to spread its wings in Sri Lanka. When Snoop Dogg released “What’s My Name”, that caught on here. It wasn’t majorly popular but in Colombo in the central business area, teenagers who could afford to buy CD’s and stuff, well that’s what they’d get. That whole year, the whole Dr. Dre, “The Chronic”, “Doggy Style”, Warren G, the whole G funk thing, it blew up in the U.S. for sure. It was a big explosion here as well. You were still doing music and that was your opening. Definitely. Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, those were our Beatles. Those were the people who set the standard for us. I listened to Ice Cube and a lot of people from West Coast, East Coast too, and eventually I started to pay more attention to my lyrics after listening to Tupac Shakur. The first album of Tupac’s that I owned was “2pacalypse Now”. That was his second album and that just fuckin spoke to me seriously. I think that album was a bit of a changing point for him as well, because he recorded that soon after he’d been shot the first time and he’d just come out of the hospital. He had a lot of shit going on in his life and he basically just poured out all his emotion into his music. I was like, how is this possible? I swear to God, back in the day I knew every single song on that album by heart. Everything from “Me Against The World” to “Dear Mama” to “Temptation”, every song man, every song. I think that was a turning point in my career as a hip hop artist. That really set the standard. I was an enormous Tupac fan, so I just ran out and bought all his albums. Everything from the first album he recorded to his last one, the one he actually recorded before being shot. Tupac was definitely my biggest influence, looking back. You were able to find his records here? See? That’s the other thing. To find a hip hop album—generally when you walk into a record store, hip hop albums didn’t sell much and everything that sold was right up front. So basically you had to grab a clerk and say, hey! you got anything by this guy and that guy and this cube and that cube? They’d be like, who the hell? You had to look really hard and you’d probably go to their storeroom and just rummage through all the CD’s and finally go, Ah! here it is! You’d probably be so excited to get it. Earlier you said you like Hyphy, what’s going on in the Bay Area. Yeah, Hyphy rocks! It is funny how there are so many different little sub-genres, and the only thing that separates one genre from another is a very small thing. I mean your kick drum, my boomer, a little more in one song, that makes it a Hyphy song. Then you may really have some raw bloody something or other on another song and that makes it a different genre altogether. Are people in Sri Lanka getting into Southern music, like Crunk? Down here I don’t think people care too much about the genres and labels. At the end of the day, they just want something on the charts that is hip hop. As long as hip hop’s on the charts, as long as hip hop culture is in fashion, as long as hip hop clothing is in fashion, everyone’s going to love it. As long as it’s playing in the clubs and they can dance to it, they’re happy as shit. Mainly you were singing in your album. In the future do you think you will be doing more rap? The reason I’m singing on this album so much is because in Sri Lanka, people like rap music but they like it in small doses. No one has the attention span to listen to a full hip hop song, a song with 3 verses of people just purely rapping. The reason being, Sri Lanka is not an entirely English speaking country, only a small percentage speak English. For them hip hop is just color, it’s just added flavor into the song. We want to hear the melody, and we want to hear our own language. Exactly! It sounds like once you met Bathiya and Santhush, it really opened up your musical career. How did you meet them? Definitely. Bathiya I’ve known ever since I was at school. It’s just that we bumped into each other at talent shows. You are pretty much the same age? They’re older than I am. So Bathiya, I bumped into him, and he knew that I sang and I knew that he sang. Santhush and I went to the same school. He’s one year my senior. We kind of knew each other informally. Do you feel like Sri Lanka has our own identity in terms of Sri Lankan rap? What we have right now is not an identity. What we have is an identity crisis. Because what we’re doing right now is we’re just absorbing something African American and repurposing it for this country. So we’re basically taking the same style of production, the same style of singing and the same lyrical styles and making music. You’ve got the guy rapping and you’ve got a beat in the background that’s just typical Dr. Dre or Jazzy Phae or something like that. My point is that’s not an identity. That’s a stolen identity. When you get to a point where your music, Sri Lankan hip hop has taken influence from local instruments, local drums and local wind instruments, once you’ve got that into the mix, then that’s something you could call Sri Lankan hip hop. Take Reggaeton for an example. That’s a brilliant example for a brand of hip hop that’s unique to one culture, Latin America. With Reggaeton music, the backbone of it draws heavily from bomba and salsa, reand people sing in their own native language, Spanish. Why can’t we do that? Reggaeton is really big in America, it’s huge here as well. That could happen with Sri Lankan music too. We could. It’s just that we’re not thinking in that way yet. Is there a good club scene happening in Sri Lanka? There’s a moderately good club scene here, but you’ve got to understand it’s a third world country and 70% of the population can’t afford to walk into a club. 70% of the population couldn’t afford the door charge, that’s what I’m saying. There’s a club scene in Colombo, about 5 or 6 clubs and that’s about it. Basically it’s just in the Colombo area? That’s right. For the whole island they are like 10 to 12 clubs, and I’m talking about a population of what? Around 20 million? New Zealand has just 1/7th the population of this country, but in Auckland alone (the capital), which has only 1.5 million people, there are over a thousand nightclubs and pubs.
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