Ilo Toerkell: Kinari, you rap and you produce your own music. What are benefits and challenges that come with that?
Kinari: As a rapper, it’s always been clear to me what the difference was between hip hop and other genres of music. To make other genres, you usually need a good singing voice, you need to buy instruments, you need a music education. But anyone can rap, as long as you have a voice and can rhyme. I’ve always loved music, since I was young. I had some really great music teachers at school but for the most part I’m self-taught. In the same way, producing my own music lets me have total control over what I’m putting out into the world. To be clear it’s not that I’ve never worked with other producers or that I’m not open to it; it just has to be the right beat and right collaborator.
A Range of Influences
You draw from a wide range of musical elements: Hip-hop, Gaana, Mujra and Ballroom styles especially on your last EP GUDI BOLI and classical piano melodies on BADDUA. How do you decide what material to work with? And how do Western and Indian and Tamil traditions interact in your songwriting?
I’m always getting into new genres and artists. And as a producer as well as a lyricist, not to mention the many languages I can speak, read and write in, I feel like I have so many more points of entry. Of course, I have different relationships to and different fluencies with all these inputs and languages essentially. Hindi is what I mostly speak day-to-day, it’s what the majority of my fans and neighbours speak and that seeps into my slang, my bars.
I’m Tamil and even if I don’t yet rap in it, this reveals itself in my production. I’m deeply inspired by parai drums and gaana rhythms. Both from my childhood memories in Chennai summer vacations as well as Tamil music and films which I still watch even today.
It’s such a waste that most Indian rap uses Western beats and sample packs when there is such a longstanding and diverse bank of Indian folk rhythms to draw from. The norm is to use Western drums and rhythms as the foundation and then put this ‘local’ flavour over that. So with BADDUA I wanted to experiment with creating a new sound entirely for Indian hip-hop that intentionally blends Western classical samples with Indian folk percussion.
These folk beats, and the ongoing rise of regional-language rappers is really the new phase of Indian hip-hop – which is lately what I’ve been seeing. You can hear it in BADDUA and in my previous project GUDI BOLI V1 which I actually made almost two years ago even though it only came out in February 2024. I’ve always had diverse influences – it’s something that people talk a lot about. As wide as my references can be, they always come from some element of truth or real experience in my life.
But as an artist you need to keep evolving and experimenting – especially as a producer and composer. GUDI BOLI V1, KATTAR KINNAR and even the music I made as Finsta [previous artist name] definitely draws from ballroom from my college years abroad, and mujra and item songs from my first year or so in Delhi. That way both lyrically and production-wise my latest single “Animal“, was a reintroduction to who I am now. And BADDUA builds on that.
Still from “Animal” by Kinari
The upcoming EP is framed by the curse and the prayer – “BADDUA” and “DUAA”. Why did you choose to name it after the first, BADDUA?
The track that the EP opens with (also called ‘Baddua’) has this aggressive atonal sound which also blends in two extended curse monologues. I want to take listeners on a journey through one night in Delhi’s underworld with me, and I want to immerse them into this dark, polluted, noisy and often violent world. Delhi can sometimes be this kind of hell but as you listen through till the end which is “Duaa” (a heartfelt prayer to God), you realise that sometimes you can get a glimpse of this entirely unexpected Heaven. This journey from hell to heaven is alluded to in the cover art (made by the incredible Priyanka Paul who is also a good friend), in the visualisers and in the soundscapes, not just in 4 tracks alone.
Dilli 17
You also rap about faith on this release. What is your relationship to faith? Has music influenced that and vice versa?
Music to me is both freedom and faith. It keeps me grounded and hopeful. It energises me to keep working and keep being true to myself regardless of the noise and the haters. And even regardless of the fans and fame. It’s not so out of the blue, because historically speaking, Christian themes are a big part of western classical music. Which is the heart of BADDUA in particular. I’ve studied and loved Western classical music since I was really young so it’s not been a huge leap to connect on a spiritual level as well as on a sonic level. Bach is one of my favourite composers of all time. In fact, I thought this was something I thought a lot about when I performed in Germany for the first time last fall. I’m really looking forward to going and performing there again soon. Musically, hip-hop in the USA is also a place where Christianity and the church have had a major influence, right from the beginning till now. Whether it’s music or imagery or even just instrumentation, it’s not a huge departure for these elements to mean something to me as well, and then to play into my art.
You also rap: “no justice out there, look for your inner truth”. What does that mean to you?
Indian hip-hop is moving towards more and more “bitter truth”. It really finally looks like artists from underprivileged backgrounds have a platform to share their stories. The audience and media will decide how much they are willing to confront this reality, but as long as artists can find a way to get by, hip-hop won’t stop.
That truth, that bitter inner truth for me, is somewhere between music, my faith and it’s what keeps me working hard to make something I’m proud of. I don’t really care if I’m welcomed or not, because I keep improving and getting better with each project. I get paid more too – I get paid for the love, and I get paid for the hate. So there’s no going back for me now.
Kinari and manager Mithran
Throughout your songs, you often reference Delhi and the district 17. What is your relationship to the city? How has it shaped you as an artist and person?
Ever since I moved to Delhi a couple years ago, I’ve had a complicated relationship with the city. It can be a dark and cruel place – it’s a lot of what my first album Kattar Kinnar talks about. But now that I’ve been here a while, and especially that I have this connection to my neighbourhood – Dilli 17 – it’s definitely added a dimension to my outlook and my music. People have these stereotypes about ‘South Delhi’ being very privileged and posh; where people speak a distinct kind of Hindi and have lived there for generations but where I live, it’s South Delhi too. The roads don’t always work, the conditions aren’t the greatest but, it’s full of people from around the world and from around the country too.
Hip-hop is an inner city story – it’s a big city story and it’s one where you can aggressively and openly be ambitious, no matter where you come from. So yeah Dilli 17 is where I’m from now and our slang, our music; the kinds of jobs we do and the kinds of lives we live are in a lot of ways the realer rawer South Delhi. And I can see that what I’ve been making is connecting with people. I make music all by myself, taking inspiration from what’s genuinely around me and what I’m going through, so I know they’re connecting with me, not just some genre or style that I’m copying.
BADDUA by Kinari is out now. You can stay up to date with Kinari via her Instagram and website.