This Singaporean hip hop artist raps in English and Tamil

mustafa-izzraimy Rapper Yung Raja | Izzraimy

Visitors to Singapore can easily recall Mustafa; the all-purpose department store in Little India is one of the most obvious markers in the tiny island-state. For someone like Yung Raja, who is a 24-year-old Indian rapper born and raised in Singapore, the 24-hour retail giant means much more than garments, grocery, appliances and mindless shopping. His debut single, released in collaboration with Sony Music Malaysia last June, is unsurprisingly titled Mustafa.

"I grew up in Little India my whole life; my house is there. And I went to Mustafa all the time. I knew this word had to become a song," says Raja swinging on a circular chair in a Delhi cafe, hours before his performance with Prabh Deep, a raging hip-hop sensation from a part of Delhi addled with drugs, crime and joblessness. Raja sings in Mustafa which was created in a studio in upmarket Tiong Bahru, home to hipster cafes, elegant boutiques and art galleries.

Call me Yung Mustafa

Brown superstar

I got girls like groceries

I put ‘em in the cart

Call me Yung Mustafa

I got what you want

If you're looking for that beef

I got it in my shopping cart

"I thought of the song 'Call me young Mustafa' in a way like I have everything that you are looking for. Whatever you are looking for, I have it. It was like an idea, like I am shopping mall in itself," says Raja, sweet-naturedly dismissing the suggestion of groupies and clarifying that "beef" here implies "problem" in rap culture. With his quicksilver gait and neon-green close-cropped hair (which was all of pink a year ago), Raja is not exactly railing against the system or screaming class discrimination or fits the bill of a hard-nosed witness to inner-city crime. Neither is he concerned with flashy cars and easy money. He is just a happy, grateful GenZ at peace with his surroundings, gallivanting with friends and hopeful of a dazzling future. "The place where I come from is a very close-knit community. There are so many different races and ethnicities which live in close harmony. I didn't really grow up seeing differences. My reality has always been us living together as a community. My growing environment has always been very cohesive. I am just trying to create something fun for people around me," says Raja whose song Mustafa recently hit the 1 million mark.

While the glitzy concrete jungle that is Singapore is not exactly a country one would associate with gritty hip-hop, there's been a small surge in the genre with local rappers belting out songs in their mother-tongues, particularly Malay and Chinese. The last two years have seen the birthing of a domestic marketplace for hip-hop in Singapore. Raja has trended in Malaysia and Singapore following the release of his English-Tamil remixes of Gucci Gang (Poori Gang), New Freezer (More Better), and Bartier Cardi (Pathuko Thambi). He is one of the first few to come to the limelight amongst Indian rappers for his easy-going English-Tamil rap, a seamless bilingual delivery and distinct cultural references.

Raja's family migrated from Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu to Singapore in 1992. His father, Rajid Ahamed, is a recognised poet in the Tamil diasporic community in Singapore and taught Maths and Science as a college professor for 17 years in Chennai. "I have three elder sisters. I am the only male child in my family. I grew up with a lot of freedom and my family could not control at all what I was consuming as music," laughs Raja who heard his first hip-hop song, Eminem's Real Slim Shady, as an eight-year old. The raw, authentic nature of hip-hop was a place of acceptance for Raja who otherwise struggled as an actor for ten years. It helped him form a bridge between two disparate identities. "I am a first generation Singaporean. I grew up with the unique duality of a south Indian Tamil at home but an English-speaking Singaporean kid outside my house. It makes me who I am. All my life I have felt difference, the disconnectedness between the two," says Raja who does not quite know how political his songs would have been had he grown up in India. He hasn't seen Gully Boy yet, even though he's a fan of the Mumbai rapper Divine who inspired the story of the most talked about Hindi film of the month.

Ilaiyaraaja and A.R. Rahman have been his biggest influences. When his manager and producer suggested Yung Raja as his stage name back in 2017, it only struck him weeks later that it chimes with Ilaiyaraaja. Raja's musical journey, he says, has been full of such happy accidents. "Ever since I started my music career two years ago, there have been so many unexplainable blessings, coming to India to perform being one of them." He took the stage in Delhi on February 16 as part of Singapore Weekender, a three-day festival organised by the Singapore Tourism Board in association with St+art India Foundation and Impressario Group. Raja also sang his second new song due to release in two months. It is suitably titled 'Mad Blessings'.

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