Bold and fiery, India’s first all-female hip-hop collective, produced by Poshak, is all set to take over the music scene. The collective consists of MCs, B-girls and graffiti artists, and aims to create a space for female-centred hip hop and rap.
With catchy rhymes, unbounded confidence and dauntless lyrics, the seven members of the collective channelise their emotions into creating a genre of music that is still largely underrepresented in India.
Their first single “I Do It For Hip Hop” is an introduction of sorts: to the origin of the group, their music, and their love for hip hop. Infectious, powerful and unique, it stands out brilliantly, cementing their place in the Indian music industry.
Q. How did you first discover your interest in rap/hip-hop?
For us, everyone’s interest in rap comes from various things – where we’ve grown up, what style of rap we’ve been listening to – and because we’re all from such diverse backgrounds, our introduction has also been very different. Some of us started off in cyphers, some relating to tunes and finding different ways to deal with grief, complex emotions; some of us through different genres of music we’d heard rap in. I think the one common element is we all heard rap or hip hop at a very young age, and that’s what has drawn us and inspired us to work together.
Q. How did you come together as a group?
Krantinaari and Hashtagpretty happened to be hanging out once and started discussing among themselves how many female rappers they actually knew. Between the two of them, they were able to connect to Pratika (MC PEP), MC Mahila, JQueen, and Demyth. They decided to meet at a live cypher, just so all the ladies can bring their bars, along with our main Bgirl FlowRaw who’s a seasoned breaker and a valuable addition to our collective. The idea was to make a wholesome collective, and broaden our horizons as a community powered by women. We will soon have a graffiti artist(s) added to the mix as well.
Q. What are some influences that guide your music?
Everything from old school hip hop to trap, soul, dance music, a dash of trance, and even heavy metal! We get it from everywhere!
Q. Who is an inspiration that you look up to?
I think there’s too many different opinions for this one, but you can say it’s similar to where our influences come from, and any one artist for each of us would be too limited!
Q. How do you think women are treated differently in the hip-hop industry/music industry in general?
We’ve said this in different places across various interviews: whether it’s being treated differently as separate from the whole main ‘boy rap’ world, isolating us to posts about ‘female rappers’ specifically, judging us before we even put enough content out, there’s a lot that goes on. But every day, our whole goal and aim in life is to overcome these obstacles, and be the voice for women in this country who cannot stand up or raise their voices. We want to give them the confidence to feel and think differently, and that’s what we’ll do!
Q. What changes do you hope to see in the Indian hip-hop scene in the future?
Lots and lots of more females involved in different elements of hip hop, be it rapping, designing, graffiti, breakers, twerkers, power movers, social activists, and the dawn of equality among us all!
Q. Tell us more about “I Do It For Hip Hop.”
The song talks about our origins as artists and where we came from. The simple idea was for the song to serve as an introduction to each of the collective’s members. We talk about our different hoods, ourselves, and our journey to where we are today!
