Rappers Raftaar, KR$NA on India's hip-hop boom, race for global recognition

As reality series Legacy drew more than 15,000 applicants, rappers Raftaar and KR$NA, along with Ankit Khanna, reflected on how India’s hip-hop scene had evolved. In an exclusive conversation with India Today, they discussed the growing importance of regional sounds, whether virality could coexist with strong lyricism, and why India’s next global hip-hop breakthrough might come from embracing its own sound rather than trying to sound global.

Raftaar remembered a time when hip-hop in India was largely associated with dance before rap began finding its own audience. “First I will talk about rappers. What I have seen is that the culture of hip-hop in our country was introduced mainly through dance. You know, dance was the part of hip-hop that blew up initially, so that already created a path for rappers to come in because the style, the lifestyle was already there. Now what has happened is that we have evolved so quickly that here, in our rappers, you will find people who sound old school, you will find people who sound very new,” he said.

When Raftaar and KR$NA began working on Legacy, the idea was to look for the next generation of hip-hop artistes. More than 15,000 applications later, the scale of the response offered something beyond a talent pool: a glimpse into just how far the culture had travelled in India.

What interested Raftaar was the pace at which that evolution had happened. “So they are covering that entire time in just 20 years, which is beautiful,” he said, reflecting on the fact that artistes today had access to an ecosystem that did not exist when he started out. “When I have made a rap song, I wondered where will I pitch it, who will listen to it? However, today, just make a song and if the public likes it, then the companies are going tocome to you.” From five cities to regional scenes

For KR$NA, he attributed a significant part of that acceleration to the internet. For a genre that had once struggled to reach audiences beyond particular pockets, digital access had altered both discovery and consumption. “Internet has really made his ups. Internet has liberalised, you know, the exposure to hip-hop in a lot of ways,” KR$NA said.

There had, however, been a particular hurdle for hip-hop in India. Unlike in some markets where rap emerged in local languages relatively early, much of the music initially reaching Indian listeners was English-language hip-hop. “India mein jab hip-hop aaya toh India mein hip-hop saara English hip-hop aaya initially. Toh English kaun samajhta tha? (When hip-hop came to India, it was initially all about English hip-hop. So, who really understood English?) So hip-hop took so much time to permeate to the roots,” KR$NA explained.

The change came when Indian-language rap began becoming more visible.

“When it started becoming Hindi and people were made to listen to hip-hop in the same language, then it started spreading. So in India it took a long time to sort of catch up, but when the internet came and our own ecosystem started building, I think since then the growth has become very fast,” he added.

Ankit Khanna, who was associated with Kalamkaar, had seen that expansion from closer quarters. The scene, he said, could no longer be described through the handful of cities that once dominated conversations around Indian rap. “It’s not limited to like five years, seven years ago. You were talking about rappers only coming out from Delhi, Bombay” Khanna said.

The newer landscape looked considerably different. He pointed to artistes and communities emerging from the Northeast, eastern India, the South and Gujarat, where local scenes were increasingly developing their own followings.

“Now you have so many guys. Like today, the whole Gujarat scene, which is like people like Ganji, Zia, all of them, they are doing crazy stuff as well. So it’s actually gone very regional now, and I see it’s only growing,” Khanna added.

That regional spread also changed the question of what Indian hip-hop was supposed to sound like. The larger the ecosystem became, the harder it became to prescribe a single sound or a particular route to success.Raftaar then pointed out the complications of mentoring the next generation. He said there wasn’t necessarily a formula to hand over. “With hip-hop you don’t need to mentor much. Honestly, because hip-hop, this rap, gives you full freedom that your extension of the story and your version of the story can come from the same society also but will be different,” he said He admitted that their generation had largely learned through trial and error. “When we came in, we were learning as we went. We were the first movers and the first people to make mistakes, and you had to learn from them. We made a lot of mistakes because there was no blueprint,” Raftaar said.

He added that for the artistes coming up at the time, the landscape was very different. They had a blueprint to look at, with established rappers and a growing hip-hop ecosystem offering examples of what success could look like.

Can virality coexist with lyricism?

A song could travel because of a hook, a single line or a moment that caught on online. For a genre built around writing and lyrical skill, that raised a familiar question: did chasing virality eventually come at the expense of the music itself?

KR$NA didn’t see it that way. “I think the essence of hip-hop and rap has always been on lyrics and it will remain on lyrics, because without them, rap has no sense,” he said.

Even when a track became viral, he argued, the writing didn’t necessarily disappear.

For him, the challenge was less about choosing between accessibility and lyricism and more about finding a way to accommodate both.

Raftaar, on the other hand, had a different take on virality.

“Sometimes mistakes themselves become hits. You were talking about virality. Yes, that same mistake becomes a hit. After that, what do you do with that opportunity?” he asked.

He pointed to MC Stan as an example of an artiste whose appeal was partly rooted in having a sound that didn’t neatly fit the expectations of an older generation of Indian rappers. “When MC Stan came into the picture, a lot of people were like, ‘What is this? What is this sound?’ because I had also come from a whole generation. The rappers of my time were different and the contemporary ones are different,” Raftaar recalled.

Stan’s ability to occupy that space, rather than conform to an existing template, was what Raftaar saw as significant. “Stan is considered one of the biggest because he carved his own space. So to be big, you have to find the void that is already not being accessed,” he said.

Could Indian hip-hop break out internationally without changing itself to fit an international market? There had already been signs that it could.

Indian hip-hop’s international visibility had grown through artistes finding audiences outside the country, with Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs becoming one of the most prominent recent examples. The track, produced by Kalmi, became a global breakout in 2024, reaching the top 10 of the Billboard Global 200 and subsequently entering the Billboard Hot 100.

For the people working in the scene, that success inevitably prompted another question: if an Indian rapper could do it once, could the next global hit be deliberately built?

Raftaar wasn’t convinced. “I don’t think that you can engineer a sound in the air. It can never be like, this will globally become a hit,” the Swag Mera Desi singer said.

Khanna agreed that there was no neat formula for reproducing international success. “There is no set formula or pattern for giving. It is only waiting till the time the wider audience is resonant with the sound you made. And if they like it, they like it,” he added.

Trying to reverse-engineer that response, he shared, could only go so far. “You can’t over-engineer this thing that, yes, we have made this, we will make it a hit. That never happens. You can buy however many views and however many streams, eventually if people like it they will listen; if they don’t, they will pick it up and throw it out,” Khanna said.

That made Hanumankind’s trajectory particularly relevant to the discussion. The success of Big Dawgs wasn’t the result of an artiste appearing overnight with a song designed specifically for an international audience. He had already been making music for years.

“Hanumankind, poor guy, had been making music for seven-eight years before that and making good music, and making all of this,” Raftaar said. For him, the lesson lay in how the song travelled rather than in an attempt to make it travel.

KR$NA remained sceptical of the idea that an artiste could decide in advance that a song would become a global hit.

Raftaar’s view was that artistes ultimately had to surrender some control once the music left the studio.

That became particularly relevant in an industry increasingly built around numbers: views, streams, engagement, trends and algorithms. Those metrics could amplify a song, but they couldn’t necessarily manufacture an emotional connection with it.

“You know, no matter what you do, you can make it the highest-viewed video in the world, whatever you can do. But it will only work when it resonates with people,” Raftaar said.

“Because who’s going to put it into people’s subconscious? No algorithm is capable of that,” he added.

Legacy will stream on ZEE5.- EndsPublished By: Prachi aryaPublished On: Sep 11, 2026 14:12 ISTALSO READ | Rapper Raftaar says he has no connection to Rajkummar Rao, Keerthy Suresh's Raftaar