The rapper from the 90s is suddenly 'socially' relevant, challenging 'followers' to get his racy numbers out of their heads

Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 31, 2015)

On May 5, bright and early at 11.36 am IST, Baba Sehgal sent a tweet to American pop icon Rihanna: Good night @rihanna, wahan sab ko batana, yahan general store is kirana. It was retweeted 117 times and 'favourited' by 52.

The post is typical of India's first rapper's brand of humour - always rhyming, with topics ranging from social awareness (hamesha blood donate karne se pehle group jaanchna, basanti inn kutton ke saamne mat naachna; October 2013) to cricket with an undertone of crime and Bollywood (bhel miley ya bail, aaj chhaa gaya chris gayle; May 2015).

After Baba, born Harjeet Singh Sehgal in Lucknow, shot to fame in the mid 90s with Thanda thanda paani and Manjula, Hindi playback decided to kill the music video star.

Two months ago, he resurfaced with his new single, Going To The Gym which crossed one million views. Not everyone liked it. One viewer commented, "I'll spend my entire life in the gym, but never sing this rap again! Khuda ka khauf kar, zalim!"

Baba considers such criticism a mark of his success. "If people write sh*t about you, it means they're taking note of you," he says on a flying visit to Mumbai from home city, Hyderabad. At a Juhu five-star coffee shop, he insists on ordering a plate of chicken fried rice. The order is an ode to his latest song which garnered 67,000 views in barely three days. "Chicken Fried Rice was inspired by my love for the dish," he says about the tune that listeners cannot get out of their heads. It begins with: Table mein rakkho plate, arre don't worry about your weight, life mein daalo spice, khao chicken fried rice. It was shot in two hours and edited on his iPhone."

Baba's return to the world of music videos was prodded by YouTube managers who chanced upon the Going to the gym track on Soundcloud. It was downloaded 15,000 times in a matter of weeks. "I didn't think music videos would work today. But they asked me to give it a shot, so I called a few friends over to my studio and we shot it in an hour, edited and uploaded it," he says. Within a week, it bagged three lakh views.

His Twitter avatar may seem an extension of his music, but Baba never intended to rhyme online. "I joined Twitter because I was told there were fake and abusive Baba Sehgals doing the rounds. My official account was to tell my fans that it wasn't me."

Then, one day, when watching a cricket match on television, he tweeted: Gayle, you fell down like a whale. "It got 300 retweets, just like that! I thought I should keep at it." What followed, were gems (murga aise pakao ke kaccha na ho, pyaar aise nibhao ke baccha na ho) that now offer his 35,000 followers a distinct hook.

Across social media channels, Baba reaches out to 1 million fans. His mass-driven wit, not clout, has earned them. "If you are SRK or Salman, and you post, 'Kaisi ho?' it will get 5000 shares. If I do it, people will say, 'Takla pagal ho gaya hai'. You've got to be entertaining," he adds.

When he isn't speed-filming his next video, he is in Hyderabad where he moved six years ago, recording songs for Telugu and Tamil cinema, like the superhit, Kadhal Vandhale for Suriya-starrer Singam (2010) and the title song of Shadow (2013).

The shift was accidental. "I had bumped into Chiranjeevi at an airport once, and he happened to be a fan," he says of the veteran Telugu superstar-turned politician. "He gave me Roop Thera Masthana from his film Rikshavodu. It became a superhit." It was choreographed by Farah Khan and marked Baba's entry into the Telugu industry. He has sung for over 50 South Indian films since, even acting in a couple. "For a hardcore sardar like me to crack the South Indian industry says a lot about my survival instincts." he says with pride.

In the soon-to-release 3D historical Rudramadevi, starring Rana Daggubati, Baba plays Naga Devudu, while also lending his voice to Choosukovo Theesukovo with Chithra.

And he is already giving back. The Baba Sehgal Academy of Hip Hop offers B-boying, DJ-ing, rapping and graffiti classes. He says hip-hop is not a dance or music genre, but a way of life — symbolic of black protest in the 70s, and his own struggle as a computer engineer who came to Mumbai from Delhi.

"Throughout school and college, I'd sing Kishore Kumar songs. When I'd tell my mother I wished to go to Bombay to be a singer, she'd say, 'hum log ab tak Lucknow se Dilli nahin gaye aur tu Bombay jayega?'" When the boss at his Delhi-based IT firm called up his parents to report on his slacking, they agreed to let him shift dreams. "I used to sit and write lyrics instead of working in the office," he smiles.

The year was 1990 when he drove his Maruti 800 to Mumbai from Delhi and parked it next to Centaur Hotel in Juhu. "I had no friends, no place to stay. I'd crash in my car and sneak into the hotel every morning with my brush for my duties," he laughs.

His first two albums, Dilruba (1990) and Alibaba (1991), flopped and his record label wrote him off, saying, "indie music is not cutting it". This is when Thanda Thanda Pani (a version of Vannila Ice's Ice Ice Baby) released and broke all records to become a chart-topper. "And yet, no one knew me as my picture on the cassette was very small. That's when Ken Ghosh and I shot a video for Dil Dhadke six months after the album release," he says of the video that featured a shirtless Baba with Pooja Bedi.

In what appears to be a second innings, Baba seems charged to write songs about everyday life. His upcoming videos include a Punjabi club number called Gaana Bajao, DJ and another to raise awareness against cruelty to animals, called Ek Pal With An Animal.