REPORTAGE mic check

COURTESY VIVEK MENEZES An Indian-American rapper and his crew are making serious waves in the world. Is ’s Himanshu Suri for real? VIVEK MENEZES

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he first time Das Racist ever performed ‘Mi- turned around to get a better look at what was happening chael Jackson’, the first single from their much- across the vast audience. anticipated debut album Relax, was at Columbia There in front of me was a pulsating vision of American University’s Bacchanal Spring Concert on 30 multiculturalism in the 21st century. Blacks and whites and April earlier this year. The picturesque, grassy all shades in-between heaving together rapturously. Right Tquadrangle in the centre of campus was packed with thou- next to me was a short Japanese man dancing with a lanky sands of students and walk-in concertgoers from the grit- girl in a hijab. Pressed up against the fence on the other side tier neighbourhoods beyond the university’s walls, and the was a young Indian woman with an audible desi accent. I -based trio was notching another step on their im- watched her listen quietly for a bit, then hitch up her flow- probable journey toward rap credibility: opening up for the ing skirt to dance, grinding against the broad black man west coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. behind her, who kept his hands on her hips the entire time. I was standing stagefront when Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri (aka ‘’) announced the song; a distinct hush of Hakuna matata Pumba anticipation fell over the crowd. Within moments, the band Por que esta es la rumba exploded across the stage, frenetically yelling the song’s Yeah, I’m fucking great at catchphrase into their mics: “Michael Jackson! One Mil- —Das Racist, ‘Michael Jackson’ lion Dollars! You feel me? Holler!” Just one scant minute later, the audience had taken up the refrain, and the call- terling reviews of Relax—their first com- back spread all the way to the back of the crowd, hundreds mercial album following on the heels of Shut Up, of yards from where I stood—a few thousand people holler- Dude and Sit Down, Man, two highly acclaimed ing, and I was doing the same. mixtapes released for free over the Internet in But before they had even begun to captivate the audience S2010—began to pile up long before the official release on with their music, and make us dance uncontrollably at their 13 September. hyped it up, an unusual occur- feet, Das Racist had first made sure to ruffle the feathers of rence for a debut on a brand-new independent label. And the elite crowd that stood before them, filling the air with The Times, Maxim, Elle and many others chimed palpably awkward and uncertain murmurs. “This is the in with approval. A full fortnight before its release, Spin most collegiate shit I ever seen,” Heems said when he had magazine’s influential critics had already awarded Relax first walked onto the stage. With an expression that made eight out of 10 stars, a phenomenal score. But such accolades it seem as if he was smelling something putrid, he contin- are no longer particularly surprising. It has been apparent ued: “You look like a Tommy Hilfiger ad.” He proceeded to for more than a year now that things have been going very greet the Ivy Leaguers with a “shout-out” to College right for Himanshu Suri, Victor Vasquez and Ashok Kond- and Stony Brook University, both decidedly public institu- abolu, close friends who formed an unlikely rap group just tions. The audience was thoroughly confused, and it only three years ago. got worse. A couple of minutes later, Heems tried to lead the Suri and Vasquez first met at , an elite liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut, where they The Brooklyn-based trio was had seen their classmates, Benjamin Goldwasser and An- drew VanWyngarden, put together the rock band MGMT notching another step on their and become global chart toppers straight after graduation. improbable journey toward rap Inspired by the success story, they decided to try making it as musicians as well in 2008, when Suri reached out to credibility: opening up for the west Kondabolu, his best friend from high school, to serve as the coast rap legend Snoop Dogg. group’s “hypeman” (although he doesn’t record, Kondabolu performs at concerts). From the beginning, Das Racist went at the music busi- students in a chant of “I will drop out of this demon univer- ness with terrific brio. The band didn’t try to get signed by sity”. I looked around and noticed several furious faces. a major label; instead, Suri started his own. He also man- But when they started to perform their music, the crowd ages the band, and, via his Greedhead Entertainment, the progressively loosened up and jumped right in, shedding young rapper now also handles the business-end of things any sense of discomfort that might have lingered. The fact is for several other aspiring bands, all of whom seem to be that Das Racist is a deceptively hard-working band—they’re friends. And so in some ways, Das Racist comes across as a aggressively ironic and ostentatiously sloppy, all of which is collective—with Suri, Vasquez and Kondabolu at the centre a front for heart-pumping effort and a great deal of commit- of a large and growing constellation of artists, filmmakers, ment. At Columbia that warm spring afternoon, the three designers and producers. This culture of nonstop collabo- young rappers criss-crossed the stage metronomically and ration has defined Das Racist’s ouevre; Relax alone features leaned into their vocals with tremendous gusto. Their en- guest-rappers , Lakutis, and El-P, as ergy was infectious, and as the dancing began in earnest, I well as tracks recorded with members of indie bands like

OCTOBER 2011 | THE CARAVAN | 51 REPORTAGE

From the beginning, Das Racist went at the music business with terrific brio. The band didn’t try to get signed by a major label; instead, Suri started his own.

Vampire Weekend and , and the neo-bhangra But there were no glimmers of anything like that happen- heartthrob Bikram Singh. ing until two soul music producers, Sylvia and Joey Rob- Das Racist came soaring onto the radar of music critics inson, decided to take a chance in late 1979 and record an at the end of 2008 with the release of ‘Combination Pizza unwieldy 15 minutes of friendly banter and stories rapped Hut and Taco Bell’, a mind-numbingly catchy and repetitive by the Sugarhill Gang over an irresistible bass-heavy hook track (“I’m at the Pizza Hut / I’m at the Taco Bell / I’m at from Chic’s ‘Good Times’, a big hit earlier that summer the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”) that soon became from the African-American disco and R&B band. The song a viral hit on the Internet and galvanised critics: ‘Combina- that materialised, ‘Rapper’s Delight’, emerged from the hip tion’ “passes from grating to absurd to hilarious to poignant hop scene to quickly scale the black music charts, and then to transcendent”, wrote . When Sasha Frere- went on to huge global success, selling millions of copies Jones, ’s widely respected pop music critic, worldwide. At a time when the American music scene was wrote about Das Racist in 2010, he dismissed ‘Combination’ still extremely segregated, ‘Rapper’s Delight’ broke down as “dumb fun”, but he grouped them with Odd Future (aka several walls and allowed hip hop to climb out of the ghetto. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or OFWGKTA), the It is the highest-selling 12-inch single in history, and still a foul-mouthed, teenage Californian crew that occupies the major musical influence. A few years ago, four Spanish sis- cutting-edge of rap music: “both are hip-hop acts as unset- ters calling themselves Las Ketchup released what would tling as they are entertaining”. Looking back, that signalled become another massive global hit based entirely on their the moment Das Racist first started edging away from its ini- cutesy rendition of the opening lines of ‘Rapper’s Delight’. tial reputation as hipster clowns. Now, they’re treated with But even with the introduction of major commercial considerable respect: earlier this year, the San Francisco stakes, the idea that hip hop would go global—that Spanish Chronicle voiced an emerging consensus when it called the teenyboppers would eventually recite its lyrics—was utter- group “formidable, dead-serious rappers who could end up ly preposterous in the early 1980s. When the first American turning hip-hop on its head”. rappers toured Europe in 1983, audiences reacted with con- fusion, and occasionally anger. “I remember looking at the Hip-hop got turned into hit pop, people and they would just sort of be looking at each other The second a record hit number one on the Pop charts. trying to figure out whether they should like it or not. They —3rd Bass, ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ (1991) didn’t know how to react. It was so new,” recalled David Hershkowitz of the New York Daily News. p until 1980, rap and hip hop (technically not But cultural awakenings are unpredictable. By the end the same, but effectively interchangeable) con- of the same decade, American rap crews like Public Enemy stituted a subculture confined mostly to the would sell out huge arenas on tours across Europe, playing South Bronx, a notoriously poor, crime-ridden to audiences who would turn up at their concerts dressed Uand overwhelmingly black neighborhood in . head-to-toe in authentic gear, and shout out every word of It took just three decades for its sounds and style to liter- every line. By then there were already a myriad of Euro- ally conquer the world, comprehensively replacing rock- pean rappers, like the smooth, brilliant MC Solaar. and-roll as the preferred cultural expression of the post- But even with the emergence of hip hop on the global boomer generations. scene in the 1980s, it remained a musical form with its roots

52 | THE CARAVAN | OCTOBER 2011 REPORTAGE planted deep in the black American experience of segrega- tion, poverty, racism and longing. Solaar is black African, a Chadian immigrant who eventually settled in Paris. Pub- lic Enemy is an all-African-American crew, and so was the Sugarhill Gang. The same is true even now for the acclaimed Odd Future. But what about Das Racist? How can we ac- count for the hip hop world’s embrace of two Indian Ameri- cans, Ashok Kondabolu and Himanshu Suri, who were born into the richest and best-educated ethnic minority in the US and attended one of the best high schools in the coun- try, locking arms with Victor Vasquez (who is mixed-race, Afro-Cuban and Italian) after he met Suri on the campus of another elite institution. Are these guys for real?

Back in 1980 from Delhi to Queens She had a pocket full of lint, He had a suitcase full of dreams. —Das Racist, ‘Relax’

couple of days after the concert at Columbia,

I took the 7 Train out to Queens to meet Himan- COURTESY VIVEK MENEZES shu Suri’s parents at the Flushing Hindu Centre, Das Racist’s Himanshu Suri, or ‘Heems’, (right) with hypeman which houses their local temple. and high school friend Ashok Kondabolu. AOften referred to as the “international express”, the 7 Train on the New York City Subway runs from Times The results were instantaneous. The main starting points Square in the heart of to the outer reaches of of migration shifted overnight from Europe to Asia and Lat- Queens, running on elevated tracks above some of the most in America. And all other motivations for migration were diverse neighbourhoods in the world. Nearly 50 percent of dwarfed by the objective of family reunification, which Queens residents are foreign-born; the train carries a be- today is the driving force behind more than two-thirds of wildering babel of migrants from every part of the globe. documented migration to the US, representing more than The overwhelming majority, however, are Asian. Half of five times the number that gets in on employment skills. By all Asian immigrants in New York City live in Queens—it is 1970, immigration had doubled. home to more Koreans, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Bangladesh- The numbers have only gone up since then, creating huge is and Chinese than any of the other four boroughs. More demographic shifts, which have been particularly stark for than 60 percent of desis in New York City choose to live Indians. By 1990, there were one million Indians in the US, there, and Queens has boasted the largest concentration which rapidly doubled to two million by 2000. That accel- of in North America for decades. Hi- erated pace has only sped up since—according to the latest manshu Suri and Ashok Kondabolu were born in Queens US Census, immigration from India is currently at its high- in the mid-1980s. They are children of the mother of all est level in history. Where the overall population of the US Little Indias. is growing at 13 percent, the Indian-American population Both of their sets of parents migrated to New York dur- chugs along at 130 percent. There are now more Indians in ing the first significant wave of Indian immigration that the US than in any other place outside India, more Indian poured in after 1980, at a time when Indians were still in students attending American colleges than students from the extreme minority, and most middle-class immigrants any other country and more Indians taking advantage of sought rapid assimilation into the white-dominated profes- the H1B visa for “specialty occupations” than from the rest sional elites. After all, it was only four decades earlier, in of the world combined. 1946, that President Truman had signed the Luce-Celler All indications are that the trend is irreversible. Within Act into law, removing an outright ban on immigration the next 20 years, there will be four or even five million In- from the Indian subcontinent. It took the unprecedented dians in the US. But things looked very different when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to permanently Suri and Kondabolu families first established themselves in crack open America’s doors to the subcontinent. Queens in the 1980s. The Indian community was far from With the declaration that the prevailing immigration sys- achieving a critical mass, and cultural and racial lines were tem of preferences based on racial and national origins “vi- still drawn taut through neighborhoods in various parts of olates the basic principle of American democracy, the prin- the city. In those days, ‘black music’ was played on ‘black ciple that values and rewards each man on the basis of his radio’, ‘white music’ constituted the entire mainstream, merit as a man”, President Lyndon B Johnson signed into and Indians listened to cassettes imported from home. As- effect an entirely new set of preferences, based on an immi- similation was a one-way street into the white-dominated grant’s skill and education, as well as their family relation- professional cadres. The idea that an Indian would ever be- ships with citizens and legal migrants already in the US. come a rapper was just about as preposterous as the idea

OCTOBER 2011 | THE CARAVAN | 53 REPORTAGE COURTESY himanshu suri

York. In our conversation at the Hindu Centre, his father, Girish, told me, “He was god-gifted from the beginning. We knew he was special.” He was a family favourite, and by the third grade his teachers had already begun to predict a bright future for him. Mr. Host, his school principal at the time, eventually told the Suris that “Himanshu shouldn’t be here”, and assigned him to special classes for gifted chil-

COURTESY VIVEK MENEZES dren after the young rapper-to-be won both the math and above: Himanshu with his father, Girish Suri, at the Flushing spelling school competitions one year. Hindu Centre in Queens, New York. By the 1990s, the Indian community of Queens had be- above right: A young Himanshu Suri playing on a drum set come an economic and cultural force, particularly so in the during a family trip to India in 1990. run-up to the millennium, when widespread fears about the so-called Y2K crisis led to a huge surge in demand for that a black man could ever become president. In those Indian coders to stave off a worldwide computer collapse. days, an Indian teen could find himself berated for simply Desis suddenly became ubiquitous in New York. Both Hi- playing basketball, ‘a black sport’, instead of something ac- manshu and his protective older sister, Shivani, grew up ceptable, like tennis. in a brand new Indian America that had reached a critical MTV was restricted to white artists when it first launched mass—all their close friends were second-generation immi- in 1981—the cable network assumed there was no demand grants from the subcontinent just like themselves, and they for anything else from its white teenage audience. Even Mi- lived in an all-desi environment that simply had not existed chael Jackson wasn’t played on the channel until his record a mere decade earlier. company threatened a blanket ban. Record company execu- Shivani, now 31, readily admits that this is still the case tives learned that not only would young white girls like his for her—she married another Punjabi American, and music, they would also pin posters of his handsome, then- though she works in a mixed-race office environment at the black face on their bedroom wall, and go on to make Thriller international advertising and PR agency Ogilvy & Mather, the greatest-selling album in music history. her closest friends all share the same ethnic background. I vividly recall that moment, because I was there. My par- But things were different for Himanshu, first because of ents had also moved to Queens at the same time as the Suris Stuyvesant, the storied New York City high school that spe- and Kondabolus (when I was 13), and it is where I grew up. cialises in mathematics and science, and has produced four It was me who was constantly criticised for falling in love Nobel Laureates and countless other notables. Admission is with basketball instead of tennis (thank you Vijay Amri- granted by a rigorous entrance examination—only 3.7 per- traj), and then, inevitably, falling hard for ‘black music’, es- cent of all New York City students who take the Specialised pecially the infectious rap that blared from boom-boxes on High School Admissions Test for entrance into eight of the the basketball courts. Later, I too went to Wesleyan, though city’s nine specialised high schools get in. No quotas, no set- two decades earlier than Suri and Vasquez. After a friend asides, no extra credit—entrance is designed to be purely tipped me off to Das Racist in 2008, I became fascinated by meritocratic. The results are quite revelatory. Asian Ameri- what I could already perceive as the vast differences in our cans—just 12.5 percent of New York City’s population—to- respective Indian-American experiences, and earlier this day make up an amazingly disproportionate 72 percent of year I decided to return to New York from my home in Goa Stuyvesant’s student body. to meet Suri and see if the reality could live up to the hype: Stuyvesant changed Himanshu Suri. He met and imme- could he be, as advertised, the first great Indian rapper? diately bonded with Ashok Kondabolu, another shy Indian Suri was born on 6 July 1985 into a close-knit, Punjabi American who had to commute from Queens every day to the family still struggling to find a permanent foothold in New school’s downtown location near the World Trade Centre.

54 | THE CARAVAN | OCTOBER 2011 REPORTAGE

On 11 September 2001, Suri and Kondabolu were at Things looked very different in Stuyvesant when the World Trade Centre was attacked. They were just 16, still a year away from graduation. Like the 1980s. The idea that an Indian millions across the world, they watched the horrific scene would ever become a rapper was on television, but, unlike most everyone else, they could also see the unimaginable event unfold right outside the just about as preposterous as the school’s windows. idea that a black man could ever Earlier this year, Suri recounted the scene in an essay for Alternet: “On screen, above my instructor’s head, I saw what become president. I thought was another plane about to hit the other tower, and by the time I looked out the window the collision had straight out of the PhD programme at Benaras Hindu Uni- already occurred. Live TV is never really live. Still, in the versity, and now lives in Queens with two daughters and a state of confusion that precedes panic, I went to speak to a son, who are all doing extremely well in school, a cause of school official who informed me that they had spoken with considerable pride for their father, like it is for most immi- the FBI and the safest place to be was inside the building, grant fathers. as there was no way the Towers would fall. AND THEN Dixit was a very friendly man, and I was grateful for his THEY FUCKING FELL!” warm reception and hospitality. At the same time, I found Three thousand two hundred teenagers were being evac- that he shared a great deal with those I considered “com- uated by foot from Stuyvesant up the West Side Highway. munity elders” when I was growing up—a generation brim- Himanshu and his friends took particular care to organise ming with tremendous disapproval for the prevailing cul- the South Asian and Middle Eastern students into a group ture around them. “There are limits to freedom,” he told that would walk together for safety. It wasn’t long before me, growing quite animated. “Don’t do it in the road, like a girl in their group who was wearing a hijab faced verbal animals.” Dixit keeps tight control over what his children abuse—“fucking Palestinian”, someone yelled, but the teen- listen to on the radio, or watch on TV, and swore he would agers stuck together, walking for hours until they could never approve of his children dating. “When even friends find a route home to Queens. Suri told me that he sat next are not allowed, where is the question of boyfriends,” he to exhausted passengers covered head-to-toe in the ashes told me, a wide and triumphant smile lighting up his face. from the WTC site when he finally managed to get on the Thoughts about the Pandit’s conservatively raised chil- Q46 bus to his home. dren were still dancing in my head while I watched the Suri “I thought about the Amritsar Massacre and Jalianwala family enter the temple. Himanshu looked rather conser- Bagh a lot that morning,” Suri wrote in the same essay. “[W] vative himself, clean-shaven and fresh-faced. His family e were already sensing the racism we would face.” Stuyves- was a picture of mutual affection and contentedness; you ant became a triage centre the rest of the school year; their could see they had found their place in this very Indian cor- classes would be held on the campus of Brooklyn Techni- ner of the US. From my discreet vantage point, I watched cal High School. Immediately after relocating schools, the the young rapper make a full round of the temple deities young rapper-to-be got up in front of an all-school assem- to offer his respect, dignifiedly reaching over to touch the bly to speak up about what he described as “essentially, ground in front of each one. not being an asshole or beating up Muslims or those who The Suri family is a fine example of how hard work has may appear Muslim”. He writes “I wasn’t sure if there was paid off for Indian immigrants in the US. This is not the any racial backlash, although when you’re brown you get a immigrant narrative most people talk about when they quick understanding of what events will lead you to feeling tout the Indian-American achievements of the past few de- weirder, and what events will lead you continuing to just cades. Theirs was a story of joint-family struggle, a large feeling weird. I don’t even need to know this happened to clan squeezed into small apartments. Discrimination was know that it happened.” commonplace. Life was extremely difficult, and it was hard to find decent work. Even if you found it, wages were ex- he temple in the Flushing Hindu Centre on Kis- ploitatively low, but they stuck at it. Eventually, both Girish sena Boulevard sits right next to the Fukuoka Sha- and Veena found steady jobs and put together a stable envi- bu Shabu Restaurant, opposite another restaurant ronment for their family. specialising in Malaysian food, a Shaolin Temple In the meeting room of the Hindu Centre, Veena Suri told Tand the Gold City Chinese Supermarket. Nothing like this me, “We never thought of going back to India, we moved existed when I was growing up in Queens, when Hindus here for a better future.” But in almost the same breath, she worshiped in a storefront that was then a room rented from said, “Now we are thinking that we will do it for at least a Masonic Lodge, and the only Chinatown you heard peo- half the year.” It is the first-generation migrant’s eternal ple talk about was the one in downtown Manhattan. plaint—in between two worlds, it is hard to give up either A couple of hours before meeting Girish and Veena Suri one for the other. at the Hindu Centre, I wandered into the small office of the The Suris and I reminisced about the 1980s, when the head priest, Dr Krishna Pratap Dixit, and got drawn into first India Day Parades trickled down Madison Avenue an interesting chat about Indian America. He was recruited (now, there is an annual torrent of hundreds of thousands,

OCTOBER 2011 | THE CARAVAN | 55 REPORTAGE

and the Empire State Building gets decked out in the co- students out of any of the 50 leading liberal arts colleges lours of the tiranga). When we returned to the subject of in the US. Illustratively, that still means that Wesleyan is Himanshu and Das Racist, it was as if we were old friends overwhelmingly white: even today, Asians, African Ameri- who had recognised each other from the early days, trading cans and Latinos combined add up to only 25 percent of the stories about our successful children. student body. I asked the same questions of Girish and Veena Suri that When Himanshu arrived on campus in 2003, it was I did of Pandit Dixit, and the answers were extremely con- the first time he was removed from the comfort zone of sequential. “We trust him,” a beaming Girish Suri told me, Little India in Queens and the heavily Asian environment brimming over with pride that an Indian journalist was at . Ebullient and confident, he talking to him about his son for a story to be printed in In- was assigned to a new dormitory that had been arranged dia. “He should be happy.” A sizeable, excitable man, he around a concept typically Wesleyan in nature: ‘Students of was pleased to hear that I have three boys myself, and told Colour for Social Justice’. His resident adviser was Victor me with a nudge, “Expectations and disappointment come Vasquez, a talented and artistic undergraduate from San when you don’t trust. You must trust.” Then he smiled his Francisco. They immediately struck a bond; Vasquez told broadest smile yet, and reached over to squeeze his son’s me, “Himanshu was definitely one of the most interesting arm. “I trust. I know wherever he feels comfort, he is going students I encountered at Wesleyan.” Despite the differ- to the top.” ences in their backgrounds, both students shared a point of view as minorities which could be called—and which they Young Amitabh, I’m a Don still call—“brown”. —Das Racist, ‘Punjabi Song’ It’s a type of camaraderie that simply didn’t exist when I was dropped off by my own parents on the Wesleyan cam- he first time I met Himanshu Suri was at a bar pus in 1986; the college was much whiter still. Though I had in Greenpoint, the old Polish neighbourhood on also been in an extreme minority in high school, at least I the northern edge of Brooklyn, which has under- came home to people who looked like me. But it was ex- gone rapid gentrification along with neighbour- tremely unsettling to be totally isolated and almost always Ting Williamsburg. If you want to start a musical career in the only minority in the small classes that characterise a the US, right here is probably one of the best places to be Wesleyan education. on the planet at the moment. It’s a fact that became appar- The big break came for me with the discovery that the ent to me over the course of two minutes, which is exactly classical dancer Bala Saraswati’s brother, Tanjore Viswana- the amount of time it took Heems to fight his way through than, taught Carnatic vocal music in the ethnomusicology handshakes, high-fives and embraces extended to him all department. Despite having no previous interest whatsoev- the way up the block, and right up to the counter where I er, I raced to sign up, and then shoehorned at least one class was waiting. with him each semester that I remained in Middletown, Tall, much leaner than he looks in his publicity photos, desperately happy just to sit cross-legged with Viswana- with a skein of hair flopping in front of his face, it was al- than and feel like myself again. Even then, I tore through ready obvious that this was a young man exactly in the my undergraduate syllabus in three years and took off as place he wanted to be: an expansive comfort zone which I soon as I could to graduate school in England. was soon to learn extends city-wide. Himanshu Suri’s Wesleyan experience was characterised In conversation, Heems was witty and unexpectedly by another kind of anxiety. For the first time in his life, he courteous. We were making plans to meet again soon, when was surrounded by children of extreme privilege who had he did something extraordinarily touching. He raised his benefited the most over the past two decades in an increas- eyes from his whiskey and ginger ale, and expressed grati- ingly skewed America. Wesleyan specialises in admitting tude to me and the trickle of other Indian students who had and cultivating dabblers and free spirits—the university has done well at Wesleyan years before, thereby “paving the no academic requirements whatsoever. But from an Indian way for the next generation of Indian kids like me to get American’s ‘high achiever’ perspective, all that can seem admitted”. Startled by the unexpected gesture, I examined like sheer frivolity, a total waste of time. So Suri took enough his face closely to see whether it was a joke, a set-up to call- economics courses (Wesleyan has a particularly strong de- ing me Uncle, or something similar. Nope, Suri was sincere. partment) to major in the subject, but almost every other He then told me that he would never have become a musi- course reflected his abiding interest in identity politics, race cian if it weren’t for his college experience; it was our alma and the history and culture of the subcontinent. mater that he credited above all else. Musing about his course selection on the first day we met Wesleyan remains a curious anomaly among top liberal in Greenpoint, Suri laughed at the irony. “I took all those arts colleges. It emphasises undergraduate studies, but economics courses to satisfy the practical Indian immi- also grants PhDs, and has always had a progressive streak. grant inside me. It seemed a waste to pay all that money and It was one of the first colleges in the US to admit women, study something like religion with all these white kids find- and remains at the forefront of racial, ethnic and religious ing themselves.” On the other hand, he said, “the courses diversity in undergraduate education. Remarkably, even to- on India were something different, a spiritual need. I took day, it maintains the highest percentage of first-year black them for the American side of my personality.” As we part-

56 | THE CARAVAN | OCTOBER 2011 REPORTAGE ed after that first meeting in Greenpoint, the rapper told me Wesleyan gave him “the conviction that I can do whatever I want with my life.” Again I checked if he was serious, and again he was. That was the precise moment when I started to believe.

Hip hop changed our society. The commodification of hip hop fostered a multiracial generation of young Americans brought up on a culture forged largely by black youth, and transformed the racial dynamic in the . The hip hop generation helped to elect our country’s first black president. —Dan Charnas, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip Hop

ost of relax was recorded in a sprawling warehouse at 61 Franklin Avenue in Green- point, Brooklyn. Heems invited me to sit and watch them record a song with Bikram Singh, Mthe 30-year-old Indian-American lawyer who has become a global neo-bhangra star since entering the music business in 2003. Singh is compact, slickly put-together and nattily dressed, another Queens boy whose family emigrated from Pun- jab in the early 1990s. I marveled quietly to myself as he clasped Suri into a bro-hug, bestowed loud high-fives and

fist-pounds, and immediately asked the vital question, “So, COURTESY VIVEK MENEZES where did you play ball growing up?” Two decades removed Himashu Suri of Das Racist performing at Columbia from a time when playing basketball and listening to ‘black University’s Bachannal Spring Concert earlier this year. music’ earned me parental reprimands, these Indian Ameri- cans from Queens all played basketball and listened to rap I started to imagine the scene that would ensue the first music. It was part of their identity, and no one questioned it. time this song plays for a Delhi or Mumbai crowd, rap and I’ve sat in on recording sessions before, they can be im- bhangra pounding together irresistibly. It was apparent mensely tedious. But this one came together remarkably even then that an instant classic was being recorded. And quickly right in front of my eyes. With the backing track that’s before Heems himself swaggered up to the mic, ad- blasting, Singh let out a series of blood-curdling yells into justed his crotch, belched loudly (it shows up on the track) his microphone, and then a searing verse about getting and, peering at his phone, took it all to another level: drunk, complete with choice Punjabi epithets. Behind him, Suri and Vasquez put down their Tecate beers and looked at Sweaty Heady Eddie Spaghetti told me to chill out each other with giddy expressions of delight. They immedi- Trying to cause some fun so I pulled a bunch of bills out ately picked up their mobile phones and started composing The booze ain’t the problem lyrics to match. It’s the other shit it leads to From the beginning of their musical career, Suri and When it comes to wilding Vasquez have drawn attention for their unusually sophis- Believe me I’ve no equal ticated verses. They constantly make references otherwise Me and Bikram drunk and be wilding in Queens unknown to rap music. For example, in one early song, Some older brothers screamed “who the fuck invited ‘Hugo Chavez’, they namecheck John Philip Souza, Afri- Heems”. can-American writers WEB Du Bois and Maya Angelou, as well as Dinesh D’Souza and Amitav Ghosh. But their writ- Uncomplicated good-time lyrics about friends hanging ing styles are quite different. Vasquez generally comes pre- out. But so was ‘Rapper’s Delight’. pared, verses at the ready, while Suri waits until the very And, just like ‘Rapper’s Delight’ turned America on to last minute, jotting down the final line just before he steps rap, it occurred to me I might be witnessing the recording to the mic. of the crossover hit that brings the real deal to the subcon- It was time for the permanently mischievous Vasquez to tinent. More so, I was now convinced Himanshu Suri is the do his thing: he immediately accelerated the party atmo- authentic article, the greatest Indian rapper standing. It sphere in the room to a near-frenzy: “Get fucked up, get was enough and my journey was over. With the hook still drunk, just don’t leave your drink around me cause that playing incessantly in my head, I packed my notebook and shit’ll get drunk up.” headed towards the general direction of home. s

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