Tsumyoki is Goa's Hip-Hop Trailblazer

When Goan hip-hop artist Tsumyoki dropped a snippet for an upcoming song, he put out an open call for a collaboration, asking which desi hip-hop artist would sound good on the track. Fans threw out names and Tsumyoki’s peers also joined in on the action.  

“I approached a lot of rappers before, and the song was just in the vault. About five rappers I approached, they rejected it,” he recalls. But then Haryanvi artist MC Square asked if he could jump on it. “He just gave me his verse and said, ‘Let’s get it, bro.’”  

That song went on to become Tsumyoki’s latest banger “Want It All,” out via Divine’s Gully Gang label (who signed him in 2021). Although it might seem like Tsumyoki aka Nathan Mendes is an English rapper in a country that’s completely taken over by rap in several other Indian languages, he’s learned to find his place, even winning the Best Indian Local Act award at the 2023 MTV European Music Awards. From MC Square on “Want It All” to Rawal on “Ek Do Ek,” Seedhe Maut’s Calm and Mumbai rapper Yashraj on “Breakshit!” to Gravity on “Money Dance!”—Tsumyoki’s songs hold space for others.  

First language: Tsumyoki says it’s still tough to be taken seriously as an English rapper in India, even when artists like Hanumankind have gone global. “It’s an uphill battle to get streams, get any sort of play listing, any sort of bookings for shows… you’ll get rejected just because your verse is in English.” 

It’s a double standard where Indians perceive English music coming from a local artist with less “seriousness,” while international artists pack stadiums. He says, “If Coldplay can sell out and Travis Scott can sell out… is it that when you’re an Indian artist from India, it’s just a different ball game?” 

From Goa to the globe: Tsumyoki first commanded Indian hip-hop’s attention with his friends and crewmates in Goa Trap Culture. With Kidd Mange, 2jaym, Elttwo and others, the group’s 2021 album Daboij showcased a refreshing fusion pulled off with elan like few others in the game, especially the hyper energy of emo/pop-punk rap songs like “Jackets.”  

He says, “It was just like a bunch of kids having fun, to be honest. We didn’t know the gravity of what we were doing. We didn’t know that it would get this big… It was just something that we did fucking around and messing around, you know?” 

Now, the gang’s getting back together, with Daboij 2 in the works. “It’s just been an amazing process to be able to work with my friends this way. It’s just too much fun,” Tsumyoki says excitedly. Where at other times in our chat he’s been more nuanced in his reactions, he promises that Daboij 2 will be “100 times bigger than everything we’ve done.”  

Tuning into songcraft: Never one to look back at his work—you can’t ask him to pick his favorite lyric from his catalog, even—Tsumyoki gets bored of going back to listen to his older material. The fans are probably going to keep at it, though, from his genre-hopping experiments with Goa Trap Culture to the openhearted debut album A Message From The Moon in 2023. His recent EP Housephull doubles down as well, and it’s here that Tsumyoki opens up about how he’s more attached to his production and beats than the lyrics he wrote. He shouts out “Work4Me!’ from the EP as a cherished track he produced. “Something about that song takes me back to like 2017-2018 SoundCloud era, when I was really discovering music,” the artist adds.  

Between a bit of self-deprecating humor (on uttering a Hindi expletive instead of saying something romantic on “Housephull”), a whole lot of braggadocio and plenty of life stories, there’s a range in Tsumyoki’s writing that makes him ripe for global stardom. He says of his process, “I just play the beat, see what makes me feel. The beat makes me feel emotional, I just write emotional shit. If it makes me want to have fun, I’ll just write fun shit.”  

Local scene talk: If it was tough enough to get listeners as an English rap artist, within Goa, there are more hurdles to getting local, on-ground support. He says, “I can’t blame Goa for not listening to rap music. They listen to the music that they like, but the scene here is just very small.” He urges more support for rap music from locals but says he and Goa Trap Culture will push on anyway. “I think one day Goa and India are just going to open their eyes and see what Goa Trap Culture has to bring and it’s going to be a huge realization, like, ‘Why didn’t we check this guy out sooner?” 

The future of music: Tsumyoki’s not bothered by AI in music so much, because it can never replicate “personality.” He explains, “That’s what people love the most. They love your music, but if they fall in love with your personality and who you are, that’s how you create a cult following. It’s not just music.”  

In the face of it all, his motivation remains personal. He says, “I make music for me and I make beats for me because they make me feel a certain way. So I’ll just keep doing that and keep releasing it. It should work. Good music will win at the end of the day.”