Hip-Hop Artist Adi Slays on New EP ‘PIGEONHOLED’

Brought up as the youngest in a household of 16 people and being fed music by everyone from Mohammed Rafi and James Brown to Lil Wayne on the hand me down family iPod, Mumbai-bred hip-hop artist Adi grew fond of various genres. After being enrolled in tabla and piano classes as a seven-year-old, Adi soon picked up drums and began to realize that his rhythmic background and a good ear for cadences and pockets translated well with hip-hop. He says, “It was probably seventh grade Shakespeare and William Wordsworth that made me write my first set of poetry. Soon, both these new worlds started to mesh and as soon as I got my hands on a laptop, I started programming beats and making music.”

With two EPs already under his belt, 2019’s three-track Testing Waters and the four-song offering Old Me Knew You which released earlier this year, Adi is now back with a refreshing genre-bending new five-track record called PIGEONHOLED.

On the new EP, Adi brings together his influences with funk, soul, blues and more heard splendidly across all the songs. The rapper says, “I think it’s important to let your listeners know that you’re not stuck in the same place making the same music and to show them that you’re growing. Both musically and as a person, with every new record.” He adds, “This EP is truly the best example of what I grew up loving, the music I want to create and the artists I want to emulate.”

According to Adi, each track on PIGEONHOLED represents a feeling of being constricted as exemplified on the bouncy title track about the music business or even physically through the fluid “LOCKED IN.” Srinagar rapper Ahmer jumps in on the angsty “COP CAR” where rhymes on being stereotyped are dropped while “BACK HOME” is the artist’s ode to his parents. The record closes with the groove induced and sample filled “.22” which is about being trapped mentally.

Adi recorded the EP at Mumbai producer-composer Rahul Popawala’s 24Fret Productions. “He [Popawala] absolutely smashed it,” says the rapper. With a music video for “.22” already out, the hip-hop artist is also going to release another for “LOCKED IN” later this month. Down the road, the artist has a few singles he wants to finish by the end of the year and is also working on a collaborative EP. Adi says, “My biggest goal is to put all my energy towards my debut album which is set to release in the summer of 2021 and trust me, it’s going to be a doozy.”

Stream ‘PIGEONHOLED’ on Spotify below and on other platforms.