How Hiten Became Badshah’s Top Producer

In 2017, producer Hiten turned cringe-pop song “Selfie Maine Leli Aaj” by Dhinchak Pooja into a breathy, measured song, making it his first hit of sorts. While covers, remixes and reimaginations of viral songs can only give you so much mileage, Hiten went on get his foot in the door with more mainstream artists like Punjab’s Tarsem Jassar on “Fix Match” in 2020.

That same year, Hiten linked up with another megastar – Badshah, producing “Awaara” featuring singer Reet Talwar. In the four years since, Badshah has become “more of a guide than an artist” to Hiten, leading the Batala, Punjab-born engineer-turned-covers-artist-turned-producer to become one of the most streamed artists in India. That distinction was secured after the release of Badshah’s new album Ek Tha Raja in March, which Hiten chiefly produced, including hits like “God Damn” featuring Juno award-winning Punjabi-Canadian artist Karan Aujla, “Daaku” with singer Sharvi Yadav and “Soulmate” with singing star Arijit Singh. Most recently, Hiten also worked with singer Priyanshu on “Hania.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone India, Hiten talks about his journey so far, how he built his association with Badshah and what’s coming up next. Excerpts:

Rolling Stone India: What was it like learning music production the first time you got into it? What was an initial challenge, if any?

Hiten: I started my music production journey long back, from a software called Virtual DJ, which mixes two songs with one another. It was quite fascinating and satisfying somewhat, it does give kicks. Later, a friend shared a trial version of FL Studio with me on a pen drive. At that time, I was new to the Internet so I just randomly searched ‘How to make beats in FL Studio.’

That video didn’t mention anything about tempo etc. but luckily the song I threw into the playlist had the same tempo as the song I was making. Bang, I uploaded my first-ever remix made with FL Studio back then. I kept on learning through tutorials and some people used to throw random DMs on Instagram and Facebook back in 2014-15 [about production]. Those people are still connected with me and I am still learning every day.

The difficulties that I faced were that I was producing in my bedroom and obviously, it created lots of noise which used to disturb my parents a lot and at that time, there weren’t that many tutorials and accessibility compared to the content today. Plus I had no musical background, so it was quite tough to get guidance also.

How did the connect with Badshah happen and what did he want in terms of the beat for [Sahdev Dirdo song] “Bachpan Ka Pyaar“?

I would say meeting with Badshah bhai was destiny and there are many people involved in the process. If I have to name a few, it would be Uchana Amit and Devinder Singh Sudan – they used to make Badshah bhai listen to all my work and then he would suggest a couple of things that I needed to work on. Also, we sat a couple of times before our first release together could take place so that we could understand each other’s vibe and obviously there were lots of things that I had to work on and we finally made ‘Awaara,’ which was my first release with Badshah bhai.

In the context of ‘Bachpan Ka Pyaar,’ he sent me a reel on Instagram and sent me a voice note, ‘Hiten sample this and we can have a beat like this with this sample.’ I immediately sent that audio within 30 to 40 minutes after that. We had no further conversation and the very next day, he uploaded the reel with [singers] Aastha Gill and Rico which initially performed decent, but after one night it just blew up and every reel on Instagram was [with the hook] ‘Jaane meri jaaneman’ – that was a crazy experience. People loved it a lot.  

So yes, Badshah bhai is a guide more than an artist for me.

What does it take for a producer to build a kind of rapport with an artist that they go to you almost every time for music?

First of all, I would say it’s our work that defines us, so make sure you give your 100 percent in whatever you are doing and you need to understand the vibe that an artist wants to create or that might suit his catalog or personality and that’ll work for the audience. Also, the way to treat them is the key – how you speak, how you interact and how you listen to their inputs. In the end, it’s a team effort.

How has the creative process changed between you and Badshah over time? What did you both want to do differently on Ek Tha Raja?

Yes, the creative process has changed a lot between us as the sound is evolving rapidly, the soundscape is changing with time and we have to keep up with it. So we keep on experimenting with sounds and new genres to get the best thing.

For Ek Tha Raja, we experimented a lot, like DIVINE is on a romantic track – ‘O’Sajna.’ There is a Nepali verse from [singer] Prajina on ‘Hola At Your Boy,’ which is with KR$NA and everyone killed it.

I guess we have done all the things we could do on Ek Tha Raja but yes, music is a wide topic, one can never get satisfied about exploring and learning.

You’ve worked with MC Square on two of his hit songs. What was that like, knowing that you were crafting songs that had this potential — on paper at least — of becoming hit songs?

First of all, MC Square is a very talented artist. He is a brilliant writer and singer and everyone knows that. While working, all we wanted was to make a good song that could be easily understood by the masses with Haryanvi as the primary language and we did our best to achieve it, hence the implementation on those two songs was on point. It’s up to the people to make every song that anyone makes a hit. It just needs to reach the right audience, that’s it.

Is there a signature sound that you’d like to be known for? Or you’d rather be a diverse producer who can work with all kinds of artists, not just rappers?

I would rather choose to be a diverse kind of producer, because I want to enjoy the process of creation and I don’t want to get bored from creating the same kind of music again and again. Creating music and having sessions with different artists is a different kind of learning process that I want to do always.

What other projects are you working on right now that are coming up in 2024?

There are many projects with many big names which cannot be disclosed. I’m planning to give exposure to new talents who are capable enough with skills. Lots of projects will be coming in 2024 and I will be releasing my own singles that will be sung, written and composed by me solely. We recently released a song that I created from scratch called ‘Hania’ sung by Priyanshu which is performing quite well, by due blessings.