Live Inside Seedhe Maut Nation: Desi Hip-Hop’s Punk Moment

Make no mistake — this is a moment, an exploding generational moment that India’s parched pop culture landscape has been waiting for years to arrive. Cinema dictates everything in India, from fashion and hairstyles, to music and choreography. The only redeeming thing is that we have many cinemas, in different languages, each with its own lexicon.

But the Seedhe Maut (SM) moment comes from outside the system. This is pure angst, pure rebellion, pure badmashi and pure badtameezi. SM is a headless chicken squawking its head off. It’s a sight to behold. There is blood everywhere but there is also grace in the chicken’s mad dancing.

Every once in a while there comes a band that marks a line in the sand. There’s a before and there’s an after. Like with all cultural phenomena that seek to stomp on the past and present and create their own future in the now, SM elicits strong either/or reactions. You either love them or you hate them. Unlike Indian indie bands in English — with the exception of Peter Cat Recording Co. — who mostly end up singing for friends and family (metal is a different universe), SM has the numbers to show.

With 489,000 followers on Instagram, 589,000 subscribers on YouTube, and 14.6 lakh monthly listeners on Spotify (that’s only one music streaming platform), one thing is clear: the lovers far exceed the haters. Local has no need to go global. As the line from “First Place” goes: “Seedhe Maut cult hai/ Need no ally.” This is our scene, our lives, our cities, our insouciance, our Hindi, our Hinglish, our lingo, our in-jokes, our profanities (more specifically: dyed-in-the-wool Dilli gaalis), our pot – Cannabis Indica, not London skunk: “Aanh! Check!/ Geeta pe haath your honour, aan/ Spit game sick and proper, aan/ Chahey poora scene karoon call out, haan/ Chahey poora din karoon ball out, yeah.” When the lyrics appear in Spotify, it’s in a potpourri of Roman and Devnagari.

My generation – different from the one SM is addressing – waited long for this moment. We thought that like in the U.K. the revolutionary vehicle would be punk. Well, punk never really took off here. It was too foreign, too British. Also, if anything as incendiary as the Sex Pistols ever happened here, the band would most likely be behind bars for life. But punk is a broad term. I would term the SM moment a punk moment in India’s constant churning. Except that this moment arrived via hip-hop – bars of a different kind.

I first heard of SM in 2019 when the animated video for the single “101” came out. It features the duo, Calm (Siddhant Sharma) and Encore ABJ (Abhijay Negi), driving around Delhi at night, past a flyover, with ripped pieces of paper raining down on the car, which manages to move and remain stationary at the same time. For some reason, the line “Noida se leke Nizamuddin” got stuck in my head. It still is. Then, for some reason, I stopped listening to them.

Seedhe Maut kept on releasing new albums and singles, their audience kept growing. Last year they dropped the mixtape Lunch Break, pretty much SM having fun in the time and space between their previous album, Nayaab and the next one, Kavi Kehna Chahte Hain. They followed this up with a sold-out 12-city pan India tour, taking the music to places big and small, from Jaipur and Hyderabad to Mumbai and New Delhi. New Seedhe Maut tour dates have been announced for October.

2024 marks a tipping point of sorts for the band. The band has become a bandwagon. Like many others, I hopped on to it. This is the year that SM began making hordes of new fans. I started with Lunch Break and traced the journey backward through the four previous albums, ending/ beginning with the first E.P. 2 ka Pahada (2017). (Originally a product of the indie label, Azadi Records, launched by Uday Kapur and Mo Joshi, SM are doing their own thing now, even though Mo is still on board.)

The word is on the street. SM knows that they are now an unshackled force, spreading their tentacles beyond core loyalists. The new fans are acknowledged in every gig. Between songs, Encore, who loves peppering his conversations and lyrics with ‘yessir’, stops and asks the audience in Hindi: “How many of you are watching us live for the first time?” There’s a show of hands. A warm welcome ensues from the stage. The follow-up is addressed to the older fans. Encore tells the crowd to keep coming back: “Jab tak tum log vapas aatey rahogey, tab tak, bhai, hum bhi stage par aatey rahenge. Tumharey bina hum kuch nahin hai.”

Yessir!

But where’s the gig? Which crowd is this? Let me take you there, live, from the concert in Dehradun to the tour finale in Delhi.

***

SM followers are a devoted lot. YouTube is full of self-made videos of kids getting ready for the gig in their bedsits, hostel rooms and shared apartments. Nothing is left out – the ride to the concert, waiting patiently in the snaking queue, and once you are in, rapping with the duo, word for word, in tandem.

I have done my homework. SM songs are scorched with red hot iron in my head. I’ve been listening to them on repeat while drunk, while sober, while driving, while drunk driving, until I get a ‘Top Fan badge’. I’m on my way to a Seedhe Maut gig, my first, in Dehradun.

I’m still ten minutes from the venue, when the texture of the traffic changes. Just kids on scooters and motorcycles, some ‘tripling’, all wearing hip-hop tees: Tupac, Eminem, Seedhe Maut.

There’s an interminable queue waiting to get in. The queue is a mela, exuding bonhomie.  There is pregnant anticipation. I joke with someone that it’s easier to vote. The generation SM is speaking to is 15 to 25/30, but it’s easy to break the ice if one knows how to deploy SM lyrics. I don’t waste any time, and begin by addressing fellow fans with the opening lines from “Hola Amigo” (with KR$NA & Umair): “Hola Amigo, Kaiso ho theek ho?/ Kya challa hai bruv/ Tell me what’s up/ Ghar pe kaise hain sab/ Aunty ko bolna I’m sending my love.” I ask if Sez On The Beat (SM’s beatmaker on previous albums) is here; this insider question melts the ice further. I’m finally one of them.

The thing about a Seedhe Maut gig is that there are no curious fans, only old and new ones. If you know you know, once you’re in you’re in. Age no bar, gender no bar, class no bar. We’re all citizens of SM Nation. They’ve come crawling out of the woodwork: gay couples holding hands, girls perched on their boyfriends’ shoulders, loners, students, food delivery agents, callcentre workers, gangs of girls, gangs of boys, and the hardcore fans who arrived three hours ago, all packed tight upfront in a unified block. The lucky ones are pulled up on stage and get to rap with SM live. One can’t really see the band from the back; it would help if in future gigs they had screens blowing up the duo on stage. Not everyone has the courage to handle the crush of the front-row converts. Periodically, Encore asks the audience to make space for those around them.

The bar is thriving. Complete strangers buying each other drinks and sharing cigarettes. Each time I’m dancing and singing along by myself, a circle forms, and we rap together, throwing water, exchanging fist bumps. There’s an incredible sense of community: no aggro, only camaraderie – we belong to a secret club, a parallel universe the outside world has no idea of. This is the close-knit Indian underground, on the ground.

The energy hits you like a gale force punch. Aside from ‘energy’, the word ‘elation’ comes to mind. There’s more energy here than in the sun. Each time it sags a little, there comes the classic SM clarion call from the stage; Calm shouts: “Tera bhai!” We scream back: “Seedhe Maut!”  Everyone throws more expensive bottled water on each other. Confetti rains down from the sky.  

***

Having seen SM in my backyard, Dehradun, it’s time to catch the tour finale in their backyard, Delhi. It’s a much bigger venue, bigger crowd, bigger cars parked outside. Inside, it’s the same vibe, except Delhi being Delhi, people are more wary of each other. Everyone sticks to their circle. For some reason, a lot of kids are wearing heavy metal tees. Seriously? Dehradun scored better on this one. Given the number of school kids, some of them chaperoned by bewildered parents, perhaps it’s no surprise the organizers have decided to do away with the alcohol.

It’s May, it’s Mother’s Day, and a voice comes from the stage informing the audience that one of the duo’s moms is here to watch the show. Again, I’m at the back, so can’t tell if it’s Encore or Calm. The voice asks us to say, “Happy Mother’s Day, Aunty” to her, and ten thousand (possibly more) kids oblige in one voice. One of the duo (again, I can’t tell who) says: “Look at those windows in IG Stadium. My father installed those. Tonight let’s make so much noise that the windowpanes shatter.” A loud roar from the crowd ensues. A big fat yellow moon looks down benignly from above.

What’s happening on terra firma is anything but benign. Rebellion is in the air. SM goes after rich kids living off their father’s money: “Pal rahe bapu ke FD pe”, and tyrannical teachers and parents: “Main aata vaha se, jaha pe bachche baithe mu fulake/ Kyuki ye teacher bina baat ke maar raha hai chaante/Toh bunk hai classein/ Ghar pe gaiee khabar to toote gaand hai/ Par dum hai gaand me, inke dollo se bade yaha aand hai/Andar se nazuk, chamdi moti, dil se malamaal hai.” My hair stands on end, and a shiver runs down my spine, when thousands of kids rap in unison to “101”: “Gharwaalo ko pata tha chathi [Standard 6] se, ladka ye mandir me maatha nahi tekega.”

There are moments in SM tracks, when I haven’t a clue what they’re talking about – like in “Tour Shit” – but it doesn’t deter the kids from running with it and rapping along: “Jaata tha Gindi ke mele mein/ Pannalal bola, main Mukaddar ka Sikandar/ Pannalal ek gadha tha, vo ghoomta tha circus mein jaise koi madari aur bandar/ Teen saal baad suna, ‘Pannalal gaya mar’/ Navbharat Times pe chhapi khabar (Aanh).”

And therein lies the difference between SM and the rappers who came before them. They are not overly political like Asian Dub Foundation, even though there is socio-political commentary in songs like “Rajdhani,” where Delhi is personified and addressed: “Tu ban chuki hai dharam aur raajneeti ki jageer/ Vaha pe chalti ni mohabbat jaha pe chalti hai laathi/ Marte Hindu, martе Musalman, marti teri santaan hi/ Par terko pade ni fark tu khaati namak hai sarkari.” Unlike Honey Singh, their videos don’t feature luxury cars and models. Unlike Faadu, of “Kaash Koi Mil Jaye” fame), they are prolific to the extreme, and have a wider lyrical ambit. It’s certainly not the safe affable nonsense rhymes of Baba Sehgal. As Calm said in a podcast: “Hip-hop cannot be sanitized.”

When the gig ends at ten sharp, those in the front do an army about-turn, the message travels to us at the back and we head towards the exit. There is no pushing, just a giant groundswell. We are pilgrims headed back to our Kumbh Mela tents after the dip in the Ganges. This is an exodus of the purged.

(The writer is the author of The Butterfly Generation: A Personal Journey into the Passions and Follies of India’s Technicolor Youth, and the editor of House Spirit: Drinking in India)