Talha Anjum Talks ‘My Terrible Mind,’ Acting and Fans in India

Karachi hip-hop star Talha Anjum and producer Umair are at their prolific best on their recent double album My Terrible Mind, released via Mass Appeal earlier this month.

Across 16 songs and nearly an hour’s worth of material, Anjum shows us exactly why he’s counted as the best in desi hip-hop – he delivers relentless, finessed bars on songs like “Good Fellas” and regards himself as “somewhat of a lyrical genius” on “Back For More” (which also shouts out to late Punjabi star Sidhu Moose Wala) and keeps it unapologetically gangster on tracks like “30 Shooter.”

Then, on disc 2, there’s heartfelt, emotional and pop-leaning hip-hop with songs like “Heartbreak Kid” and love songs like “Departure Lane.” It’s not so much that My Terrible Mind simply represents two different sides of Anjum but how he’s able to balance himself artistically between accessible bops and more hard-hitting, lethal lyrics for his fans from more than a decade ago. He says over a call, “I discovered my actor side on this album. Apart from that, I already knew about these two sides [presented on the album]. I think they call it ‘pookie’ these days. So I have this shady side, and I have this pookie side.”

Earlier on in our chat, he said more seriously, “The first part of My Terrible Mind is something I think fans were longing for, because I was doing too much of [2020 Young Stunners song] ‘Gumaan’ and [2021 Young Stunners song] ‘Afsanay’ type music.”

In addition to releasing a double album, Anjum also scaled up by releasing a short movie called Kattar Karachi to accompany My Terrible Mind and some songs are woven into the narrative. It also meant Anjum took on acting in a manner he’d never done before, aided by director Abdul Wali Baloch. Receiving a theatrical release in Pakistan, the movie comes across as an action-packed, rollercoaster ride with Anjum in the driver’s seat as protagonist. Unlike his music video shoots which took about 10 to 12 hours in a day, Anjum was out on set “working hard all day” for Kattar Karachi. “You just go home after and then you have to be there again. I have to be there for like five to six days, that was something new for me,” he says. Then of course, there was learning dialogues. Luckily, he says, acting as a lead in Young Stunners co-founder Talhah Yunus’ thesis film counted as prior experience and his Kattar Karachi co-stars were all supportive. From the film, two out of four music videos – for “Good Fellas” and “Heartbreak Kid” – are out so far.

Understandably, though, in anticipation of these projects, Anjum was “very nervous” about how things would be received, but with streaming numbers turning favorable and a good opening week for Kattar Karachi, it’s safe to say he’s feeling reassured.

It helps that he’s being backed by a label like Mass Appeal. Anjum says about his experience, “I actually come from a come from a place where there are not a lot of labels and companies that are investing in music. So we always had this perception about a label, that it’s like a big bad wolf and it’s gonna come and make you do everything that they want to do and how they’re not about creativity – it’s all about the money and this and that. But for me, it’s been literally the opposite of what I had heard about labels.” Part of advantages of signing to Mass Appeal was getting on a phone call with founder and rap titan Nas himself. “Sharing my work with him has been a very big achievement for me personally […] It’s beyond my imagination to be on his team,” Anjum says.

Inspired by the likes of J. Cole, Anjum says another idea of making My Terrible Mind as a double album was to also not have any features, only working with longtime producer Umair, who produced most of Anjum’s 2023 album Open Letter. “Cole always used to say ‘I went double platinum without a feature’ and that is something that always stuck with me,” he says. Anjum admits it’s not something fans care about much (as long as you’re putting out music), so it was more of an artistic statement.

It helps that he’s got the backing of fans, though. Anjum and Umair occupy the top two spots among local artists on Spotify Pakistan’s most-streamed artists. As it turns out, gaining the number one spot was something Anjum was working on for three years. “But [Pakistani artist] Atif Aslam is Atif Aslam,” Anjum says with a laugh about the artist he’s overtaken. True to the person we hear in the braggadocious lyrics, Anjum is every bit proud to flex these kind of achievements. He shouts out his management for helping him level up. “Our team is out there putting up billboards all over Pakistan, that excites me. I love seeing myself on a big-ass billboard,” he says.

A quick glance at Anjum’s Spotify monthly listeners show that most of his listeners come from New Delhi, Delhi NCR, Mumbai and Pune. The fifth city on that list is Karachi, so it’s safe to say Anjum – and Young Stunners – have plenty of fans in India.

It’s bolstered by cross-border collaborations, most notably with the likes of Kr$na (“Quarantine,” “Touch Base,” “Been A While”) and Seedhe Maut (“Nevermind”).

In November, Anjum and Yunus met up with Kr$na in London, with the Delhi rapper calling himself “officially the third Young Stunner!” in an Instagram photo. Anjum recounts his conversation with Kr$na and says, “He said, ‘I’m shooting a video. So how about I come to you, or you come to my place after the shoot.’” As it turns out, it took just a 15-minute drive to link up after more than three years of being a hitmaking team. “We just had a good party, we didn’t even talk about work. He’s such a humble guy. I mean, everybody knows he’s dangerous on the mic, though. Same with [Mumbai rapper] Divine,” Anjum says.

With Divine, he and Young Stunners linked up at the Wireless Festival Middle East in Abu Dhabi in 2023. Anjum confirms that a collaboration is “obviously” on the cards. With Kr$na, they’ve made the “biggest Indo-Pak collaboration.” He adds, “So now that we’ve met, you can only imagine we have big plans.”

December 2024 was intended to have marked Young Stunners’ debut India shows, but it was mired in unclear signals from tour promoters from the start. Anjum doesn’t comment on how it went down, but says an India tour is “always a possibility.”

For fans in India, Anjum is grateful for all the love. “The love, the support, all the messages, the comments, the likes that I get, I talk to some of my fans in India and all the people that I get to meet from India when I’m in Europe or when I’m in America, Canada. I love you guys,” he says. He feels like he’s been put in a spot, so he adds diplomatically, “I love all my fans in India. I love all my fans in Pakistan. This is just a border thing.”