Tulsi Kumar and KiDi Get Playful in Kerala for ‘Shut Up’ Video
The pop artists from India and Ghana talk about the “perfect fusion” that came together on the song which has music by composers Tanishk Bagchi, Jack Knight and Soundmanlos
KiDi and Tulsi Kumar in a still from their new music video "Shut Up."
Ghanaian hitmaker KiDi and Indian pop favorite Tulsi Kumar team up for an international bop on “Shut Up,” which comes with a vibrant music video shot in Kerala.
Released via T-Series, the video has already gained over 10 million views in three days and stands at #18 on the music trending charts on YouTube. It’s Kumar’s first international collaboration and the connect with KiDi came about after she created a Reel on his hit song “Touch It.” She says over a video call, seated next to KiDi, “It’s my first international collaboration and I wanted to do it with someone I would sound good with. The process had been on for a year, actually. We’d been in talks since January and we’re releasing it now.”
For KiDi, who has been making in-roads all around the world after the success of “Touch It” in 2021, he feels that collaborations are important for every artist. “You cannot always be by yourself. Even the biggest artists in the world collaborate with other people,” he says. Although he now has a strong India connect with the buoyant, innuendo-heavy club song “Shut Up,” KiDi says his first introduction to India was by watching Bollywood movies in Ghana. “Every Sunday, you sit down for three hours, from 2 pm to 5 pm and enjoy a movie with the songs. We have some cultural similarities between Ghana and India – we’re both very respectful as cultures go, we both like our spices. There are so many similarities so I’m not surprised that we gel so well,” he adds.
The music video – directed by Adil Shaikh – sees KiDi and Kumar transported to different parts of Kerala, by waterfalls, on a boat and amidst kathakali dancers and folk artists in their most colorful. “Everything has been an adventure,” KiDi says about the project with a laugh. Kumar chimes in about how KiDi was just hunting for spicy food throughout the video shoot. During the shoot, though, the artists joke about how they pulled the famous Titanic pose on the boat and were among the few who didn’t slip on any rocks while making their way between waterfalls for certain sequences.
Kumar says it was the “most authentic music video” she’s been a part of in terms of cultural richness. Sonically, “Shut Up” plays up an Afrobeats style, with composing and producing coming from Tanishk Bagchi, Jack Knight and Soundmanlos. While KiDi delivers the hook in English, Kumar makes the song more accessible with Hindi lyrics. The singer says, “We’ve stuck to the melodies that KiDi had in his original idea. Even my Hindi parts have similar melodies, so Tanishk came in and rephrased and got the right words in Hindi and introduced a new verse for my parts. It’s like an Indo-Afro fusion.”
There may be more collaborations between the two in the works, but for now, KiDi is more than happy to take the sound of “Shut Up” and the visuals representing India to the rest of his fans around the world. “I’m definitely playing the video on tours, because everybody needs to see this rich Indian culture. It’s the beginning of many great things,” he adds.
Watch the video for “Shut Up” below.
