Rap Activism

Anil Adhikari - Yama Buddha
Image Source: Wikipedia

A rapper is an urban poet. For him, writing is very important, rather than the beat. He should inspire others and influence others along with messages through his songs no matter how many records he sells,” states Anil Adhikari, popularly known as Yama Buddha.

With strong messages through his rap songs, he is one of the promising rappers of Nepal. You can experience the gusto, flow and messages in his songs like Saathi and Aamaa, to name a few. However, before he became a rapper, he was a poet. Starting with Nepali poems to English rap songs; he has come an interesting way.

He started out with a poem — Meri Sani Nani, which he had written for his sister when he was in Class III. It was his first poem and it is still fresh in his mind. By the time he had reached the junior high school, he had been introduced to rap music and getting into it. “My sister used to write poems and she used to get medals for that. People would praise her,” shared Yama Buddha, who was later motivated to write more poems. “I was kind of in the shadows but I also wanted to show people that I too can write poems.”

When one of the poems written for his sister won him a prize “nobody believed me that I could write”. In order to prove himself, he started writing seriously. As the time passed, he moved towards rap.

“In the rap songs, rhyming is one part and I enjoy rhyming,” he cited. It was Eminem, Canibus and Immortal Technique, Big L among others that he used to listen to and he stated, “I want to become like them.”

During the years of his intermediate level, he used “to listen to lots of Nepali rap music”. He loves rap because he can express himself openly through rap songs . “In rap, there is a lot of lyrics. There are two to three songs in a rap song and one can express from heart on any topic,” he pointed out.

He opined that “being rapper is not enough, expressing is important”. Social taboos are a few subjects that he opens his heart out to people about and he writes on anything that does not satisfy him. Breaking into the industry initially he had no future prospects, support of family and education but he wanted “to reach out to people through his songs and make a change in society”.

But in his earlier days, he had no aim and was like any other youngster “wanting to go abroad “in his intermediate days. Life took a U-turn for him when he met an accident which changed his life. “If that accident hadn’t occurred in my life, I wouldn’t have come this way.”

In this bike accident in 2008 he was bed-ridden for two years where he “wrote songs and made songs”. He is also assured that if there had been no hip-pop culture, he wouldn’t have been working either.

After coming back from the UK after having lived there for about a year, he worked hard and came up with a mixed tape — Yama Buddha of 21 rap songs last August. Yama Buddha also shared that he wanted to be a part of the industry seven years ago but “I was not satisfied with the work I was doing”.

For his first mixed tape, he bought beats online on lease for his rap songs while he included seven original beats. Saathi is one his rap songs with the beat bought online to which he said, “I didn’t know who makes rap beats here. Now I know them but rap beat makers are very few. Rappers are writers and not beat makers. It is their producers who make the beats for them. If a rapper is a producer as well, he can make the beats as well.”

Yama Buddha believes that if one has talent and passion along with money, anyone can become a rapper. Originality is another element and this is something that is missing in the rap music scene of Nepal. He opined, “Raps have been limited to remixes,” adding that there are also “wannabes” who “show off something that has been copied”. But he claimed, “It is getting good as people are understanding.”

Nevertheless, with his passion about writing and expressing along with a mindset for rap songs, one can deliver positive messages, according to him who expressed, “I am not here for entertainment. I want to be an independent soldier.”

And he is coming up with more rap songs that are likely to deliver messages to ponder upon.

Note: This article was originally published on "The Himalayan Times" few years ago and was written by Jessica Rai.