Hip Hop hits Kerala through “Native Bapa” giving rise to Mappila Hip Hop!

The New Year marked a new beginning for a lot of things, especially Hip Hop in Kerala.  We’re not talking mainstream Hip Hop, we’re talking real Hip Hip, music that carries a socio-political message, raises a voice and uplifts a society.   Mappila Lahala is a movement, started by three friends over a cup of coffee.

In Kozhikodan coffee evenings, we started sharing and shaping a dream, over endless sips and sweet elanjis, that a sort of music movement can bring some constructive changes in people’s lives, at least our own. Music with a purpose, visuals with a vision, we thought. Culture and politics were and still are too big words to talk about at this juncture. No tall claims; we simply love to engage in different possible genres of music with striking and lasting lyrics. Our conversations went on, whenever we had teas and more eloquently when we had breaks between those teas. By accident (in its sweet sense), we came upon a team called Street Academics. And we thought of collaboration and thus embodied the collective dream of Mappila Lahala, and we started the first project titled Native Bapa.

“Native Bapa” is a story criticizing the role media plays in portraying all Muslims as terrorists tied to the 2008 shooting of 4 Muslim youth in Kerala by the security forces of Jammu and Kashmir.  With Mamu Koya, a well known actor in the Malayalam film industry as the father and Harris, rapper from Hip Hop crew “Street Academics”, “Native Bapa” packs a revolutionary punch to the audiences with over 100,000 youtube views in just 6 days of launch!

Desi Hip Hop is the evolution and revolution of Hip Hop.