By Rahul Thapa
Northeast India has a strong hip-hop culture that is rapidly developing. KRU.6, a group of six passionate young musicians, were inspired by this and came together to create Straight Out of Hills Cypher (SOH Cypher), a song that was written in seven different languages, including English, Khasi, Nepali, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, and Assamese.
KRU.6 is a rap group made up of Atoxin (Anosh Darlami), Vocablo (Aryan Sunar), Yolf (Ome Sunar), AankBeats, Dibakar, and Nygil. KRU.6 stands for Kreate (Create), Rap, and Unite.
The cypher, Straight Out of Hills was composed by three rappers, Atoxin, Vocablo, and Yolf and the beats were produced by AankBeats. Dibakar was in charge of the videography, and Nygil was in charge of the editing of the video. The numerous cosmopolitan communities in Shillong and other regions of the state showed the multilingual cypher a great deal of support.
Dancehall, Reggaeton, Lofi, Drill, and BoomBap are just a few of the new genres that KRU.6 has included in its music. “We were never influenced by hardcore hip-hop music; instead, it was much more heavy metal, rock, blues, R&B, etc. The way words were played gave us an idea, and it was not until much later that we began to listen to lyrical hip hop and we learned how to compose and produce our own rap,” Vocablo told The Meghalayan, proving that music truly has no bounds when it comes to language.
“It was during the pandemic when we released our first track, wherein we had ample amount of time. Since many of us were in our final year of college, it was difficult for us to manage our calendars once things began to return to normal. As a result, we decided to record and film videos on the weekends and to release at least one song within a month or two.” Vocablo added.
Speaking more about their music, Atoxin added, “Our all-time favourite songs are Behind the Lights, Above Any Queen, and Self-Talks, and we personally adore them since these songs hold a profound significance,” thereby believing that rap is not only art to them but also a way to convey hidden emotions.
On being asked about what rap means to him, Yolf said, “Once you start loving rap culture you might leave the culture but the culture will never leave you,”
When asked about their next projects, they said, “This month we have been incredibly busy as our new rap song called Indian Nepali Cypher will be posted to our official channel”. KRU.6 is also working on another rap song with local musician Lucky Das and classical singer Raju Sunar at the same time.