Photo: Mass Appeal
When Singapore’s rap royalty Yung Raja, born Rajid Ahamed, premiered his debut single “Mustafa” just over six years ago, the nation’s underground rap scene disrupted and shocked Southeast Asia at unprecedented levels. The young emcee, who had been hustling it out for years, razed through the Asian rap scene with a provocative discography and tore down clubs at sight.
Behind that historic breakthrough, which continues to this day as Raja became the first Southeast Asian emcee to partner with Nas’ coveted record label Mass Appeal, the “Spice Boy” has dealt with many fierce challenges. While you may recognize him as perhaps the finest Singaporean Tamil emcee to ever step into the game, he has just begun.
The conversation which you’re about to read traverses Raja’s grit and his drive to stand firm against whatever came his way to “push the creative envelope at the highest level”.
Yung Raja, how have you been? You’re fresh out of a single…. How’s everything? Man, how is Singapore? Talk to us about it.
Hey man, I’ve been doing great! just finding some time for myself and my family… locking in with family before the touring season starts again and I hit the road. So yeah, finding balance with everything that’s going on while working on music amidst all the travels… it’s an interesting time, brother, for sure.
Are you planning on coming to India as part of your tour too?
Yeah, yeah definitely… we got some shows there. We’re eyeing at September… from there on or in October. I’m definitely coming down to Bombay.
We can’t wait! A lotta great music comin’ out from Singapore’s underground scene and you’ve inspired a slew of emcees to do this shit at the highest level. Whether its rappers from your camp… your boys or other rappers such as Ae$op Cash, Feez and more… you’ve led many artists to believe that rap in Singapore is alive and well. Talk us through that rise.
Oh, glad that you feel that way. If you ask me, I feel like it was really a situation of being at the right place at the right time with the right people. For me, when I started off, I didn’t realize that we were at the cusp of a breakthrough… Because, you know, we used social media to our advantage to kind of… put our stuff out, and we did it in the right tone, with the right intention, I guess, and it caught the right people’s attention. It later became a real breakthrough moment for me and my people… led us to getting signed and getting the proper backing that we needed to debut our careers, and get the right kind of funding and the right kind of push.
From there on, it became a ripple effect, man. Singapore is so small. We’ve always been trying to find our place and a sense of belonging when it comes to the grand landscape of Southeast Asia and Hip-hop as a movement. You talk about Thailand and Malaysia and even Vietnam, or Indonesia, they’re all leading the race. They’ve always been ahead of time… and because we are small, there’s only so much we can do. It’s a circumstantial disadvantage. There are a lot of great things about Singapore as a country, but one of those things just happens to be is that we’re super small… the scene is small, and the industry is small, so there’s only that much we can do.
So yeah, when we put out our first couple of videos on Twitter on our own, before any labels came into the picture… it became a new trend, and a lot of these new artists, in the underground scene kind of got inspired by the fact that we can do that. Like, why do we have to wait around? Who are we trying to wait around for? Like, it’s free! We can just shoot a video right now and post it. So, there was a whole wave of artists… singers, musicians, rappers… just publishing music on their own.
2018 was a very important year for the underground scene in Singapore. It was for the first time that some of the dots connected and laid the foundation for a lot of artists. Hip-hop started vibrating at a much higher level… all the parties around that time were crazy, and the Hip-hop nights were insane. However, I’ve always felt that the Hip-hop scene in Singapore is a lot quieter than our neighbours around the region.
When you say that the scene in Singapore is quieter than your neighbours… what do you mean by that?
We just have fewer people, brother… a lot fewer people. When you go to Malaysia or Indonesia, they have these massive Hip-hop festivals with all Malaysian acts or all Indonesian acts and people come through to show love… I’ve performed many shows in Malaysia and I’ve seen 5000 people coming to support almost entirely Malaysian Hip Hop acts. We don’t really see much of that in Singapore purely because of the scale that we’re talking about here. I can count on probably one hand how many rappers we have in Singapore and that’s not a good thing if you’re trying to build a movement.
We need more gas. We need more horsepower to propel this shit forward. So yeah, it’s really difficult at times for us to build that bridge to a bigger audience without it feeling forced or going against your ethos. Though it’s growing… in the last five, or six years, it has grown a lot. We have a lot more locally organized Hip Hop shows, club shows, hip hop festivals. So yeah, the needle is moving. But in reality, Thailand and Malaysia and the rest of the cats have been on this wave since the 90s So it’s just a different ballgame.
This year, we heard a lot about how Hip-Hop is a competitive sport. Situating Singapore’s nascent community of rap music into Asia as a whole.. do you face competition from your neighbours or do you receive a lotta support from the bigger markets of… say Japan, China or Thailand?
I think the vibe here in Southeast Asia, as much as in America, you got that beef culture… and some of the old school OG rappers from like Malaysia, from the 90s… I’m pretty sure they’ve had their fair share of beef.
However, from my point of view, and in this current day and age, people are actually quite supportive. People are trying to figure out ways to work together and empower each other. I think at the very core of it, we have an understanding that this is a borrowed culture… I’m not sure how it is in India, maybe people are beefing in India because you guys have a lot more rappers but in Singapore and Southeast Asia, people are trying their best to give a platform to artists like me just because we are from Southeast Asia and we are so displaced culturally. So yeah, it’s not ours man… it’s a borrowed culture, and we are now trying to contextualize it and make it make sense to us, tell our story and our DNA.
So, yeah, I don’t feel that energy from my neighbours and where I’m positioned on the grand landscape of Tamil or South Asian or Southeast Asian rappers, maybe on a global landscape… it’s not a vibe that I subscribe to also. I don’t like the super aggressive f—-in’ trying to diss people.
I feel like Hip-hop as a culture… it’s so beautiful. It has a lot of things in it. I feel like beyond Hip-hop music, the culture that encapsulates everything, whether it’s DJing, graffiti… every aspect, every pillar, every part of Hip-hop culture that I’ve subscribed to for more than half my life, that I’ve grown to love so much. I believe that Hip-hop stands for unity, for brotherhood, love, for celebration of life and brings people together, cultures together and celebrates and empowers voices that have never been heard before.
There are all these wonderful things that I feel like we should talk about more when it comes to the composition of Hip-hop… because where I’m from, we get so easily stereotyped. “Oh, you’re a rapper. You must be a gangster.” Well, I’m not a gangster. I’m just having a good time… just blessed with the fact that I can feed my family through music, which is fucking insane, coming from where I come from because there’s no blueprint.
This city is not built for people like us. This city is built for blue-collar, white-collar folks and I’m just doin’ my thing.
You are not just an emcee from Singapore… you’re a Tamil Singaporean emcee. You’re born and raised in a brown family and our traditions & family ties are way different from who we are and the music that we listen to. So, when you, as a young Tamilian man, were trying to come up into the Singaporean rap scene which is way different culturally, did you face a lotta hurdles?
Oh, man, it was wild! Like… even deciding to put out music in Tanglish… it was a moment of self-discovery for me. For years, I didn’t connect those dots when I was trying to put out music. When I tried writing full Tamil lyrics… it just didn’t sit right. I tried writing full English lyrics and it didn’t sit right as well! So for me, having that moment of clarity where I understood that this is my unique voice as a Singaporean Tamil boy and that I’m a tanglish-speaking person, opened so many doors to expression for me.
But yeah, to answer your question, It made me feel so terrified at first because I looked around and I couldn’t find anybody to draw reference from. A lot of these Tamil artists, or celebrities in Singapore… I just couldn’t find somebody that I could see myself in and a lot of the people that I was looking up to at that age of, like, 10 years old, 11 years old were so far from where I’m at. I mean, what does a Tamil boy have anything to do with 50 Cent? That was such a unique experience because there was no one from my community or my family, extended family, in Singapore that I could see eye to eye on my passion or my interests in Hip-Hop, you know.
It also made me feel very alone in that journey because I could never find the people to rock out with me the way I would like to rock out and never have many fellas doing things like us on a global platform, yeah? I’ve always had beef with that. So, when I started off, there was a reason why I wanted to have all the designer clothes in my videos. I don’t fake flex on the gram about shit that I don’t have… most of the shit that I rock is through my stylists. I’m not trying to portray myself as if I’m living a life beyond my means or whatever but when it comes to my art, I give a fuck enough to make sure it’s fly as fuck and that’s intentional. It’s about me portraying a Tamilian the way that I want to.
Everything is so globalized now and designer clothes, designer jeans is the way I feel and it’s rooted in my experiences as a kid. I just never aligned with my peers who were too Tamil culturally and had very little to no Western influences. They just weren’t shaped the way I was shaped and it took me such a long time to understand my identity.
To understand why I felt disconnected from my extremely South Indian Tamil friends, you know? So, by the time I started doing music, it was even crazier, because there was nobody else… like even when I looked at the Tamil rappers from Southeast Asia, I was like “Yo, I don’t feel a sense of belonging” and it felt very painful and lonely too.
It must’ve felt that way. But Raja, it all pays off. You listened to 50 Cent while growing up, Divine who was the first artist to be signed by Mass Appeal grew up listening to him too and I’m sure he faced these struggles in Mumbai like all of us have in different parts of Asia. So yeah, let’s talk about Mass Appeal! Talk to us through the partnership, man.
The conversation started quite recently. Everything is relatively recent but I have to appreciate that by saying that this was a pretty long one in the making because Ranbir (Senior A&R, Mass Appeal India) and I connected three years ago.
It was one of those things which we never wanted to talk about until… I mean, it was clear from the start that we wanted to work with each other… but the actual conversation didn’t come in until Ranbir found his home at Mass Appeal and I was at a point in my career where… as you must be aware, I was with a major label since forever… since my start. My debut was with the majors I had just become independent at the time… slightly less than a year and I was figuring out the next chapter with my team, you know and Ranbir and I
I reconnected at that time… and it was a beautiful reunion where we could finally have that conversation.
The timing just felt right and it was damn insane. But like, we had that conversation, and it was extremely… it was palpable, you know. Me and Ranbir were aligned with what we are trying to do here which is something, that I personally feel, is very special and rare to find in the industry. I feel like coming from the world of majors, I always felt like I couldn’t see people eye to eye when it comes to my art, you know or when I’m having conversations about my music, about my art.
At the very start, there was so much, there was so much that I needed to learn and pick up and understand about show business and music business and the industry. So I’ve always felt a little bit insecure. So for me, this journey has been very interesting because I finally feel like I’m in a phase, or in a part of my career, where I can work with people hand in hand and I’m finally in a position where I can have the kind of conversations that I would like to have.
On that note, I would have never imagined that I’d be working with Mass Appeal. I never thought about it like that because, in my mind, I’ve always thought had such admiration for Nas and Mass Appeal. To be a part of it, I feel so blessed…. And I’m super excited to see what I and Ranbir can build together through this partnership.
You’re also the first Southeast Asian artist to get signed to Mass Appeal.
I never imagined, brother. I never imagined this shit. I am still kind of processing it. We are still so early in the partnership, in a sense where we haven’t made the announcement yet. We haven’t started rolling up music yet, so I’m still in the process of digesting it. I’ve only told some of my closest friends… like, people don’t really know, you know.
Also, I don’t want to get too excited either. I’m keeping it together. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done. So, I’m trying to make sure that we are as collected as we can be, to make sure that every move from now onwards is steady, yeah.
Mass Appeal has turned into an industry behemoth and has worked with some of the biggest acts in Indian rap music. What are your expectations from this partnership?
I think at this chapter of my career… it’s a brand new chapter, right? For me, the first five years were about trying to make an impression… and trying to find my footing in Singapore and Southeast Asia and beyond. However, now I feel like we have come to a point where it’s no longer about trying to find footing or trying to find a place or a sense of belonging or trying to get validation or even get people’s attention. It’s no longer about that.
We have managed to push the creative envelope to the furthest extent that we could push with everything that we had presented to us. we utilize all of our resources in the best way that we can and in the most efficient way to put out the kind of art that we have been putting out in the last five, six years. However, now, it’s time for us to get outta survival mode and ensure that our actions are at the highest level.
As for me, I’ve dealt with a lotta things in the past six years and I lost my sense of satisfaction from the music that I was making. I lost my personal sense of joy from the work that I was doing. I lost my personal sense of direction and identity a little bit as well and it was because there was so much going on and I couldn’t get clarity on certain matters when I needed to, and which was caught in a whirlwind of things, you know.
So, right now, the question I’m asking is, how can I be in love with the process and put up my best music? Like, not the best music, but what I feel like is my best music and it’s not subject to whether you like it or not. It’s subject to whether I know that or not, and the conversation was never that for me in my personal journey of being an artist.
We gotta talk about the music, man. Tell us about it.
I feel a renewed sense of purpose with my music. I have been very fortunate to be able to travel the world doing what we love, and when we started off, we never imagined that the journey would take us this far and still be here… I’ve been doing this for seven years now and I’ve been so fortunate to have connected with other Tamilian artists from the diaspora and from all around the world.
To answer your question, I’ve never been so inspired and so propelled to want to make music and put it out… I’ve come to learn that this wave of “Tanglish” is so new, and there are so many people around the world who understand Tanglish the way I am presenting it, you know, I’ve always had a sense of insecurity about it. Not anymore. I feel like this Tanglish wave that I started my career with… and that I’ve been pushing the envelope with every song, with every video, with every collaboration… I tried to make this wave bigger and see how far this wave reached out to and we here now.
The way my life has panned out, I’ve always had a very strong touch point to the West but when I look at my people and my culture and how we are being represented on a global landscape, I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. I don’t like the feeling of feeling small and feeling insignificant, you know? And it’s so late because I come from a place like Singapore that’s so small… and in Singapore, I’m a minority race group. There’s only 4% of us Tamilians in Singapore. There are so many layers to it. But coming back to answering your question… through the music which I’m going to be putting out through Mass Appeal, I want to challenge that status quo, and I want to bring Tamil and Tanglish to the world. I’m very clear about that.
With your partnership with Mass Appeal, you’ve drawn a straight line from Singapore to New York. Now, Nas will be one of your first listeners. Before the music comes out to the world, he will have the first listen. Does that stress you out or perhaps, pushes you to make the best shit out there?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, for sure, there’s a sense of like, pressure and a sense of like, not fear, but damn, like that’s crazy. But as I go through this process, I try my best to stay clear in my mind about what am I trying to achieve here?
When I was with a major label before, I remember thinking, “fuck, I wish the label loves this”. I was making things that I knew deep down that I would get validation for or approval for from the higher-ups, you know what I mean? And that was a journey that I had just left after the last six years. So, I don’t want to get caught up in that situation… of me trying to, like, get a nod of approval from… I mean, of course, it’ll be great if I do get a nod of approval from Nas. But if, let’s say it comes to a situation where I absolutely love a song and I want to put it out and Nas fucking hates it, yeah, I would love to be given an opportunity to prove him wrong because I’m an artist too. Yeah, he’s an OG, of course, he’s an OG. I mean, he’s fucking Nas! Are you kidding me?
However, at the same time, I want to be able to stand for my art, you know, to be able to fight for my art, to be able to have important conversations from the A&R standpoint, on a promotional standpoint and everything. If my teammates at Mass Appeal don’t think that this is going to work out, I would love to understand why. And I would love to understand if we can, like, meet in the middle and just make that whole process very collaborative and very straightforward… which is one of the reasons why this conversation with Mass Appeal is one of the most important conversations I’ve ever had as an artist till date. I mean, Ranbir is right here and there’s no other way that both of us see this.
Ranbir: Yeah, for sure. The biggest currency of this partnership is for me & Mass Appeal to be able to tell artists that you guys are free to, like, do whatever the fuck you want. As you must be aware, me and Raja go way back and I actually discovered his music from watching him live first, and not from hearing his music and then watching him live, so it kind of had a heavier impact on me and we just kept bumping into each other, like, at different events.
Like, even, even, actually, this past December, when I was in Dubai, at Sole DXB, I ran into him, and I was with Sandeep… and he told me that he’d love to have Raja too. So yeah, we’ve just built that supportive system for artists from the ground up here. It gives me joy knowing that he’s comfortable in making music now and sharing it with an entity that’s deeply excited about his endeavours too and I think this freedom is crucial in everything to begin with.
I mean even in journalism nowadays, you put out something in the artist team, if you have a journalist and be like, “Oh, why do you write this” and all that shit. Well, no, like, this is my hard form. This is my expression. You don’t have the authority to come and tell me to edit something, and, you know, all that kind of stuff, which is kind of dumb to me. Artists, even before the song has come out… if you’re killing the vision of the song, and you’re kind of putting it out in existence… the song may work or not, but you’re killing someone’s expression and it’s just not how Mass Appeal works.
We gotta talk about your Rolling Loud debut in Thailand last year. You performed alongside Travis Scott, Central Cee, Cardi B, Offset and so many more artists. How was that?
Oh man, it was fucking wild. For me, it was the first time watching so many international acts at the same place, yeah, and because I was also on the bill… I had the extremely privileged experience of being a part of this VIP area to watch the show. So, I remember, like it was day two. It was after my show, and I was done with my set, and I was chilling right next to Central Cee and Cardi B. But as trippy as that was, I would specifically talk about witnessing Travis Scott live.
Travis Scott is one of the most influential artists for me, because he was one of my favourite artists around the time when I had decided to do music and right before that timeframe, from 2014 to 2017… Travis Scott was one of my favourite artists, and I loved him for so many reasons. I loved him for how he has built his brand. To go from a producer to then becoming an artist, to then become one of the greatest live performers of all time, to have seen him go from putting out like music… from Days before Rodeo to Astroworld and Utopia… and for me to be that connected to his journey, and then to see him live, while I’m amongst the other headlining acts that were also a part of it, it was emotional.
I got to see what is the highest level a rapper or a performing artist could possibly take it to when it comes to doing a show. From the pyro to the set list and how he pieced everything together… the way he hyped the audience… the way everybody was so locked in with him for the entire set. I’ve never seen anything like that for real.
Any words for your fans who will be reading this interview?
Man, it’s been seven years. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. Yeah, and as much as we are in this journey trying to keep things moving and trying to make the dream stay alive, you … keep the dream alive as we are trying to, like, keep the ambition and everything going… sometimes we forget. Sometimes I forget that I would not be here if it wasn’t for the love and support of everyone, every single fan that I’ve met along the way, every single person that has commented, shared, liked, followed and dropped me a DM saying, “bro, I love what you do.”
I forget how important acknowledging them is, acknowledging that energy is, and giving respect where is due. Because, bro, this is hard man. A lot of the people that I started off with… it’s not an easy path to be on and to keep things going, it is extremely challenging at times, but to everyone that’s listening to this, if you’ve been a Yung Raja fan, you’ve been a fan of my music, if there’s anything that I’ve done that you’ve liked in any way if you have shown love and support in any way, shape or form in these last seven years, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I give you my greatest debt of gratitude because this dream wouldn’t have been possible without the love and support of the supporters, the fans, the people, the family that came through to share that shit, you know, fucking run it out.
Coming from a small country like Singapore, with having big dreams and having all these big aspirations, none of this shit would be possible without the support of people.
So, people who are watching this and listening to this, man, my heart goes out to you. I love you. Thank you. I’m very excited about what’s to come, and I hope we can continue walking this journey together and experience more exciting moments together. Let’s get it.
Stream Yung Raja’s debut single “Mustafa” via Spotify below.
