Poverty, corruption and crime: how India's 'gully rap' tells story of real life

In the chaotic, cramped streets of the Kurla West slums in Mumbai, the familiar sounds of Bollywood music spill out of endless windows, tea stands and passing phones. It is the soundtrack to everyday life in India’s biggest city – yet the songs, which speak of a life of glamour and wealth, reflect little of the world into which they are played.

But, beneath the surface of the city, a new sound has begun to emerge, one which refuses to airbrush poverty, illiteracy and police brutality. Driven by a similar sense of disenfranchisement that characterised the development of hip-hop in 1970s New York, a new generation of musicians is creating India’s own homegrown rap scene – labelled by some as “gully rap”, slang for gutter or from the streets.

At the forefront of the movement is rapper Naved Shaikh, 24, known better as Naezy. Raised in Khatarnak in the Mumbai suburbs, an area notorious for gang and drug-related violence, he spent his teenage years caught up in petty crime and was twice arrested by police, at 14 and 18.

It was after his second confrontation with the police that Shaikh – inspired by US rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG’s use of rap music to express their anger and frustrations with a broken society – began to write autobiographical verses.

The tracks have struck a chord with the millions of young people in India not used to hearing their voices reflected in popular culture. His first song, Aafat, which paints a vibrant picture of the neighbourhood he grew up in, went viral on YouTube and thousands turned up to his first live show at the Mumbai venue Blue Frog.

“This story of real life in India – of corruption and poverty and crime – is never told in popular Indian music,” he said.