Representing the young desis

Bohemia raps about working with Akshay Kumar and Oakland's hip-hop lingo

BOHEMIA looks like he's walked straight out of a hip hop video. Black hoodie, baggy jeans, white sneakers, shades, a small nose ringu2026 but he used to be the "little nerd kid while growing up who listened to Jagjit Singh, Mukesh and Lata Mangeshkar". His tryst with music and poetry began at a very early age, through his father.

The Punjabi rapper, birth name David Roberts, was born in Karachi but moved to Oalkand, California in his teensu00a0 the place that he now calls home. His alias was formed when friends began to call him Bohemia because he didn't follow any tradition "I'm not rapping in English or singing in Punjabi," he says. Despite the disparity between what Bohemia creates: rhymes in Punjabi and what's famous in Oakland: jazz (it's seen as a world class jazz avenue), he didn't find trouble finding an audience. "There's a lot of jazz and a lot of hip-hop. I used to be welcome to parties. I felt I was needed at the time."

Why was he needed? Because someone had to get up there to represent the young desi lifestyle. The rapper had a clever way of reaching out to desis abroad to acknowledge their roots. "A lot of parents take their kids to America and lose them to the western culture," says Bohemia. His way of bringing them back to it is to look like them and create songs in their national language with beats that are Western enough to be played loud on car stereos.

Bohemia's album Pesa Nasha Pyaar (2006) grabbed the attention of Bollywood biggie Akshay Kumar. He was chosen by the actor to sing for the two Bollywood films Chandni Chowk to China and 8x10 Tasveer. He's now coming out with a following album in April: Da Rap Star that features artistsu00a0 Malkit Singh, Devike and J. Hind.
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How did Chandi Chowk... happen? "Pooja Batra calls me, saying Akshay wanted to get in touch with me. He invited me to the Singh is Kinng premiere and said that he used to work out to the songs on Pesa Nasha Pyaar," says the rapper. Akshay was impressed enough to collaborate with him again for Tasveer humbling for Bohemia, "He's a superstar and I'm an upcoming little rapper".

He tried to show the movie's dark tones through his lyrics, here he raps a bit of the song for us, going into a mood that most musicians do when they're lost in their art. Ask if Akshay takes on the vibe of a rapper well and he says, "He loves it, he feels expressed."

As the interview ends, we chat about hip-hop and rap lingo. Only to discover (after much discussion between Bohemia and J.Hind seated right next to the rapper during the interview) that different states have, well, different lingos. So we're updated on the appropriate hip-hop slang in Oakland. There's "Hyphy Tip" which is like saying, "Don't get dumb on me." And "Yadada" which is how you greet someone on the phone and also doubles up as "You know what I'm saying?"u00a0

In a nutshell, Bohemia is keen on originality, producing and composing your music. To create something genuine, "Go back to a blank piece of paper," he advises.