DJ Ruchir Kulkarni on Dua Lipa performing his viral mashup: ‘A little credit would have been good’

In the days following Dua Lipa’s performance in Mumbai, where she sang ‘Levitating’ and followed it up with the mashup with ‘Woh Ladki Jo’ from Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Baadshah’, there have been a lot of discussions. While credit should be given where it is due, mid-day.com spoke to DJ Ruchir Kulkarni, who is happier than ever

DJ Ruchir Kulkarni was at Dua Lipa’s concert, when she sang ‘Levitating’ and followed it up with his mashup of the song with ‘Woh Ladki Jo’. The feeling was surreal because only the previous day, he had asked his followers on Instagram whether she would play it, and while some of them were unsure, it was a dream come true for the Mumbaikar, who hails from Borivali, and has been a DJ for 17 years now. “I was absolutely stunned, thinking ‘what is happening?’. And, people were singing, and that was the loudest song; the other songs were good, but this one was next level.” 

In the days since the reels of Dua Lipa playing the mashup have gone viral, there has been a discussion about due credit being given to the original singer, Abhijeet Bhattacharya, and composer, Anu Malik, as well as DJ Ruchir, who created the mashup. “I had hope I would get some credit. I agree with Abhijeet Ji that credit should be given, but it's okay because we don't know how they work in terms of what is the international procedures. So, I'm glad they played my mashup, but yeah, little credit would have been good," he expresses.  

While the song has been immortalised by Shah Rukh Khan and Twinkle Khanna in the film, ‘Baadshah’, its virality in reels has only picked up in the last few years, and one that every millennial loves. It was no different for the city-based DJ who was going through his collection of 90s hits in 2021, just after the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. He adds, “I made this mashup in 2021. I was making a lot of mashups at that time. I was going through my 90s playlist checking for the old songs and came across 'Woh Ladki Jo', which used to be one of my childhood favourite songs. I have seen 'Baadshah' hundreds of times. I truly love that song. They had not made a remix of the song, and they had not remade it yet fortunately, so I had the opportunity to make it. Since ‘Levitating’ was trending at that time, I decided to use both those songs.” 

But Ruchir points out that they are not natural matches. However, he put his experience of over 14 years at the time to make it in a unique way. “They are both like totally different keys – where ‘Levitating’ is in Bm and ‘Woh Ladki Jo’ is in D, and there are different parts to it. So I just brought them at a middle point at C sharp minor and I made the mashup.” While it may seem easy, the Mumbaikar says, this was actually the difficult part. “When you change the key of the song, the quality drops. Every time I changed the key, I had to make sure the quality doesn't drop too much and it sounds good.” 

In hindsight, Ruchir believes he made two critical mistakes in the mashup. One was that he uploaded it only on reels and the second was that the duration of ‘Levitating’ was very big, which meant that when you shared it on reels, you only get 15 seconds, and by the time, his mashup came up, it would skip to the next reel. It was only in 2022 that one of his influencer friends told him to reduce the duration for it to get picked by the algorithm. “So, I edited it and posted it again on October 23 in 2022 before Diwali and it went viral and a week later when it was Shah Rukh Khan’s birthday, it went even more viral.” Unfortunately, this comes with a lot of other challenges, as he says, there were a lot of people who stole the mashup and reuploaded it as their own but fortunately, he had posted it on YouTube first, and that’s why people knew it was his. Today, there are about 125,000 reels that have been made with the mashup. 

It has been a long journey for the Borivali resident, who has been a DJ and music producer, but he is humble and content. Some of his other music that he posts on his YouTube includes the likes of ‘Roko Roko’, ‘Nadaniyan’ on Zee Music and even ‘Midnight’ that he released earlier this year. Ask him which artist he would like to work with and he says, “I would like to work with Dua Lipa because I love her music and production style. My dream artist is The Weeknd, so I would love to collaborate with him.” If the popularity of ‘Levitating’ x ‘Woh Ladki Jo’ is anything to go by, then DJ Ruchir Kulkarni has a lot more to offer, especially to the 10,000 new followers that he has amassed over the last two days since the Zomato Feeding India Concert performance by Dua Lipa. 

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