MUMBAI: Divine recently joined Ebro in-studio of Beats 1 on Apple Music to discuss the Bollywood film Gully Boy. The movie released to amazing response and reviews yesterday on 14 February 2019. While the general vibe is that the movie is based on him, Divine corrects the thinking, “The movie is inspired by me. The guy’s original story written by the director of the movie, Zoya Akhtar, who has built on a character, from Bombay, influenced by me and Naezy and the whole Bombay scene. But she made her own guy, you know? Style-wise, he’s not like me. Flow-wise, he’s not like me.” But Divine told that he helped Ranveer to get the flow right.
Divine did five songs for the movie. “I’ve done all rhymes. I composed three songs that the main actor is singing, rapping all of them. But two are my songs.”
Divine also shared his liking for heavy drums, “I like heavy drums and that’s what we grew up with, you know? Listening to heavy drums around us. This is because we have celebrations on the streets and we have heavy drums all the time, so I’m used to the noise.”
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The songs have made a lot of noise, both, positive and negative. Divine shares his source of inspiration to pen the lyrics of his song. “Just growing up, you know? It’s all our things, like people have to pay for water. I don’t think that makes sense. It is the small things, I saw growing up and that’s what I’m saying in the song like the people, from where we come from, bring in drugs and then blame it on us, this the point I raised. I’m not raising fingers at one political party or anything; this is just what I experienced growing up. Pac said something that hit me so hard. You’re a single person, why do you need eight rooms when there are 20 million people in my city, you don’t need so many cars as a single dude, and that’s what I have said in the song, which is why it comes off a little harsh.”
Divine further clears out that he doesn’t’t support any political party, “I actually saw some Tweets now, right now. These political parties, they put my words on there with some pictures and are tweeting each other. I don’t know why they’re doing that and so I just want to clarify, this is that I don’t support any political party from India. I just support my people.”
Divine also confirmed that he has an 11-track album on the way in April, and exclusively tells Ebro the name and its meaning. “Till now, I only had released singles, but now I have my first album dropping.”
He reminisces how he got in Hip-Hop, “I discovered hip-hop on a tee shirt. Yeah, I saw 50 cent on a shirt. This was in school, when I was in my ninth grade and a guy came up with -Get Rich or Die Trying. I saw it and was like, ‘Who is this guy? And he’s like, ‘Yo, this is 50 cent. And then, he wrote me a CD, an mp3 CD with 70 songs on it. It was a mixed CD. I think he had a cousin in America or something, who had given the CD to him and that’s how he was introduced. But, when I got that CD, I played it back-to-back, and then just fell in love with hip-hop. I fell in love with the melodies, the way they were talking, though; I didn’t understand a lot of the stuff, they were saying.”
The popular rapper also explained the meaning behind his record Azadi, and gave props to Raja Kumari. “She has some fire. The producers are so good out here, man. It’s because when she met me for the time, she saw the music and she connected. She was like, ‘Yo, I love the music,’ and then when she sent me her songs I was like, ‘Wow’. She has also done a couple of shows with me. She was trying to mingle in the scene and try to find out what’s what. People have their own opinions everywhere, but yeah, she’s not trying to fit in and she was just trying to show love to her community and I think she’s doing a very good job.”
Divine signed of sharing his future plans with Raja Kumari as he said, “Yeah, 100%. I love playing with her. It’s because we have less female artist out there, I think no female rappers as such. We have two or three, but I want more females to come out, and the scene needs more. It’s because that’s more power, then. I think it’ll change slowly, it’s because Kumari is one of them. And yeah, I’m waiting!”
Beats 1 on Apple Music is a free nonstop livestream of music programming – broadcasting worldwide, 24/7. It is the first and only streaming service creating a live global listening experience from studios in three major cities, bringing the world together through music. Daily anchors are Zane Lowe, the UK’s Matt Wilkinson and Julie Adenuga, and NYC’s Ebro Darden, as well as LA pop culture show host Travis Mills, Chart’s Brooke Reese and Anna Lunoe of Dance Chart. Listen to Beats 1 live on Apple Music: apple.co/B1
