MUMBAI: Talented, smart, adventurous and an amazing rapper are the words to describe him. Are we leaving you guessing? Well no! We are talking about Jagjeet Singh a.k.a Jaggi. He is the rapper in Rabba, a track composed by Amit Trivedi for his episode on MTV Coke Studio Season 3. Associate Director in the Programming and Music Content department, he had handled all seasons of Coke Studio, MTV Unplugged, Sound Trippin and the VMAs 2012 apart from handling talent for the channel.
“I am not a trained musician. Being a Punjabi and music and dance is in my blood. I start dancing the minute listen to a song,” said Jaggi jokingly.
Speaking about his rap, he sang, ‘Main ho gaya jogi tere pyaar de fakir, main ho gaya ranjha meri ban ja tu heer’. It is a young boy who is like a show off (he has a hummer, likes clubbing etc) but he is good at heart. After the first stanza, when the girl is in the boy’s life, the rap is with ‘Rab’, saying “now that I have her, do not take her away from me”.
The rapper got in touch with Trivedi last year after working with him for Coke Studio 2. Talking how did he go on to do this track he said, “Amit Trivedi had fixed the music but he felt something was missing as he wished to a little of ‘masala’ and decided to add rap. Our hunt for rappers began. We zeroed down on a few and even recorded the same but failed to please Amit since he wanted a rustic Punjabi rap. I jokingly said I could do it and sang a few of my written lines, and we decided to record.”
Initially he didn’t agree but after a little coaxing, Jaggi had to do it. He only had 16 lines of the rap and was asked to pen eight more lines. One and half months passed and he still could not write. “Even on the day of the technical’s, Amit was okay with me repeating my lines. I did not want to do that. That evening, some lines came to me but they did not fit. But the day of the recording, as I left home the flow just came and finally we just recorded,” exclaimed the singer happily.