Raftaar

“If you try to sound like somebody else, it will never work because we already have that person. You are noticed when you try to be an original sound.”

“You can't stop an artist from expressing his views through art.”

“I feel instead of censorship, we need to self-regulate ourselves while producing any kind of content.”

“First of all, I'm not a singer or rapper. I'm an artiste. Besides singing, I produce music, dance, write poetry, and sometimes I paint as well.”

“I hate it when people in India throw in an American or English accent while rapping without even a passport in possession.”

“You know you have made it as an artist when you have the power to say no.”

“My album is called 'Zero to Infinity' and none of my songs are going to have cheap, dirty lyrics. Every song, in a way, is a women empowerment song. Every song, even if it's a dance track, you'll be dancing on it, but it's the right thing.”

“I knew I had a sharper mind than most others and I had a sense of rhyme. One didn't even need to sing melodies. It felt like the perfect way to make my way out of the gutter.”

“When we are making our independent music, we know our directors and what's happening around as we are paying for it. When it's a movie song, it's not you who is doing everything it's the creative heads and production house.”

“I am my own parent when it comes to rapping and do impromptu stuff. Being a rapper, you have to be good at improvising, like you give me a word and I have to rhyme it quickly and then make sense out of the rhyme.”

“Talking about remixes, some people like to preserve what is original and some people give it a new meaning. Coming to Hip Hop, the biggest of the artists use sampling. You are changing the genre of the song and to be able to give old music in new package is also fair and people who have emotions attached to it - they are also not wrong.”

“My mom's not working, my dad doesn't want to stop working because he likes to be engrossed, so everybody is happy.”

“Mom makes South Indian food for me almost always, because I get it rarely,as I travel a lot for work.”

“I do rap and speak in Malayalam but only to save my life as my vocabulary in the language is not as good as it is in Hindi.”

“When I rapped for 'Manto', I used cuss words and no one objected because it was an adult movie. I feel cuss words are also a way of expression.”

“But in Delhi, people love artists. They love any musician, any actor; anybody from the art field who visits from the entertainment industry, gets an amazing response in Delhi.”

“Being a Malayali, I had to learn Punjabi and Haryanvi to be able to jump into the music scene.”

“I come from an extremely modest background. So now I have way more than what I'm used to.”

“Delhi gives you a lot of love. Bombay people don't care much because it's usual for them to see a TV serial guy or a movie actor.”

“People are getting permanent tattoos of my name. It's madness. People come and touch my feet. Initially it was really weird, but now I think people see me as an inspiration. So I need to set the right example.”