Jayaraj Warrier's daughter Indulekha raps about women's issues and more

Rap music is still taking baby steps in Malayalam and as for female voices in the genre, there are barely enough singers to count on one hand.

Singer Indulekha

Warrier is one of the few who has been winning attention with her rap numbers. The 27-year-old artiste, who is actor Jayaraj Warrier’s daughter, recently released a rap track titled Poymukhangal, on the theme of cyber abuse. Indulekha, who debuted with the number Pen Rap a few months ago about women’s independence, says, “Malayali women have enough issues to rap about. Personally, I feel anyone who can write decently and has a sense of rhythm can attempt rapping.”

Her first rap came about after a negative cyber experience. “Someone cut out a few portions of a song I had uploaded and clubbed it with bits of dialogue, turning it into something of an abusive nature. It was friends who alerted me to the same. I’m no celebrity and hadn’t experienced anything similar before but I could understand how such things can affect a person. A day after the experience, I uploaded my Pen Rap. A week later, I started writing my latest rap Poymukhangal as well,” says Indulekha, who is now settled in Chennai with her husband Anand.

Interestingly, after hearing her Poymukhangal lyrics, her dad gave her some feedback and corrections. “As someone who has an Ottamthullal background, dad could connect with its writing part. Ottamthullal too, after all, has similarities with rap through aspects like rhyming lyrics, social commentary and the like. When I first began rapping, he was like ‘Ivalenthu bhaavicha? (laughs) but now, I think he gets it and is fully supportive, just like my husband,” says Indulekha.

The artiste, who has done playback singing for movies like Apothecary, Autorsha, Vidyasagar’s Tamil film Uchathila Siva and quite a few albums, has also a song coming up in the Tom Emmatty film Dhuniyavinte Orattathu, which she has both sung and composed. She will also be soon doing rap songs in two upcoming movies, set to start by December. “The song in Dhuniyavinte Orattathu, penned by Rajeev Govindan, was a track that I intended to just upload on my Youtube channel. But when Tom heard it, he expressed interest to include it in the film and that’s how it happened. It’s a melody with shades of mappilappaattu,” says the singer, who has been learning Carnatic music since the age of seven. She is also trained in kathakali sangeetham. A BTech-MBA graduate, Indulekha says she is also gearing up to join a company soon in Chennai.

As for her next rap track, Indulekha has an environment-based theme in mind. “After my first rap video, quite a few girls had reached out to me saying ‘I too have written some issue-based lyrics but I’m not brave enough to present it myself,’ or ‘I will write the lyrics, could you rap?’ and the like. I guess what’s standing in their way probably are a lack of family support or just a nervousness. Or else, we would have had more female rappers here now,” she says, signing off.