How Malaysia gave the world Tamil rap: ‘we can make it ours’

In a pink-lit car park outside a Colombo club, young Tamils cluster in loose groups. Laughter, the clink of glass bottles and the low throb of bass from the decks inside spill out into the warm night air. Sri Lanka’s capital is home to hundreds of thousands of Tamils. But a Tamil nightclub is still rare - the sound of so many Tamil voices gathered together can still feel provocative in a country where memories of a long, bloody inter-ethnic civil war remain raw. Inside the club, as British-Tamil DJ Prito prepares to start his set, the MC leans into the mic with a challenge. “DJ Prito’s just come from a world tour,” he tells the crowd. “And the best room so far? Kuala Lumpur. Can Colombo beat it?” The crowd erupts. For those in the know, it’s a pointed nod: Kuala Lumpur is more than just another stop on the tour – it’s the birthplace of Tamil rap. In 2006, in the heart of Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur’s predominantly Tamil neighbourhood, a giant poster for Vallavan loomed over the street. Emblazoned across the advert were Yogi B, flanked by the Natchatras – duo Dr. Burn and Emcee Jesz – whose breakout collaboration would come to define the sound of a transnational culture. Nearly two decades later, the influence of Tamil rap is impossible to ignore. No one can tally its global fanbase with any certainty, but Yogi B’s songs regularly rack up tens of millions of views, while Indian rapper Arivu’s “Enjoy Enjaami” has soared past half a billion. Vallavan – derived from the Tamil phrase Sakalakalavallavan, meaning “master of all arts” – delivered a message: Tamil hip hop had arrived, and it wasn’t asking for permission. Tharan Retnamurthi was 14 when he first saw that poster outside the Alai Osai CD shop in Brickfields. Until then, he had followed Linkin Park and local English-language rap. Vallavan changed everything. “It wasn’t just that they were rapping in Tamil,” he said. “It was the hooks, the confidence. They sounded like they belonged on the same playlist as anything coming out of America.” You learn early to fight back with language Coco Nantha, Malaysian Tamil hip-hop artist With a sharp, swaggering sound, it was unmistakably Malaysian Tamil, drawing on a diaspora that spoke the language fluently but thought, dressed and moved in a global register. Years later, Tharan’s teenage obsession would transform into a career producing music videos for a genre that was poised to soundtrack Tamil youth from Singapore and London to Toronto. “When the Malaysian Tamils stepped in with our distinct diaspora sound, that mix of home and world, it turned heads … and took the whole industry by storm,” said Kuala Lumpur-based rapper and radio DJ MC Syze. Roots in the margins Most of Malaysia’s estimated 2 million Tamils, about 7 per cent of the population, are descendants of estate workers brought over during British colonial rule to toil on rubber plantations. The work was gruelling, the wages low and their social position marginal. “The wealth of this nation was built on plantations. Our parents and grandparents worked the land, lived in the lines and we were left behind on the estates,” said rapper Coco Nantha, explaining the origins of his genre. “You learn early to fight back with language. We call it oorai vechi: to express pain and anger so each word lands like a stab.” Yogi B, a striking figure in oversized hoodies drawn from the hip-hop style guide – and always with a red kumkumam (powdered spot) on his forehead – did not set out to create a genre. In the late ‘90s, he was part of Poetic Ammo, a multilingual rap group emblematic of Malaysia’s cultural mix. Their second album, It’s A Nice Day To Be Alive, featured a Tamil track, now widely regarded as the first-ever recorded Tamil rap song. Acts like Chakra Sonic and Boomerangx pushed the sound forward, blending Tamil rap with samba rock: a fusion of Indian percussion and rock instrumentation. For many young listeners, it served as an entry point to a new sound. “My brothers weren’t into hip hop at all,” Tharan remembered, “but when Boomerangx came out, they were blasting it.” By the mid-2000s, Yogi B’s Vallavan had blown the genre wide open with its slick production, heavy hooks and bars as confident in their language as in their flow. “Anybody can rap in Tamil,” Yogi B told This Week in Asia. “But to be a Tamil hip hopper means living the culture.” That sound travelled fast. Yogi B & Natchatra were invited to perform at the 2006 Vijay Television Awards in Chennai, the beating heart of Kollywood, Tamil Nadu’s raucous film industry. Their performance brought Tamil rap into the living rooms of the global diaspora. In Queens, New York, a transfixed young Rolex Rasathy watched that broadcast of the major Tamil awards ceremony with her family. A Carnatic-trained vocalist, Rasathy had grown up balancing the discipline of classical music with the free-form energy of New York. Seeing Yogi B on that stage was transformative. “It was like … oh, we can do that too. We can blend it, make it ours.” Rasathy is now a New York-based rapper and singer. Today, Tamil rap moves with the effortless confidence of a global industry – streaming to millions, filling venues worldwide, and shaping fashion and attitudes as part of India’s US$800 million music economy. Yung Raja, a Singaporean Tamil rapper and inaugural signee of Def Jam Southeast Asia, calls it “two superheroes joining forces”: Tamil and hip hop. But for Malaysian rappers, their beginnings – and the politics and prejudice that fuelled their lyrics – are never far from mind. “At a police block, you’re still treated like an outsider,” said Klang-born rapper Balan Kash. “My ID doesn’t say ‘Malaysian’; it says ‘Indian’. I’m a third-generation Malaysian.” Women on the mic For all its global reach, Tamil rap remains overwhelmingly male-dominated. Rasathy says women have always been integral to the music, but have rarely commanded the spotlight – reflecting both a Tamil cultural conservatism that polices women in public and a hip-hop ethos that prizes aggressive masculinity. “It’s hard. There are so many beautiful aspects to our culture, but also some toxic, conservative ideals that you end up pushing against,” she said. But times are changing. Artists like Yunohoo – a trilingual rapper from Kuala Lumpur whose career has spanned Kollywood tracks and viral anthems – alongside newer voices like Navz-47 from Toronto and Iykki Berry from Chennai, are shaping the future sound of the genre. Within music circles, it has never been forgotten that Kuala Lumpur provided the beat. The city and its surrounding Klang Valley – home to roughly half a million Tamils – are steeped in language and tradition, yet shaped by an English-speaking, globalised, relatively affluent environment. With access to studios, the internet and distribution, they could record and share music, but needed an outlet for their marginalisation. That tension gave Tamil rap its edge. This wasn’t rural folk music retooled for pop, nor film songs disguised as rap, artists insist. It was urban and proudly subcultural – until the day it suddenly wasn’t. Tamil rap has entered the mainstream, heard at weddings worldwide and in blockbuster Kollywood films, its stars flipping verses between Tamil, English, French or German. Veterans like ADK from Sri Lanka and Rabbit Mac from Malaysia, who helped shape the genre’s early identity, remain reference points – and Brickfields still feeds a musical history connecting tens of millions of Tamils together. MC Syze, now 44 and one of the scene’s enduring voices, puts it simply: “As long as there’s a beat, Tamil will ride it.”

How Malaysia gave the world Tamil rap: ‘we can make it ours’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A new sound for a new generation, Tamil rap has gone from Kuala Lumpur subculture to global phenomenon

A new sound for a new generation, Tamil rap has gone from Kuala Lumpur subculture to global phenomenon