RAJA KUMARI: EMBRACING CULTURE AND CONTROVERSY

The Indian-American rapper on female representation in music, her conflicted relationship with the diaspora and why it’s time for the world to listen to Indian hip-hop

- Riddhi Chakraborty

Like many young girls, there was a time in Svetha Yellapragada Rao’s life where she felt like she didn’t quite fit in. The early 2000s weren’t kind to most teens, but it was probably a little tougher for a South Indian girl in L.A. “I was alone,” she says. “Growing up in America, I didn’t see anybody like me. I wanted to be different, obviously. I wanted to dye my hair and I wished I were skinny. I wished I was so many things... and then I discovered hip-hop and Lauryn Hill.”

Over the next few years, the American R&B/hip-hop singer became the figure Rao hoped to be someday. “Her music wasn’t like the stuff that Britney [Spears] and Christina [Aguilera] were doing, like, ‘I’m a genie in a bottle, rub me the right way.’ No, it was more like, ‘I played my enemies like a game of chess’,” she recalls. “That was one of the first things that Lauryn said to me. Listening to albums when you’re young is like hanging out with the artist.” She realized that while she would never be a Britney or a Christina, maybe she could be a Lauryn Hill. Or maybe she wanted to be someone completely new and become the representation she so desperately wanted in the industry. “I needed to find a way to make it as an Indian pop star.”