Das Holistic

New York's desi rap star Heems's new album re-imagines the diasporic experience not as a site of endless ambivalence, but a place to be whole.

- EDWIN HOUGHTON

AFTER A FEW eerily quiet years, during which Himanshu "Heems" Suri (of Das Racist and Swet Shop Boys) was more likely to be found in the music industry's executive suite than onstage, the Punjabi American rapper is once again in the spotlight. In fact, when we speak by phone from his home in Long Island, New York, he is putting together vinyl packages for Lafandar, the second release on his new Veena imprint, recently launched in partnership with Mass Appeal India, while simultaneously prepping the syllabus for a class on marketing global music that he'll be teaching this fall at the Clive Davis institute at NYU Tisch.

That's just today's multitasking. Lafandar-which was released in February and features Heems's polyglot rhyme styles over the dusted, minor-keyed beats of Chicago producer Lapgan, is slated to be followed by another full-length album in May. That one, a collaboration with Australia-based electronic musician Sid Vashi, is titled Veena, and will sell through a web-based brand of the same name that comprises much more than a mere landing page for the record. Veena.nyc is a multipart venture that includes an online zine helmed by editor Meghna Rao, formerly of The Juggernaut, plus a range of fashion and imported food and wellness products. Though Heems certainly wouldn't be the first rapper or musician with an online shop through which they sell some band tees and other merch, Veena feels a bit more, well, holistic in both theme and approach. Though the suggestion of a musical instrument, and its association with the goddess Saraswati, was very intentional, "Veena" has an even more personal meaning for Heems; it's his mom's first name.

"I think it's common, with Indian businesses, to name it after your kids. But I don't really have kids so I named it after my mom," he explains. "I thought it would be a nice way to honour her."