KEEPING IT TRILL

Three Mumbai-based rappers take through their style evolution as we explore gully culture's influence on how we dress

- NIDA NAEEM

The ubiquity of Apna Time Aayega T-shirts. A necklace on Amazon listed as 'MC Stan Style Cuban Link Chain'. Street vendors on Linking Road persuading you to check out their assortment of baggy jeans. What's the common factor here?

The impact of gully rap and desi hip-hop on the Indian fashion landscape is inescapable. Wherever you turn, all the cool kids are dressed up, or 'dripped out', as they say, in oversized streetwear that has pretty much become synonymous with youth culture. But as gully hip-hop has grown bigger, so has the fashion cred of its artists. In an industry as public-facing as that of music, and in a genre where the fashion is intrinsically tied to the music, appearances matter. A lot.

Saloni Mahendru, one half of a stylist duo named Dos Two that counts DIVINE and Raja Kumari as its clients, chimes in: "Desi hip-hop is coming from the gully, it's the voice of the Indian streets. And fashion comes along with it. The way and the pace at which desi hip hop is evolving is giving room to budding Indian streetwear designers to express a lot through their art. It's beautiful how some Indian brands are mixing Indian textiles and prints in streetwear clothing. Or even as an audience, the youth in our country are really enjoying Indian hip-hop and as a result, they are also interested in hip-hop fashion, whether that means buying from Indian streetwear designers, or copying the way hip-hop artists are dressing." We delve into the style evolution of three Mumbai-based rappers as they open up about how they've made universally popular aesthetics their own.

UNDER THE SWAY

Growing up as a fat kid, Chaitnya Sharma, better known as Slow Cheeta, only felt comfortable in oversized clothes: "I felt about how I looked and self-conscious I didn't want anything to stick to my body.