Abhir Hathi has been moving away from common stereotypes and labels for a while now. And there, in a moment of freedom and change of priorities, the Canarian rapper of Indian origin, who had already shown signs of his talent in ‘Lazos y knots’ (2021), created one of the best and most interesting albums of 2023. ‘Brown boy’ is a work shaped by a sanctified identity crisis, which he presents at Razzmatazz this Thursday. “I fell in love for a moment, I felt like there was nothing ahead of me in 2022,” says Abhir Hathi, who has been living in Madrid for six years and initially combined music with his office job. “Thank God I quit, I didn’t want to do what I was told, I can’t get along with authority,” he says. And doing what he wanted produced an extraordinary result.
The 28-year-old from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has changed our perspective on the key concept in all of this: success. Success based on numbers, measurements, lists, and other things that are more calculator-related than art. Or as he describes it: “I thought about success in a different way, in terms of how it was envisioned for the world, for the marketplace, and for the people who set out to achieve success. music“. “The biggest thing learned in recent years is that the perception has changed, both as a musician and as a person. Now I think it’s peace, being able to enjoy without a burden on your back, without fog in your head.” says. “I really like what my manager always says: it’s a song thing, not a taste,” he says. And ‘Brown boy’ is full of your favorite songs, featuring collaborations like Quevedo, Ébano, Juicy BAE and Cruz Cafuné.
The album by the ‘brown boy’, who was Saint Lowe’s right-hand man in its production, is a testament to his origins, to his understanding of the business.The album breaks away from the world of musical trends because it has an experimental atmosphere that translates all of these. “I found that my childhood had a lot more to do with my current situation than I thought. And I wanted to separate myself from this hermetic world of urban music and rap, which is nice because it’s moving in such great strides, but I feel like it limits me a little bit too,” says Abhir Hathi.
The rapper also touches on the racism he experienced due to being the child of immigrants. And the responsibility he lives: “I don’t want them to feel [sus padres] I throw away the sacrifice they made by messing around with the microphone. “The sacrifice they made for me is far greater than anything I could ever make for anyone.”
In his work ‘From Bombay to Las Palmas’ he charts his journey and bares his chest and says:“This is how I laugh at people who can only be racist behind an anime photo.” Outspoken Abhir Hathi says he has little hope that Spain will become a less racist country any time soon. “I don’t think it’s going to change anytime soon, but I’ll continue to keep my mouth shut. I take it well, but I eat it and turn it into gasoline,” he says.
All this in Spain, which is no longer a white country musically, because there is a generation of artists like him, children of parents from very different backgrounds, who are finally at the forefront. “There’s one name that changed everything for me: MDLR, aka Morad and Beny Jr. They’re a light for people like me, who at times question why I can’t connect with people because I’m brown. And they say, ‘We agree they’re there, and it doesn’t have to be that way.’ Morad and Beny have singing ‘palos’ in the upscale neighborhoods of Barcelona and Castellana. They are what I hoped I could be for me,” a kid who thinks about it, “ditch.