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Horsepowar.
‘When I say she is an empowered woman, I really mean it’ … Horsepowar.
‘When I say she is an empowered woman, I really mean it’ … Horsepowar.

The best of BBC Asian Network: Swet Shop Boys, Horsepowar and more

This article is more than 7 years old

Ahead of the station’s live event, DJ Bobby Friction picks political pioneers, radical rap stars, EDM overlords and artists a step away from becoming international superstars

Swet Shop Boys

This is the group if you want pop and politics. Heems, Riz MC [the actor Riz Ahmed] and producer Redinho coming together was a dream come true for me. I was supporting Riz before he became a fully fledged rapper and actor and Heems when he was in Das Racist. They sound like everything you ever wanted an Asian band to sound like. They’ve released an album, Cashmere, it’s brilliant. They can change the world.

Mickey Singh

The US singer’s music is pure drown-yourself-in-pop-electronics-and-forget-about-what’s-happening-in-the-world. We’ve always had young male singers that people have gone absolutely mad about: they write torch songs, they’ve been dancers, they’ve been vessels for young girls’ and guys’ dreams – they burn very brightly and make perfect pop. Singh does this and mixes loads of genres, but the difference between him and almost all cultural pop stars – and the only reason he’s not in the top 40 – is that he sings in Punjabi a lot of the time. If he started to sing in English he would be up there.

Nucleya

This is India’s biggest EDM success story. His fame marks a turning point in Indian music. I was playing him on my show about 10 years ago when he was in a band called the Bandish Projekt – they were making really nice electronic dance music with traditional Indian instrumentation. Then he kept mixing it up and threw in dubstep, techno and everything else. Dance music and clubs were the preserves of the middle class in India – because you need loads of money to get into a club and it’s not what you do if you’re poor and working class. You just watched Bollywood and went to bed. What Nucleya did was take EDM to the masses – and the masses in India are literally the masses. We are talking just under a billion people. He’s kept Indian music flowing and become a bona fide superstar. He released his second album last year and launched it in a stadium in front of 30,000-40,000 people. People around the country travelled to watch his album launch. I watched it live on YouTube. When I saw the crowds, I thought: I know these guys! That’s not the rich boys and party girls of Mumbai. That’s pure street-living Indians. It’s not a 1960s moment in terms of the politics or the drugs but it’s a 1960s moment in terms of the demographic youth bomb that has exploded at the same moment that EDM has exploded and he is surfing that wave.

Raja Kumari

I think she’s going to be the next big thing in terms of Asian music. I used to play her on the Asian Network when she was 17 – her music was a bit of R&B, a bit of hip-hop and Asian samples. Then she disappeared. She appeared again last year and has turned into this goddess, visually and vocally. She spent the last few years writing songs for people like Gwen Stefani and Fall Out Boy in LA. Then she realised: wait, I’m writing good songs but I want to be a pop star! She’s just amazing; she’s like a comet. Like Nucleya, she’s not letting go of her south Indian roots. Even though it’s R&B and urban music, you can hear Bollywood flourishes too.

Flux

Bit of a leftfield one. This is a band from London and they are essentially a classical western band. They’re brilliant. They’re all in their 20s and sound like London at 3am. They are pulled together by Shammi Pithia – who I’ve been touting as the new Nitin Sawhney – and they are cool and classical; like a funk band with a string section. Their debut Shadowlines, which came out at the end of last year, was everything you’d want from a young band in London – it infused drum’n’bass, Roni Size, Goldie. They’re a live band who grew up on a diet of trip-hop and dubstep and pushed it through a classical music filter.

Jaz Dhami

Jaz is from the Midlands. He looks like a normal guy but he’s an amazing singer who always tends to get experimental after every two bhangra tracks. He’s definitely an innovator sonically: he’s done grime tracks and sings in Punjabi. For me, he’s the perfect symbiosis of bhangra culture and whatever is still to come. He’s soaking new genres up like a sponge.

Anik Khan

In terms of south Asian music, America is leading the way. Like the Swet Shop Boys, Khan is needed right now. He was born in Dhaka in Bangladesh and brought up in Queens and Brooklyn. His voice is powerful, it’s soulful and blistering, and the music itself doesn’t take any prisoners: he’ll take it anywhere, from Bollywood samples to singing about his mum and dad, culture and religion. His track Columbus was on burn for a while – he wanted to get the track out there so brought its release forward. It’s about Trump. I’ve noticed more music becoming political, but literally only around the edges and specifically only in an American context. I remember a lot of Islamic rap coming out of the UK post 9/11 and 7/7 and with everything happening now you would assume there would be a big push on political music but there isn’t really. People like Khan are doing it, but artists are massively politicised on their own social media accounts and will talk about what’s happening, but when it comes to their music they’re going back into that traditional idea of: OK I’m going to entertain people and push the boundaries musically instead.

Fateh

He’s performing at Asian Network Live this year and I love this guy. Toronto-based Fateh is just a bona fide classy rapper who just gets it – he totally nailed it musically and sounds very of the moment. I know this is a bit of a cliche, but he’s like Drake in that he blurs the lines between hip-hop and singing. The production is impeccable. It sounds like it was mastered in Los Angeles with a big record label budget. When you listen to his tracks the second time around, you realise this is speaking to not just Canadians but a village boy in the Punjab, India. His music sounds effortless and I think he’s amazing.

Horsepowar

Another Canadian, this time from Vancouver. She’s just brilliant, how MIA might have sounded if she’d decided to stop being such a cut-and-paste artist, wrote some songs and started to sing. Horsepowar is quite psychedelic even if she doesn’t know it. When I say she is an empowered woman, I really mean it. If you’re a white woman you can take control of your body in a media space or as an artist and everyone thinks that’s great. But she’s singing about being pleasured and giving head and stuff like that. When you do that in an Asian space, where people have some really backward mentalities, you realise how radical she really is. This is like Prince blurring the lines between black and white in the late 70s. Even though on the surface she seems quite playful there’s a real powerful streak running through her just by the very culture she’s alluding to.

  • BBC Asian Network Live will be triple-cast across Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network from 7pm on Saturday 25 February.

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