Raghav Mathur calls his track Chingari an ode to hip-hop, shares why he collaborated with rapper Divine | Exclusive

Raghav Mathur, the celebrated Indipop sensation from the 2000s, has dropped the party track of the season with his new single Chingari, for which he has also collaborated with the famous rapper Divine. In an exclusive interview with DNA, the Canadian born singer talked about his latest track and called it his ode to hip-hop.

Sharing his thought behind his latest track, Raghav said, "Chingari is an ode to hip hop. When I was in the high school and even before that, hip hop was the most influential art form. When my first album came out Storyteller in 2004, there were some guest rappers featured on it Kardinal Offishall, Jahaziel and Iceberg Slimm, I never could have imagined that time that hip hop would become one of the biggest genres in India as well and 20 years down the road there would be Indian artists that I could work with."

"A few years ago, I also did a record where Abhishek Bachchan rapped on it. Rap, hip hop is such a huge part of my career that I wanted to have a record that was kind of an ode to it, and I couldn't think of doing that than with Chingari, the sound of which is kind of like Dr. Dre meets OP Nayyar", the Angel Eyes, and Teri Baaton Mein singer further added.

Raghav also revealed why he chose to collaborate with the rapper Divine (whose real name is Vivian Wilson Fernandes) for chingari as he stated, "Divine had reached out to me during Covid because he had a song called Mirchi and he wanted me to be on that record, and it never happened, but we stayed in touch since then. I think he has been heavily influential not just in India, but all of Asia in terms of what hip-hop means and how the rest of the world views it. So, to take that friendship and him wanting to work with me on a record and me wanting to work with him on a record, it was just a matter of time before we found the right way."

In Chingari, Raghav has also sampled a couple of lines from Kishore Kumar’s song Aadmi Jo Kehta Hai from the 1974 film Majboor, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Parveen Babi, and Pran. When we asked him about why he chose a less popular Kishore and Amitabh track, he said, "That's Mushtaq, our producer. For me, it was a nice juxtposition as Desperado has Mohammed Rafi's Chura Liya Hai Tumne, which is among the most famous Indian songs of all time, and now we have taken this less famous song. We haven't even taken the main hook of the song, its from verse two. Until Desperado, I had only sampled female voices and now, I have sampled Rafi and Kishore. The best way I could put it is that old hip-hop records in the 90s sampled stuff from the Frank Sinatra era. So, Chingari has that similar kind of feel from our years."