The day, not too long ago, that I rapped an entire verse in Tamil was when I knew I was obsessed with bilingual rapper Yung Raja. For the uninitiated (why, though?), I speak with musical reverence for the 26-year-old Singaporean hip-hop artist who has successfully managed to include his made-up word ‘shtambi’—Raja’s version of the Tamil word for brother, ‘thambi’—into common parlance. Now that is cultural influence.
“Till the age of 11, I had not listened to hip-hop music or any English songs. My early years were very much Kollywood-inspired because my whole family is from Thanjavur, South India,” Raja tells Cosmopolitan on a Zoom call from Singapore, where he grew up.
Raja is seated in his room with a purple light radiating from the ceiling, giving his blond-dyed hair a pinkish tinge. Not that he would mind—which has racked up 1.2 million views in eight months—he sports an acid-purple mane along with outfits in bright yellow, pink, and shades of blue. But we will get to his eclectic fashion in a bit.
