If there is one artist who has been able to capture the pulse of the Indian youth, oscillating between the new and the old, it is Nucleya. The popular DJ’s recent album titled Tota Maina is a perfect mix of his signature style Indian bass, reggae and dance music; along his love for experimental sounds of pop.
“Each song is very different from the other one. The album has a lot of emotions in it and that is why we ended up calling it Tota Maina,” he shares.
Tota Maina refers to a pair of birds, a parrot and a mynah. Ask him if the album explores the ideas of love and romance and he says, “The idea was not to make an album that goes in this direction but to make music with honesty. It has a very strong emotion of love in it and that somehow ended up being the theme for the album.”
None of the themes for his albums are pre-decided, he shares. “The difficulty is that when I am working, I only look at the song in hand. When I move to the next song, I try to explore a completely new territory. This is why in the same album, all songs end up sounding so different from the others,” he says.
Reflecting back on one of the songs, Going to America, which he recorded with Anirudh Ravichander in Chennai, he says, “The singer is Anthony Daasan and I met him for the first time. It was a fan moment for me. I don’t speak Tamil and Anthony ended up saying something in Tamil. Everyone smiled. Turns out he was saying, ‘I have been chasing Nucleya to do a song with me for seven years!’ It was very sweet of him to say that.” The other tracks include collaborations with A-list artists from the industry, including hip-hop star Raftaar, as well as prominent indie artists such as Rashmeet Kaur, Avneet Kurmi and Vibha Saraf.
The album also features a song by Shruti Hassan, titled Out Of Your Mind. “I remember sending her the instrumental music for the song because I like collaborating over emails. You can be in your own space and work that way. But she was adamant that we finish this in a studio. I agreed and she only took 30 minutes to do the song writing and the singing! It was done,” he laughs, adding, “She was fast. I guess when it comes from the purity of heart, it becomes easy for everyone.”
Talking about Indian music industry, he says, “The music industry is dominated by Bollywood. But people are looking for alternatives. My own songs do not fall into the mainstream three-minute segment. Neither are they on a high-rotation on radio nor do they fall into the mainstream. But it is important for music to come from your heart in order for it to work,” he signs off.