BENGALURU : Rapper Vignesh Shivanand aka Brodha V’s phone has not stopped buzzing with notifications from texts or social media tags since the time his new single, Vainko, was released on his YouTube channel on Wednesday morning. The song has gone viral on social media with almost 1 lakh views in the first couple of hours. The single was created in collaboration with Bengaluru’s popular YouTubers, Naser Al Azzeh and Vineeth Kumar from Jordindian, which is a sketch comedy YouTube channel with more than 1.72 million subscribers.
The catch phase of the song briefly translates to ‘take it’ in Tamil. Brodha V says, “You say ‘Vainko’ to someone when you prove them wrong. It is a part of our vocabulary now and I decided to make a song out of it. I wanted it to sound very South Indian,” he says, adding, “The whole rap is in English and the only catch phrase that stands out is ‘Vainko’, which I think bridges the gap between the niche crowd and the masses.”
Brodha V’s love for folk music like kuthu and tapang was the inspiration for this song. It took almost a month for him to write, record and produce the song.
But once the song was ready, collaboration with Jordindian was easy, when the YouTube stars heard the song. “While I was writing the song, the first people who came to my mind for collaboration was Jordindian. They can own the catch phrase ‘Vainko’ like no one else. They were equally excited when they heard the song,” says Brodha V. The whole song was shot in a day in the areas around Lingarajapuram.
The song has been getting positive reviews since its launch. “During post production itself, we knew it is going to be hilarious. Even people who worked behind the scenes had loads of fun just because it’s a funny song,” he adds.
The 29-year-old city-based rapper is popular for his fusion rap, which has a heavy usage of Carnatic beats. He says with Carnatic music, he can come up with many variations. He has been part of South Indian and Bollywood projects like Jersey (Telugu), Chennai Express (Hindi) and more. His last song was Vaishnava Jana To, which was a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. Unlike his counterparts, his raps are quite a shift from the slang-laden lyrics.