CHENNAI: It feels like only yesterday 17-year-old music producer and composer Ankith Gupta captured our collective attention with his record-making collaborative single, 7500. After having spent 7,500 hours on the piece with 12 musicians from around the world and 14 languages, you’d think that he’d be taking his well-earned break; or worrying about the fate of his ICSE board exams.
Not this guy. In the seven months since, Ankith worked together with Bengaluru-based rapper Dank Sinat`a to put his debut album, The Inconstant. In a way, it was this song that had inspired the work on his debut album, begins Ankith. Having spent so much time on that massive project made him realise that it’s not the only way to work; and if he kept going that way, he wouldn’t get to do everything else he would like to. It was this epiphany that pushed him to produce a 11-song album in six months, he says, not without a touch o f pr ide that c ome s with accomplishment.
Once there, the collaboration happened quite naturally, he says. For someone who has proved to have quite an eye for identifying exemplary fellow artistes and getting them to come aboard his project, that he managed to pull it off with Dank doesn’t come as much of a surprise. “Dank and I have been in touch for a long time and we always wanted to do a few songs together. One day, he messaged saying he was coming to Chennai and asked if I wanted to do some songs.
We booked a studio and made one track,” he recounts. This turned into a 3-4 song EP, which then became a 10-song album, which finally got its concluding track, thanks to lastminute inspiration. There’s a whole concept built around the album, says Dank. “It has 11 songs, it starts with the introduction and the last song is called Outro. In the middle, it has an interlude as well. It follows a typical album structure. And the concept is around different emotions. There’s one about contentment, excitement (with the song aptly titled Alive), brotherhood, intoxication marked by the Happy Drunk Interlude, and so on,” he elaborates. The album also ponders on emotions and experiences on the uncomfortable end of the spectrum, from boredom to overthinking, indecisiveness to restrictions on one’s mind and body.
Musical experiments
The theme aside, the album itself was an experiment of sorts. For Ankith, who has a majority of his work in the hip hop side of music, bringing out a lo-fi jazz-electronic album itself was straying far from comfort. For Dank, this was an opportunity to do rap that wasn’t angry and didn’t require him to scream. It allowed the two artistes to meet at the ideal middle ground for this collaboration too. With nearly ten years between them, you’d think the collaboration might have come with a fair list of troubles. But, it was all smooth sailing they say. “Dank was very flexible.
When he wants a beat and I’m between classes, he’d let me take my time and get him what he wants. With me in class 12 and board exams here, he understood what I was going through. I’d send him the beat, he’d write the lyrics over it and record it and I would add to it if necessary and that’s how we did it,” says Ankith. For Dank, it was quite refreshing to work with someone younger. “Ankith is at that age where you can give more to music, I feel; I am caught up with so many commitments. As a kid, you don’t think about so many eventualities and possibilities.
You just put your mind to it; if you’re excited and want to do something, you just go ahead and do it, right? Ankith was very eager and it was good to work with him that way,” he surmises. Even the album art turned out to be a collaboration, for they used pictures of themselves and turned into illustrations of the different “moods” represented in the album. And the reception has been overwhelmingly positive, they report. “All the hip hop artistes have given very good responses.
They were surprised that I gave a jazz album for my debut. A few artistes who I really look up to messaged saying this is one of the craziest works of mine that they have ever heard,” shares Ankith. “I have been putting out music for quite a while. It usually takes time to build up and get attention. Now it’s getting to a point where you think people are listening to it and liking it. It gives me some motivation, too, to know that people are playing my song,” says Dank, who is a lawyer by day. As always, it doesn’t just stop here. Uncertainty over his board exams notwithstanding, Ankith is already working on his next album. Expect to hear more from this young artiste soon enough.
The album is available on all popular music streaming platforms.
Adding more feathers to his cap
Ankith also recently added more feathers to his cap through new records certified by both Asia Book of Records and India Book of Records for being the youngest hip hop artiste to be charted multiple times on iTunes Top 100 (for the songs Viper, Rain Dance, 7500 and Upwards)