Energetic women at a wedding, excited kids at Dhobi Ghat, young girls at a coffee shop and good-looking boys on the top of a bus -- are all grooving to the catchy tune of Jimpak Chipak, that is currently going viral on social media. The rap video created by a group of four youngsters from the city -- the popular MC Mike and Uneek (Kanna Murali and G Harish), Om Sripathi and Sunny Austin -- released on March 6. And in just five days, it received more than one lakh views.
“It is overwhelming,” smiles MC Mike about the number of views and the kind of appreciation the group is receieving. “Telugu people from the United States are sending us Dubsmash videos doing the signature step. Some came even from Ukraine,” says the 24-year-old. Before Jimpak Chipak, Mike collaborated with Om Sripathi to make Hey Pilla. “It was in May 2015 and it was a love track. We were sceptical about how people would take it because it was in Telugu. But more than two lakh people watched it. We realised that people want to listen to Telugu rap,” says Mike.
But rapping in Telugu was not a random thought. Back in college, he was a freestyle rapper. “I studied in Loyola College and macha was a popular way of addressing friends. One day, I sat in the studio and started freestyling -- shoes macha, FB macha. Around the same time, I met Sunny Austin, who was a beat boxer. He did his thing and I did mine and it just blended,” Mike recalls. Two years later, Sunny and Mike collaborated. Uneek and Om chipped in and Jimpak Chipak happened.
“We are all good friends first. And the collaboration came out as a perfect package because of this,” shares Mike. The three-minute and 40-second video has all the four of them rapping. “Each of us wrote our own bits. I created the signature move and also did the sound mixing. Another friend, Abhishek Pallati was the cinematographer,” Mike tells us.
Though there was minimum investment, getting people to dance to their tunes was a challenge. “At Dhobi Ghat, it was a challenging to make people comfortable and agree to shoot with us,” he explains.
There is also a wedding shot of aunties and uncles doing the Jimpak Chipak. “Uneek’s brother was getting married and we made use of the opportunity,” he laughs.