Raftaar is a well-known famous hip-hop artist from India. He has done songs in various genres and also used to be known for some adult songs he did in his early hip-hop days.
| Real Name: | Dilin Nair |
| Born: | 16 November 1988 |
| Occupation: | Songwriter, music producer, dancer, rapper, reality show judge |
| Genres: | Bollywood, R&B, Desi hip hop, pop, urban |
| Labels: | Sony Music India, Kalamkaar, Zee Music |
| Spouse(s): | Komal Vohra (m. 2016) |
Raftaar Biography
Raftaar or the real name of this famous well-known Indian hip hop artist Dillin Nair is of Malayalam origin and residence of Kerala. Raftaar in his Initial days was a member of another great Indian hip ho artist Yo Yo Honey Singh formed a music group known as “Urban Music Group Mafia Munder” in 2012.
Honey Singh is yet another hip-hop artist who is known for starting the hip hop trend in India, and believe me, people were crazy for his songs back in the decade. A song would simply become a hit if it had a mention or a few lines by Honey Singh in the entire song.
Though later Honey Singh and Raftaar parted ways and Raftaar signed with a Punjabi band after that: “RDB”. He performed in the three records of the RDB band.
He recorded his debut single Manju starring Raftaar and another Punjabi artist Deep Money in 2012. The following year in 2013, he released his debut mixtape: WTF Mixtape, and in the next year.
In 2014, he released a song that became one of the most popular songs of the year and won the Best Urban Song at the Britasia Music Awards: Swag Mera Desi. Caps and T-shirts were being sold on this very phrase: Swag Mera Desi.
Some of the most popular songs by Raftaar are: Desi Hip Hop, Lak Hilaade, Can’t stop the party, Sheikh Chilli, and one of my favorite Cute Vol. 2 which was kind of a parody song to the original adult song that Honey Singh and Badshah had recorded.
Raftaar Life & Career
Dilin Nair was born to Delhi-based Malayali parents in Trivandrum which is now Thiruvananthapuram in the Kerala state of India. He started his hip-hop career with another artist named Lil Golu in 2008 along with fellow rapper Young Amli who is known famously known as Ikka.
He had recorded many songs and uploaded them on social media and music streaming sites along with YouTube. He then started working with Honey Singh in his group Mafia Mundeer in 2012.
After splitting from the ‘Mafia Mundeer’ Raftar release his first debut mixtape in 2013: Witness The Future aka WTF. He made his first Bollywood debut song in 2013: Tamanche Pe Disco, starring actor and actress Saif Ali Khan and Sonakshi Sinha, and this Bollywood song became a major hit of its time.
Swag Mera Desi by Raftaar in 2013 got him recognition in India, and a major hit for Raftaar to kickoff his hip-hop career to even greater heights, he release this song with Manju Musik who is a music composer of many hit mainly Punjabi songs.
It was a piece of big news then that Raftaar tried to diss Honey Singh with the line “Ab yeh karke dikhao” in his song Swag Mera Desi, as it was originally used by Honey Singh in his earlier song for the Bollywood movie “Boothnath“: ‘Party with the boothnaath‘
This led to a dispute between the two big hip hop artists in media, and later in 2014, Raftaar’s hit single Swag Mera Desi also won Best Urban Song at the Birt Asia TV Music Awards.
Raftaar had also worked with Vishal Dadlani, another famous Indian singer, they worked together in a Bengali film ‘One’. This movie was a debut for Raftaar in the Bengali music industry.
Raftaar has collaborated with various Bollywood artists, like one of them is Varun Dhawan, they both collaborated for the second edition of Breezer Vivid Shuffle and Raftaar has also produced a rap song for the Chaamp Soundtrack in 2017.
Right now, Raftaar has gained much fame and authority in the Indian Hip Hop industry and he also hosts many reality shows, one of them is The MTV Roadies on the MTV channel India, and also works as a Judge in Music and Talent shows.
Feud with Emiway Bantai
One of the most famous controversies in Raftaar’s life is the one with Emiway Bantai, real name Bilal Shaikh, who is a Mumbai-based hip hop artist and formerly a friend to Raftaar.
The fact that Raftaar used to treat him like a little brother and loved his art but later they became started acting like enemies made this controversy so much fun.
During the mid controversy, Raftaar stated that this is not a controversy anymore, this has just become something where someone says one thing and a reply comes from the other side, that It has just become a fun activity for fans now.
The real reason for this controversy, from where this all starts, is an interview Raftaar had where he calls himself “I’m the biggest” in terms of being at the top in Hip Hop which kind of sounds about right because he is known across the whole India now but saying that he sure disrespected many other artists.
The feud was mainly with Emiway Bantai but many other artist like Ikka and his former hip hop friends were pissed on this too and shared there views via Instagram live.
Raftaar talks about how hip-hop artists are unable to make money right now and he is at the top of this hip-hop game. Which made Emiway diss him concluding that he is wrong about hip hop and he is not the best.
This, however, did not seem to be a major issue to diss another rapper at first to me, and I was right the real reason for this was some previous feud between these two and this event gave Emiway a way to diss him.
The diss game was quite good, even people who were not so interested in hip hop seemed to have fun with their diss game, both the artist made super diss songs and punch lines were awesome in their songs.
However, I liked Emiway’s diss songs, his diss songs especially are always better. Seems like he is better at dissing people.
After this feud, Emiway gained a massive following, subscribers to his YouTube channel, and widespread fame, which he used pretty well later by releasing many songs back to back.
To be honest most of them were shit but the song Machayenge crossed 100m+ views in a short span and he later made Machayenge 2 which crossed 100m+ views again on his YouTube channel.
So this is all about Raftaar in this article of Lyricsvan.com. We believe we have covered all the major highlights from Raftaar’s life as an artist in Hip Hop Industry.
If you would like to read more about Raftaar, about every inch of detail from Raftaar’s life, you can visit the Wikipedia page.