An Inverted Paradise Lost

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n Kendrick Lamar’s post-Drake-beef album, GNX, the artist meditates on his place in the world and on his connection to it. In doing so, Lamar proves just exactly why he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize back in 2018 as he created new mythologies that gave rise to newer literatures worthy of scholarly inquiry—while making novel offerings to contemporary music culture. A track that weaves a thematic thread to tie the GNX record together is the sixth one—titled “Reincarnated”—and placed right in the middle of the album of 12 songs, where Kendrick ends his verse with “I rewrote the Devil's story just to take our power back, 'carnated.”

Through his evocation of paradise lost with the track, Kendrick embodies multiple historical figures to the point of personifying the Devil himself. However, the image is one of descent from the Divine as it inverts Milton’s image of the Devil’s ascent from hell into the earthly domain (it is far worse for the Devil to descend directly onto earth in a human form than to descend to hell). Lamar’s inverted paradise lost points at the type of spiritual void that results from the fatigue caused by enduring long and arduous earthly battles. By equal measure, Lamar also makes certain through “Reincarnated” that his adversaries and fans understand in clear and present terms that if he has to reincarnate as the Devil, he will do so, even at the cost of carrying the burden of eternal damnation for all of humankind (read “Three Versions of Judas”).

In his last verse—“I rewrote the Devil's story just to take our power back, 'carnated”—Kendrick could also be signalling the possibility of taking the “power back” by suggesting that the capacity to be evil can no longer rest with the oppressors or with the wicked in power, and that an evil of a certain sanitizing and reaffirming kind, in being badder than bad, is required to re-establish or invert the order of evil that existed previously. This becomes especially significant when taken from the notion that good and evil are human constructs and abstracts, and not caricaturesque figures that we see in cartoons.

In fact, one could even posit that the human condition has become so degenerate in certain instances, that human actions make the Devil look good. Since whatever is good and evil resides within the human, there are those who bring out the Devil within and those who will bring out the Divine in each one of us. Such is “the banality of evil” and—in direct opposition—the splendor of good in this human world. Evil lacks character until it takes on a human form, and presents a paradoxical quality in of itself: it can avail the universal freedom of being abstract while diffusing such abstraction into the concrete through an embodiment—and a human one at that.

This is similar to the notion of the Holy Trinity, the Father as the creator of all things goes from the Holy Spirit into taking the human form of Jesus, the Son, made of flesh and bone to experience human history, to endure mortality by means of a persecution till death on the cross, and finally to rise up via a rebirth, a reincarnation. However, in Kendrick’s “Reincarnated”, the Californian rapper introduces this notion of exile from heaven in an inverse (Big Pun intended) manner by having the dark angel assume the mortal form of the rapper himself. As a result, the level of fatigue that Lamar’s spoken-word poet in “Reincarnated” is willing to take on far outweighs the burden of embodying the goodness of the Divine made into flesh. In this sixth track, Lamar is Jesus made Judas because the world is exactly that wretched in its demands.

“Are you not entertained?”

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile any of my previous observations can be contested, problematized and even refuted, it is clear that Hip Hop beefs and battles create a fatigue that puts artists in positions of defense and offense–offense as best defense. Under such rigid conditions of self-expression as retort, they may risk losing their integrity and shedding their character in ways that can chip away at their spiritual core. All this at the ultimate risk of departing from the same humanity that makes them artists and poets in the first place. When one is pushed to a corner, with what force, tenacity and vicious intensity does one retort? In going far, how far is too far before one sheds one’s dignity and one’s soul to disarm the other? And in such lyrical exchanges, what of peace in these times of constant war?

The Hip Hop battle that extends over a period of time creates a type of strain that can lead to a particular type of dehumanization; one is forced into defending by attacking and vice versa, to the point where the space of elocution becomes suffocated by the darkness that one is forced to bring out from within. That darkness presents a definitive danger because words have power and weight, and the one who utters them and projects them into the space of self-expression is not unburdened by that power and weight. Language, much like life itself, is a boomerang—you throw something good out there, and it comes back to you. You throw something bad, and even Pulitzer-prize-winning Kendrick Lamar cannot remain unscathed by his own utterances. While Kendrick Lamar released “Reincarnated” on Friday, November 22, 2024, SOS (Straight Outta Sriangar) preceded him by five months with parallel iconography, thematic undertones and lyricism in Rasm-e-Chaharum, which was released on the Saturday of June 29, 2024.

When the storm of direct lyrical and artistic confrontation had subsided, it became apparent that Hip Hop battles do not offer redemption, nor liberation, even if there are clear victors, because no wars exist without casualties and no battles unfold sans vast devastations. And in the case of such beefs, the wounds remain invisible to the public, and unseen to audiences. Such publics and audiences, in the same vein, risk becoming like the conscience-zombie Romans entertained by the bloody duels of Hip Hop Gladiators in the Colosseum of bars over beats. “Are you not entertained?”, one has to ask. If you revel in humiliation and dehumanization through the casting of words, please stand up, cheer on, and roar with all your might till your ‘epicaricacy’ surpasses its innocent association with Shashi Tharoor’s list of favorite vocabulary words.

With this Bitterness (of Poison) in Mind

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is with this bitterness and the aftermath of such Hip Hop beefs, battles and a lyrical war now gone that I arrive at TARYAQ, SOS’s (Straight Outta Srinagar’s) latest post-beef release. As a listener, I arrive at this juncture to seek healing, to find reincarnation as a fan, and to seek a re-attestation to the greatness of the contemporary art that is Hip Hop. Needless to say, for those of us who became invested in the heavy artillery of bars over beats, each diss track felt like a battle, and the collection of the lot a war of its own.

At one point, one was concerned that Rolling Stone India dedicated a full 38 minutes to discuss the nature of a beef now (thankfully) past, while the greater catalogue of artistic excellence that Tufail Nazir and Aatankki (Syed Arsalan) have cultivated since 2020 had remained a mere afterthought in the background of such discussions. The resounding silence after the beef left one meditating on what tomorrow would bring, if anything at all, with releases such as ALIVE IN K I and ALIVE IN K II Ahmer to breathe fresh hope and new possibilities for those who went out to the big city and came back home for a new start.

While Ahmer’s ALIVE IN K I and II ushered in a new era of homecoming for Kashmiri Hip Hop artists, SOS’s TARYAQ confirmed that a lengthy chapter in the Hip Hop scene had come to an end. The  image of such artists as marginal creative figures within the larger Indian Hip Hop scene had dimmed out since “resistance" and "conscious" Hip Hop no longer served to validate and give legitimacy and widespread recognition to a record label claiming to represent the voices of the voiceless. While there was nothing more left to capitalize on, an entire era came to an end in a brutal manner because the voiceless made themselves heard, loud and clear, and perhaps in the most scathing and unforgiving ways.

As it all transpired, Ahmer’s ALIVE IN K I and II acquired a greater symbolic value with the release of SOS’s TARYAQ when it became conceivable that certain artists remain consistent whether backed by an industry, a fanbase, and a record label, or not. For such artists devoted to such art-making, in the paraphrased words of Ahmer himself, breathing leads to life and living, and both of these lead to art and its making.

When one looks into the critical reception that TARYAQ has received thus far, the same consistency remains true of certain fans, as numerous “reaction” videos to the album from Indian Hip Hop aficionados started to emerge. In that online reaction culture, notable influencers and content creators from India demonstrated (through their excitement and engagement with TARYAQ) that Hip Hop cannot be defined by cultural distance, nor by borders and difference. This latest release by SOS indicated a greater appreciation of their craft, especially from the Indian fanbase represented by countless “reactors” who did not shy away from discussing the preceding beef and the new record on their playlists—and in the sphere of their discussions and reflections.

A Timely Pharmakon

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Rekhta Urdu dictionary cites “tiryāq”—TARYAQ—as “an antidote for snake-bite, sovereign remedy, antidote for a poison or snakebite, bezoar, which was used as an antidote for all poisons.” Through such a definition, SOS’s TARYAQ acquires its symbolic title as the entire album appears as a panacea for the years-long departure from their record label that escalated into a weeks-long exchange of diss tracks. At the present, and in the aftermath of such a bitter departure, all those diss tracks crossfired from one side to the other can only distract from the relentless force that the Straight Outta Srinagar Hip Hop duo has become.

In his Ghazal “kai nadiyan mujh mein bah niklin meri miTTi nam karne ke liye”—translated as “Many rivers flow within me, to moisten my dust (earth) and make it fertile"—the poet Vikram offers a couplet that makes clear mention of “tiryāq”:

duniyā ke manāzir zahr-bujhe sab maiñ ne basā.e āñkhoñ meñ mirī ek nazar hī kaafī hai tiryāq ko sam karne ke liye

In the same vein, when faced with the “venomous sights” of an underground Hip Hop world now gone corporate and commercial, looking forward could only lead to a “nazar” sufficing “to recognize the antidote”, which in SOS’s case translated to persisting with their music-making, with or without record label patronage, and with or without the certainty of whether a particular fanbase would remain or turn their backs on them.

While the title of the album is quite self-explanatory as it is self-reflexive, TARYAQ as an antidote also brings along with it a wide range of connotations since antidotes are associated with medicine and pharmacology. More concretely, the word “pharmakon” adds to the more extensive meaning behind TARYAQ if one considers it from the definition derived from philosophy and critical theory as “a composite of three meanings: remedy, poison, and scapegoat.” In the first two meanings, to arrive at TARYAQ, or remedy/antidote, one has to have known poison or experienced poisoning, since there can be no antidote without the a priori poisoning.

Composite meanings notwithstanding, the third meaning of “scapegoat” is perhaps the most symbolic in attempting to understand where Kashmiri Hip Hop artists such as the SOS duo and several others have stood as subjects of multiple marginalities. As popular as Hip Hop has become in South Asia, it remains at the farthest margins of traditional society, making Hip Hop artists subject to criticism, dismissal, societal scorn and outright rejection as interpreted from the following verses  from “WALLAH”:

Meri shayari ko fenkoge taalaab mein tum Jab haraam hai mosiqi aur nasaaz ye dhu

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WALLAH, by SOS (Straight Outta Srinagar)

Where there should be acceptance of artistry in its many forms of expression, a particular rejection and the resulting alienation leads to wandering, as expressed through the lyricism in the chorus of “AWARA” (featuring Ahmer). The song seeks solace perhaps in a higher power, in the unrequited love of the beloved, or in the divinity of a love that is distant or estranged due to heartbreak and separation:

Phirta awara
Mai girta sitara
Chahiye kya sahara?
Tumhara hi toh maara
I wander, a [revolving] wanderer
I, a falling star
What solace do I need?
I was struck by you
(my translation)

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AWARA, by SOS (Straight Outta Srinagar)

To dwell in the margins, in a liminal space of uncertainty, neither here nor there, can only lead to seeking solace and redemption after returning from a war fought through lyrical conflagrations and battles fought on the grounds of artistic identity and integrity.  Whether in relation to the Hip Hop world of the big cosmopolitan city and its big (and sometimes fake) promises, or in relation to a birthplace with a society that frowns upon certain artmaking and even reduces it to “entertainment” (and “tamasha”), the ultimate acceptance arrives at the gates of faith and in its rekindling in the last track, “MAULA”. A powerful appeal to the Almighty as the greatest of healers, for that ultimate cure, which is a return to faith, and a return to acceptance from the One who accepts all of His creation, is found in the following verses:

Bechainee se aati na nind
Shayad mai dil ka mariz
Jo chaha tha kabhi ab sab kuch ho paas
Par tabhi bhi aati na feel
Wahi toh mera hakim
Maula hi mera azim
Sajdon mein karta hai mujhse wo baatein
Wo rehta hai mere kareeb

What I had once wanted, now everything is within reach
But still, I can’t feel it [inspiration]
Only He is my healer [doctor]
My Lord is the greatest
In my prostration to Him, He speaks to me
He stays close to me

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MAULA, by SOS (Straight Outta Srinagar)

With the dense cloud of toxicity, toxification, and intoxication that characterized a phase of conflict and contrition as a chapter in SOS’s longer trajectory as artists, TARYAQ ends in a humble supplication, in repentance wherever it was needed and in finding acceptance within the tenets of faith:

Khuda yaad aata muskilon mein saath jab na koi
Khuda waha mila mujhe jaha ummeed na thi koi
Bande manng ke to dekh pehla aakhri hai wohi
Wo to sunta hai uski bhi jiska khuda nahi koi

God is remembered during troubled times when no one else offers solace [friendship]
God met me there where there was not any hope
Ask and see for yourself that He is first and last
He even listens to those who have no god

While TARYAQ begins with all pens blazing in “CODISTAR” with adrenaline-charged bars that counteract the pollution and toxification from the lyrical war of a Hip Hop beef, the smoke only clears towards the end with “Maula.” One returns to the immense significance of the word “taryaq” or “tiryaq” and its relation to the word “pharmakon” and also “pharmakos” that substantiate a framework for understanding the relation between poison, antidote and the subject (“shakhs”) who is poisoned and requires healing. Added to that, the allusion to the ritual of the pharmakos practiced by the ancient Greeks, cannot be avoided, especially when consulting an excellent PhD thesis by Mary E. Murray titled The pharmakos phenomenon (presented to the University of Western Sydney):

The pharmakos ritual is ancient in human experience where in times of crisis, a human being was beaten with fig branches, and led throughout the community to receive the pollution prior to being killed or banished. It has been interpreted as the means of purifying a community of pollution - the scapegoat.

At a specific time, the tensions and angst were running high as SOS’s members were receiving threats while the overall environment of animosity had grown towards them. It became apparent that the space of Hip Hop as artistic performance had been cordoned off by vicious online trolling and a variety of ugly allegations to the point of making the presence of the artists potentially unsafe in the platform of DHH (Desi Hip Hop). The summation of the back and forth beefing via diss tracks and the subsequent discussions, some of which were quite rabid, created the environment of toxicity, pollution and contamination, and it demanded a scapegoat. SOS was turned into that scapegoat—or pharmakos—especially when their identity not as Kashmiri artists, but as young Kashmiri men was politicized through a variety of ugly stereotypes, including one about subjecting them to the UAPA and calling them “stonepetlers” as if that were a pejorative term. And all this coming from artists who were represented by a record label called AZADI whose core mission was to promote “socially and politically conscious music” from marginalized communities.

TARYAQ as the Pharmakon within Language and Expression

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he departure of Ahmer and SOS from Azadi Records symbolized a parting of older ways and a purge of sorts, with the record label having the upperhand through its institutional power, especially when its mission and vision seemed to shift from “conscious” to “commercial” in many aspects. Meanwhile, the release of TARYAQ allows for great meditations on toxicity, toxification, poisoning, remedial healing, but more than that it can easily be studied through an understanding of the subject (“shakhs”) of that toxicity, toxification, poisoning and healing. It is here that the notion of the “phamakon” and the “pharmakos” is highly relevant:

Derrida conducted a deconstructionist reading of a famous text by Plato in which there is a merging of opposite poles; according to this reading, the pharmakon, "this 'medicine', this philter, which acts as both remedy and poison, already introduces itself into the body of the discourse with all its ambivalence. This charm, this spellbinding virtue, this power of fascination, can be - alternately or simultaneously - beneficent or maleficent"

(Barbara Johnson, translator, from “Plato's Pharmacy” in Dissemination, by Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, 70).

As an unfolding of language, and that too of Kashmiri cultural sophistication, TARYAQ does not simply offer itself as an antidote, be it so for the artists who made the work or for their listeners and adversaries. More than that, TARYAQ is characterized by an affirmation of the self—a common device in Hip Hop culture—and a departure from what preceded, a shedding from the serpentine skin found on the ultimate Greek symbol of medicine, the caduceus, which displays a staff with two snakes coiled around it (with the shedding of serpentine skin symbolizing a revival, a reincarnation, the turning head-on towards the Jungian shadow in order to turn away from its control on the self). It is no wonder that the album cover and the subsequent merch made available by SOS shows a serpentine figure in the shape of a spiral.

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Caduceus: a Doctor's sign in the Wellcome Institute.
Source: Wikimedia

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Album art for TARYAQ by Saiful Mir
Source: SOS Instagram

TARYAQ naturally unravels into language and displays the inherent multiculturality of SOS as a duo well-versed in multiple South Asian languages (Kashmiri, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi) with access to lexicons from neighboring languages (Arabic, Persian) and, of course, English. Such an unravelling happens on account of being a Kashmiri production in that greater sense of Kashmir as a geographical location at the intersection of vast civilizations with vaster access to multiple coexisting languages, literatures, cultures and oral traditions that somehow emerge and converge within the “talaffuz” (articulation, utterance, expression) of the Kashmiri Hip Hop artist.

Kashmiri Hip Hop has acquired a unique standing in the world of Hip Hop as a global and cross-cultural phenomenon due to its multilingual character and its access to languages developed through the depth necessitated to articulate a poetic language capable of gaining greater proximity to the soul, to this world, to the Divine and to the cosmos within and without. It is not by chance that Kashmiri Hip Hop as a composite of linguistic articulations allows for triple to quadruple entendres and multi-pronged meanings (but that is matter for another essay or paper).

There was in the beef and exchange of diss tracks an attempt by their adversaries to box SOS into a set of cultural boundaries defined by ignorant and terribly stereotypical qualifiers such as “stonepelter” as if such a term was to be understood as pejorative and highly offensive, as the SOS duo was left to explain themselves as if they had committed some crime podcast after podcast. In an India where Dalits and other minorities are brutalized on the daily, the accusation of being stonepelters somehow seemed like a major concern for their adversaries and a few podcasters.

Such an accusation was grotesquely far more reductive than if in response one problematized India as a country where minorities are targeted—as if that isn’t a common feature within South Asia and anywhere else, depending on how far you zoom in and what metrics/indices are used for such reductive/expansive evaluations. However, all such sensationalist concerns and questions have fallen face-flat when it comes to the success of TARYAQ as an album that people from all sorts of backgrounds are listening to and reacting to, online and offline.

Coming back to the connection between TARYAQ as the pharmakon, the album operates at a deeply personal level as the antidote “as both remedy and poison” (Derrida). When considering the articulating subjects—the “shakhs” as Tufail Nazir and Aatankki—through the lyrical craft of their songs are embodiments of “discourse with all its ambivalence” (Derrida). The voice, the poetic subject, the spoken-word poet is formulated through language and articulated in discourse that is ambivalent, which is immediately observable in the many verses of their songs where the notion of healing is not independent of the notion of wound, just as the notion of faith is not free from an a priori notion of “sin.” In a similar manner, an encounter with the Almighty is not possible without the notion of erring in this world and without the fatigue from battle resulting in a spiritual void. Jacques Derrida’s explanation of the ambivalent nature of the pharmakon is remarkably apt for approaching the nature of such dualities:

If the pharmakon is ambivalent, it is because it constitutes the medium in which opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side cross over into the other (soul/body, good/evil, inside/outside, memory/forgetfulness, speech/writing, etc.)


(Barbara Johnson, translator, from “Plato's Pharmacy” in Dissemination, by Jacques Derrida, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, 127)

The ambivalence at the core of TARYAQ in its representations of the pharmakon transcends into how we can approach time and tense: the past, present and future can be approached as distinct, opposite, same, or fluid as they cross into one another. Such is the power of expression, memory and remembrance as operants upon our conceptualization of time and our understanding of chronology. TARYAQ as the embodiment of language and discourse could reflect potentially that one phrase—“language is the house of being”—that made Heidegger a bigger philosopher than he actually could be considered next to Husserl, Wittgenstein, Arendt, Walter Benjamin and other Jewish philosophers displaced into death or exile during the Nazi regime. However, the notion of the discursive subject (the “shakhs” who makes a poetic utterance) and the subject of discourse (the “shakhs” who dwells in that poetic utterance) goes back to the minute the first poet said “Arz kiya hai”— “it is thus uttered”—when Amir Khusraw (1253-1325) is said to have kickstarted the Mushaira (Ludmila Vasilyeva). Concurrently, others attribute the introduction of the Qawwali to his poetic legacy in a debate that remains unresolved due to varying perspectives that include its Persian influence.

Kashmiri Hip Hop is a reflection of the contemporaneity that places Kashmir at the intersection of multiple civilizations, languages, and literary and poetic traditions, all of which are constantly undermined and ignored at the service of projecting Kashmir as a troubled and conflicted place, and nothing else. To understand the multidisciplinary and inherently multicultural dimension of Kashmiri Hip Hop, one need not look further than the system of allusions and citation that unfolds in the subculture of “shoutouts” and “name-dropping” by Kashmiri Hip Hop artists, particularly Tufail Nazir, who repeatedly mentions poets, authors, thinkers, musicians from such vast traditions.

A few such allusions by Kashmiri Hip Hop artists like Tufail (and earlier MC Kash) include Ghalib, Shakespeare, Mahmood Dervish, Jaun Elia, Karl Marx, Kabir, Iqbal, Sara Landry, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Wordsworth, Gandhi, Tool, Seedhe Maut, Che Guevara, Porcupine Tree and so many others that it would require an entire paper to dive deeper into this culture of “shoutouts” and name-dropping.” Added to that is the reference to theological texts and religious scripture that reflect a deep knowledge of faith and religion. Interestingly, the same culture of referentiality by mode of allusion to great figures of culture exists within Spanish Hip Hop from the 90s onwards, wherein prominent Spanish Hip Hop artists refer to literary texts, famous figures from art history, great poets and revolutionary figures in their bars and verses.

The same is true of underground Hip Hop at the margins of its commercial and mainstream variants, whether from the American scene or any other part of the world. As a consequence, there was nothing outstanding or impressive for me to note when Jay Z and Beyonce shifted the setting of the Hip Hop music video (released June 16, 2018) to the scenes of an art gallery or the Louvre Museum in Paris since the Black Panther comic book and later film  (released January 29, 2018) provided a more substantial commentary without being derivative. Will Smith in his comeback did the same with a “dad verse” (synonymous in corniness to the “dad joke”) by uttering “I am a Libra but I identify as a cancer” in his song “Work of Art” (feat. Jaden) as the discourses of decolonization spread from the altars of academia to the urban cityscape. I leave it to readers interested in Kashmiri Hip Hop to look deeper into the constellation of references, shoutouts and namedrops that are a part of TARYAQ and extend its artistic value through its many verses—the same engagement is possible with earlier works by SOS and that of a few other Kashmiri Hip Hop artists (take for example certain references in "CZAWUL": "Bajhta 2 Pac / Tufail rehta sath Mere",  "Ab bole damn Lamar Ka Mai Jaise element", "jaa ke pooch Prophecy se", "Aur Bobby beat nai dega", "Main Tansen mene raagse buja di aag").
.

Between the Terrestrial and the Celestial: AZLI, TARYAQ and the Tortuous Mystic’s Journey

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]mbivalence and arbitrariness mark the range of elocution, the thematic undertones and the allusions that shape TARYAQ as an album. Much like Ahmer’s AZLI, there is a thematic progression within the landscape of lyricism and metaphor. The official video for “CODISTAR”, directed by Ednitworld, departs immediately from the most transcendental symbol of medicine, i.e. the dwelling place for recovery that is the modern hospital. The hospital is a site where healing and administration of drugs (medicines)—perhaps to counteract the self-administration of other substances—takes place in a track where SOS have made a chorus-line out of a cough. The cough is a bodily response to pollution, toxicity, poisoning, contamination, and it is equally an utterance that makes for a remarkable chorus-line that SOS audiences sing (or cough along to) in live performances, such as the one showcasing artists from Koshur Nizaam at Depot48 in New Delhi (on February 24, 2024). The cough is a sound made by the body in reaction to pollution or contamination (contagion) that phonetically takes on the shape of the word as onomatopoeia.

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The poster for the Koshur Nizam Showcase where SOS performed CODISTAR and BANGER, perhaps even before these songs even had their final names. Source: Depot 48

In the “CODISTAR” music video, the visuals of Tufail Nazir’s protagonist, connected to tubes and inhalers on a hospital bed, and breaking out into the street in chapiyn (slippers) is the loudest image of a reincarnation visible in relation to this notion of being “reincarnated” that Kendrick alludes to in the middle of his GNX album. And similarly, while having returned from a series of battles fought through diss tracks to close off a war that had taken away crucial creative time to produce new projects, the SOS duo do not mess about with “CODISTAR” as the leading track and music video. The lyrical aggressiveness, brutal bars and unflinching articulation of verses is an immediate reminder of beefs past.

From a hospital to fast-paced scene-shifting of visuals, the “CODISTAR” music video combines the spectral with the algorithmic—in presenting the subject as a projection into the digital dimension of bits, bytes and data flow as a means of re-emphasizing the immensely performative side of a Hip Hop rendition. “CODISTAR” goes from presenting the image of a Tufail Nazir under recovery walking out in a chapiyn (slippers) to donning a “pimp coat” within the span of a few seconds—to focus on the Hip Hop song as performance and its visuals as a projection of the digitized subject (“shakhs”). By the time Aatankki pans in with his verse at minute 1 second 37 in the music video, a multitude of Arsalan’s replicas swerve on the screen floating around from one side to the other without making it clear which one is the real one because the uttering subject produces a “shakhsiyat” (subjectivity) built on multiplicity—as if dealing with one Arsalan wasn’t enough for his adversaries.

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Official music video for CODISTAR - SOS and 30KEY! | Directed by Ednitworld

The lyricism on the “CODISTAR” track is entirely vicious and unforgiving in its delivery to the point of again presenting the notion of ‘sickness of language’ as ‘sickness of the body’ (the inherent duality and ambivalence of the pharmakon) towards the end of the track with a sound bite of a severe cough attack at minute 3 second 17. The toxicity of language cannot be contained within the body, which will break and show signs of deterioration, as is amply presented throughout TARYAQ in multiple verses. Where there is male bravado, gruesome (sick) bars, and an element of machismo—grounded in outright lyrical war and versification of unpleasantries—at the start of the album and in direct counteraction to what the duo have seen from the scene (society, adversaries, industry, label), there is also human fragility, vulnerability, purgation, loss, longing, repentance, a supplication to the Almighty and finally—healing.

Ahmer’s AZLI album comes to mind as it is a work that can be studied side by side with Dante’s Divine Comedy as the poetic voice in Ahmer’s lyrics in AZLI journeys through the hell that is Kashmiri society, the Hip Hop industry, and the dehumanizing condition of a modernity imposed on the Kashmiri subject. The soundscape of the AZLI album begins with industrial sounds, metallic and bone-crushing in their nihilistic essence, with tracks like “Gumrah” and with “Nishaan” leading the listener to a “nowhere land” surrounded by death and by the de-spiriting of the subject (“shakhs”). In engaging with the AZLI album, a listener familiar with Ahmer’s use of multiple South Asian languages, will easily decipher the triadic cantiche structure that is core to Dante’s Divine Comedy with three parts through which a soul must travel: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Heaven).

It is not until AZLI’s 12th (and technically last) track, “Shuhul Naar” (feat. Junaid Ahmed), that the theme of healing or arriving at the revival of hope emerges after tracks such as “Rov” and “Janaza (Interlude)” mark the phase of purgation or wandering in loss to the point of death till the final revival. In another paper that studies Ahmer’s AZLI album through the thematic structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy, I draw comparisons with the storyline of Dante’s narrative poem as it connects the journey of the poetic voice through Hell, Purgatory, and finally Heaven. In the first part of the Divine Comedy, Inferno (Hell), Dante inserts himself into his verses and finds himself lost in a “gloomy wood” (a forest symbolized by sin or a falling from grace) where he is attacked by a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf (beasts, or competitors-in-beef since all three of these are carnivorous). Unable to find a “via diritta” (direct way or “the pathway of the truth”), he remains stuck at the foot of a mountain, at the end of a dark valley without reaching the light of the sun (that symbolizes purification, healing and revival of hope).

While comparisons with Dante’s Divine Comedy are competent in understanding the structure and the poetic voice’s journey in Ahmer’s AZLI, the same can be observed of TARYAQ. However, both are equally comparable to the mystic’s journey or the mystic arc of transformation found in mystic poetry within Islamic, Christian and Abrahamic traditions. The mystic’s journey has five main stages, especially in the Sufi tradition:

Stage 1 — Yearning and Separation: the Mystic’s journey commences with the awareness of separation from the Divine.

Stage 2 — Awakening and Self-Realization: the call of the divine, known as the awakening, with the realization that the material world cannot suffice to fulfill the soul’s greater longing, on a terrestrial plain within the illusory nature of the material world.

Stage 3 — Purification and Trials: the Mystic goes through a process of purification (healing, remedy), which results in the breaking away from or shedding of the ego by walking on a thorny path to let go of worldly attachments.

Stage 4 — Union and Ecstasy: after going through the trials, the Mystic arrives at a state of spiritual union with the Divine (God, Almighty). In fact, when one studies Rumi (read the “Drunk with the Beloved” poem), the experience of union is described as ecstasy (wajd) and intoxication (sukr).

Stage 5 — Return of the al-Insan al-Kamil: in union with the Divine, the Mystic reaches an impossible state, that of pure consciousness and perfection, and returns to teach and spread peace in the world.

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Album art for Ahmer's AZLI | Designed by Keshav Bhugra

Ahmer’s AZLI lends itself to be studied as a journey within a dark and venomous society stemming from the modern industrial world that continues to condition Kashmiris through war, contemporary enslavement, hyper-individualism and hyper-materialism, and lateral violence resulting from centuries-old colonizations and occupations. However, past the terrestrial inquietudes from the human domain, one arrives at the approach of studying AZLI as the Mystic’s journey found within mystic poetry—particularly from Spain’s composite Islamic-Christian literary tradition and in the multicultural studies of Sufism. Towards the end, AZLI teaches that the restoration of faith requires the arduous journey towards hope, which is not necessarily at one’s reach or grasp. That possibility of arriving at hope can be found in ALIVE IN K I and II where the hellish landscape of AZLI has been crossed through a river of fire and torment to return to the roots as a form of reincarnation within ALIVE IN K I and  II—especially with II indicating a return to the innocence of a home otherwise turned into the toxic social wasteland that AZLI emerges from in its creative counteraction.

Meanwhile, TARYAQ begins at the exit gates of a lyrical warzone, with a fatigue that requires medical intervention to regroup and to reflect the ability of the SOS duo to keep on battling if it is at all necessary (as seen in “CODISTAR”). A visual of Tufail's protagonist situated in the crude reality of a hospital far from the limelight of Hip Hop stardom communicates that sometimes vulnerability is strength, giving greater validity to the merciless bars that follow as the track moves from one bar to the next. The (direct/indirect) reference to the battles in “CODISTAR” progresses into an articulate critique of society in “WALLAH”. The track exposes societal hypocrisy, and the obsession of those who are overcome by ego, narcissism and vanity as they chase materialism, its falsehoods and its dikhawat (pretense) in a social environment controlled by powerful panoptic forces. It is in this second song that Tufail in the most poetically literal manner affirms the Mystic dimension of his poetic voice, all double-entendres and references to Palestine’s national poet set aside:

Darwesh iss qalam se bana mai pehle
aur rap game mein phir thehra Mahmoud
This pen made me a mystic first
And the rap game made me endure (stand, become established) as Mahmoud
(my translation)

The liberty of interpretation that music and art offer brings us to “AFSURDA” as a sad song meditating on heartbreak, rupture, separation and longing. However, if studied as a mystic song, it could equally, verse for verse and bar for bar be about the longing of the human spirit for the Divine, in seeking the Almighty (God) if one understands the second person subject pronoun of “tu” (“you”) as addressing the “Maula” (God). The way Rumi refers to “the Beloved” in his Sufi poetry in reference to God, one can also dare re-listen to “AFSURDA” along the same lines, especially when considering that the notion of love in Sufism is so vast that the love for “the Beloved” in its purest form is the love for this universe and ascends into the spiritual plane of love for its Creator (as the ultimate form of love). After all, “AFSURDA” is a song of estrangement from “the Beloved” and a song about losing oneself and the other even when one is close to the other. It teaches not to take the other, a.k.a. “the Beloved”, for granted:

Tujhko paake kahi kho gaya tha
Phir mil saka na mai khud ko waise phir
Having found you, I lost myself somewhere
And then, I could not meet myself the same way again


(my translation)

Be it in the way of love or in the way of faith, estrangement from love and faith creates a loss of direction, a purgatory state of wandering, that is best expressed through “AWARA.” A song like “AFSURDA” where the Hip Hop warrior lowers his guard to sing the woes of the heart requires to be followed-up by a track like “BANGER”. The fact that one song follows the other in such a sequence again reminds of the ambivalence that characterizes TARYAQ, so as to show that Kashmiri Hip Hop artists can go from exploring deep emotions associated with love even to the greatest degree of sentimentality caused by heartbreak and then gather themselves to go back to lyrical war or to celebrations of self-affirmation. The Hip Hop artist that is SXR is most notably known for getting immersed all up in his feelings in certain heartbreak songs to then slaying on diss tracks as a sort of fighter and lover all in one—it depends on what the “haalaat” (conditions) require.

Finally, TARYAQ ends with two songs, one (“AWARA”) about being lost and exiled from love, and left to wander in the darkness of the world, while “MAULA” signifies that stage of the Mystic’s journey in union with God, but in this case as a beginning of that long and arduous journey away from the disillusionment caused by society, the adversities faced in a duplicitous and self-serving industry, the subjective displacement suffered from heartbreak and loss of love. Beyond such losses is an invocation of the highest power, the sublime as represented by God (“Maula”) with the track offering lyricism that is parallel to prayer and supplication. It is by such means, that TARYAQ goes from taking on a gruesome terrestrial form of self-expression to then ending up on the celestial plane with recitations of prayer through verses of Hip Hop.

The Mystic’s journey in its five stages offers a great framework to approach themes related to transformation and spiritual liberation, and easily applies to songs in other genres of Kashmiri contemporary music—take for example Alif/Muneem’s “Dilgeer” or more literally “Like a Sufi” in Muneem’s collaboration with MC Kash. Many times, the poetic voice in such songs does not project a subject-protagonist who actually goes through all five stages, some barely get there or reach certain stages but not others, because such are the ways of life and of being alive.

From being gripped by society and suffocated by its evils, the polyphony of poetic voices within TARYAQ progresses through loss, descent and pain into the domain of the universal pointing towards the direction of the Divine (the Almighty). An element of authenticity and “realness” characterizes the record and its ambivalence sheds away any pretense to the point of allowing for an introspection that is required. TARYAQ offers a message of healing and transcendence to everyone, including SOS’s adversaries and certain record label executives, because the troubles of this life are vast and healing is in universal (global) demand in these toxic post-pandemic times where antidotes in the form of artistic expression have a great role to play within contemporary culture. As such, while SOS (Straight Outta Srinagar)’s TARYAQ is almost entirely self-referential and grounded in lyricism rooted in the experience of everyday life, as a work of contemporary Hip Hop, the record holds the potential of serving an antidote to those walking side by side with SOS (Straight Outta Kashmir) and even to those getting in their way on the duo’s rise to great success and greater critical acclaim.