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Hard won
Hard Kaur
Her journey from being Taran Kaur to England’s first Brit-Asian female rapper, Hard Kaur, hasn’t been easy. Hard Kaur, who was in the Capital recently to promote her album “Supawomen” with Saregama, has endless stories t
o share. “My father died during the 1984 riots and my mother remarried with the hope of giving us a better future. We came to Birmingham City, but I guess nothing is destined to be easy for me,” she says. “My stepfather was a drunkard who abused my mother for money. One day, I came back from school and saw my mother bleeding as he had smashed her face. Something happened to me and I started beating him and told my mom that I was going to take care of her,” she recounts.
Challenges had become part of the game for this daring soul, when survival in an alien country became the foremost issue. “Kids in school called me freashie, a term used for Asian kids. Finally, I started hanging out with black girls as nobody messed with them,” she giggles. “It was in their company that I learned hip-hop.” However, rapping had its own share of tribulations for Hard Kaur, who recalls, “Rappers of Indian origin were treated like dirt.” As a girl she had even slimmer chances of being noticed by the music companies. “I shaved my hair and donned a tomboy look so that people start taking me seriously. The Sikh community abandoned me saying Sikhs don’t crop their hair,,” she says. The real problem was with the kind of music she was making. “Nobody wanted to listen to depressing issues like racism, domestic violence and global warming. It was then that I came up with ‘Gallasi’ with Sona family. See, the moment you add booze and balle balle to the song, it sells like a hot cake,” she quips. Nonetheless, she doesn’t consider “Gallasi” her best work as she came up with lyrics in 15 minutes. With “Supawomen” climbing the music charts and Bollywood offers in her kitty, the sun shines brighter for the rapper.
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