“Whether he’s gone or he’s come back, he’s always there”
Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous is a delve into the rise, fall, and staying power of a superstar. The Mozez Singh directorial captures the main ingredient in Honey Singh’s concoction for ubiquity, his duality. Anyone raised on mainstream Indian pop culture could resonate with parts of this documentary. His hits act as timestamps in the trajectory of our lives; he represented a counterculture within the mainstream.
His music has always had a tinge of ambitions which often shot towards the West, sometimes manifesting explicitly in his lyrics, such as “Mere liye dua karo/ Grammy le aaunga” (“Pray for me, I’ll bring back a Grammy”), in “Isse Kehte Hai Hip Hop” (2014). The documentary details his journey, beginning with incorporating the dhol sound associated with his roots in Punjab and his home in Karampura, Delhi.
“This is my hood,” he claims as the camera follows him into his neighbourhood dhaba. His family speaks of raising him on Mohammed Rafi and R.D. Burman as clips of Singh playing the flute and the sitar while donning outfits reminiscent of Bronx streetwear float by.
The documentary often sneaks into the studio and captures the electricity Singh poured into his early hits such as “Glassy” (2005) with Ashok Mitra. Singh speaks about how, when he started producing and writing music, no one would sing on his work because it was too “urban”. His journey truly began when he began embodying this style, unacknowledged as being heavily influenced by Black Americans, and performing his own work.
‘Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous’ (English, Hindi)
Director: Mozez Singh
Cast: Hirdesh Singh aka Yo Yo Honey Singh
Run-time: 80 minutes
Storyline: The rise, fall and re-emergence of controversial Indian rap icon Honey Singh
Music journalist Bhanuj Kappal steps in and recounts the trajectory of sonic experimentation, with dhol, gangsta rap, and party rap, until he found his space within the “international sound”, resulting in “Brown Rang” (2011), one of his biggest hits.
This was the sound that gave him an inroad to Bollywood. His sound went on to shape a major element in Bollywood’s latest formula for creating hits; a rap verse. “Party All Night”, “Mein Sharaabi” and “Lungi Dance” seeped party culture into the skeleton of every hit Bollywood soundtrack.
Singh explains that these images and lyrics of partying came from the Western media he consumed. He cites Enrique Iglesias’ “Tonight (I’m F*****’ You)” as inspiring the music video for one of his classic hits, “Dope Shope”. He recalls the image of Iglesias on a yacht, kissing two girls. This imagery seems to have formed the basis of the worldview conveyed in his music.
One of the more intimate moments of the documentary shows Singh drinking at his home with his friends, singing along to “Din Mein Leti Hai” from the 1994 Akshay Kumar starrer, Amaanat. The song is filled to the brim with innuendos alluding to sexuality, which is typically shunned from conversation in Indian households but sung out loud in the vessel of a good tune.
“This is f***ing Indian music,” Singh says with a laugh, “why to blame motherf*****g Yo Yo Honey Singh only?”
Around this point is where the film verges into sounding like a defence case.
Honey Singh’s appeal lies in his emulation of Western hip-hop aesthetics; his popularity stems from the average Indian’s oppressed lust and desire for opulence in a manner that mimics the Western cultural hegemon.
The documentary features clips of fans on the streets of Mumbai admitting to seeing the misogynoir in his music but ignoring it due to “bachpan ka pyaar” (their childhood love for Singh).
The film forays into how his music was cited as “why rapes still happen in India”, in light of the Nirbhaya incident in 2012. Interview clips show Singh maintaining that he continues portraying women through a misogynistic lens despite these controversies because it was how he was raised and that “people like it”.
Kappal brings up a valid argument against this reasoning: “Are you an artist or are you a supplier?”
Despite this acknowledgement of how his music is perceived, the topic is dropped without further exploration or an update on how he plans to make art with these ideas in mind.
His sister, Sneha Singh, mediates a lot of how the documentary speaks about women; this is at its most apparent when she speaks about Singh’s ex-wife, Shalini Talwar, alleging in court that Singh abused her, and eventually dropped her charges.
Rug-pushing aside, Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous shines brightest when Singh discusses his struggles with bipolar disorder. His symptoms and his regulated sobriety are spoken about in an informed but palpable way, acknowledged as a debilitating illness, but one that can be regulated. This is the documentary at its most human and relatable, despite the rarity of a condition such as bipolar disorder.
Sparks of this vulnerability can be felt in scenes of Singh discussing his weight gain, denying himself food, and talking about how he needs to stay fit for the sake of his fans, who are waiting for him to “come back” from being “fat”, a side-effect of his bipolar medication.
Music documentaries, specifically about people at Singh’s stage of fame, hardly exist to document the essence of the music put out or the people behind it. More often than not, they exist to shift narratives.
This front of authenticity, evoked by scenes of Singh at the fireside speaking about the truth he found in the idea of death, falters when the viewer realises that not once in its 80-minute runtime does Singh get called by his actual name, Hirdesh Singh. The front withers further with every mention of Singh’s inevitable “comeback” into the mainstream.
The documentary ends with Singh saying that he wants to keep going for the people have not who forgotten him, after his exit from the mainstream, and expressing his eventual goal of sitting in a studio beside Dr Dre, who has also been accused of violence against women. So this begs the question: does Yo Yo Honey Singh’s need to come back for his people only apply to his male fans?
Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous is currently streaming on Netflix
Published – December 20, 2024 06:49 pm IST