Base Notes: Vivian Fernandez aka gully rapper MC Divine

“Hip-hop is about your own struggles. When you don’t write your own lyrics, it’s not really hip-hop. Also, struggles do not comprise so many tiresome parties with cars, bikes and women. Now, do they?” he quips, about the Chaar bottle vodkas and Blue eyes that exist. The rapper is referred to as the “Slumdog Millionaire of Sahar” by his fans.

It was in school that Fernandez first heard hip hop. “I saw a classmate wearing a 50 Cent t-shirt. I didn’t know who he was, so my friend gave me a CD with some 500 songs — all hip hop. At first, I couldn’t understand a word, so I read the lyrics online. I was in love,” he says. While his heart was set on studying sound engineering, his mother couldn’t afford the tuition fee, and gifted her son a microphone. “It became my best friend,” he says.

Obsessed with gospel rap at first, so much so that he called himself “Divine” on stage, Fernandez started rapping in English. Soon, he shifted to Hindi to “break the language barrier”. It’s been a while since he’s been rapping but he came under the limelight only last year when his song Mere gully mein with MC Naezy went viral. It earned him a place in the list of Top 6 artistes to watch out for in 2016 by the BBC Asian Network. “They thought I could change the scene for Hindi rap,” says he.

Signed by Sony Music, he was invited by bass sensation Nucleya to be a part of his album Bass Rani and open for international dubstep star Skrillex, alongside him last year. “I want to talk about my Mumbai, the alleys where I grew up playing football bare feet, as the only pair of shoes I had was kept aside for when I had to go to Church,” says the artiste. On April 30, he will perform at BBC’s