Meet Param, ‘That Girl’ from Punjab whose single is blowing up Internet

This song, which is blowing up the Internet right now, is by 19-year-old rapper and singer Paramjeet Kaur, who goes by the moniker Param, and is based in Duneke, a sleepy village in Punjab’s Moga. Produced by British record producer Manni Sandhu, the track has been backed by an independent record label, named Collab Creations, shot in Mohali and made without the help of industry heavyweights.

Interestingly, the song was recorded in an Airbnb in Punjab during Sandhu’s recent India visit. He began to play some keys and Param began layering the first verse.

“We did not record this track in an expensive studio. There was no acoustic treatment… you could hear cars outside, but still, the vocals were extremely crisp. Honestly, after 15 years in the game, experiences like this only happen now and again. Within 10 minutes, we had the vibe of the song down,” Sandhu says in a video he put out on Instagram on Monday.

Sandhu took these vocals back to his studio in the UK, added some final touches and asked his friends, Dilsher Singh and Khurpal Singh, who call themselves Tru Makers, to shoot the music video. “This was simply down to raw talent, That’s it,” adds Sandhu, who was born in West London and raised in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

What has earned Param the spotlight is not just the raw energy in her voice, but also her authentic tone, powerful singing and a challenge to the typical trope of a Punjabi woman singer who often sings folk or pop. In the hyper-masculine rap scene of Punjab, where women are often reduced to props in music videos, Param isn’t doing the emceeing in street vernacular — she has composed the track and is singing with all the lung power she can muster.

“There are many women in Punjab singing pop music. But Param is quite unique because she is one of a kind. There aren’t any women rappers in Punjab rapping in Punjabi. She is the first one in the ‘Gully Boy’ space. I think she will go a long way,” says Satvinder Singh Kohli, managing director, Speed Records, the region’s biggest music company that releases over 200 songs annually and is responsible for launching musicians like Honey Singh and Satinder Sartaj.

In Param’s case, what makes her even more interesting is that her swagger isn’t ripped off — it is her own and is born out of a struggle to survive.

Growing up in Duneke, where her mother works as house help and her father is a daily-wage labourer, Param got interested in rap when she was in Class 10 at the village’s government high school.

Her interest in music surged when she took music as a subject at DM College in Moga. “She wasn’t a great singer in school, but became better and better over time,” 19-year-old Jashanpreet Singh aka ‘Saab’, who has written the additional lyrics of ‘That Girl’ with Param, told The Indian Express.

“Param already had the first verse in place. For this song, we sat down with Manni Sandhu paaji and then wrote the rest of it,” he says.

On this stage name ‘Saab’, Jashanpreet said he chose it because the honorific title used in the subcontinent, for him, implied “that you had become something”. He adds, “Another reason was Sidhu Moosewala’s song ‘Saab’, where he says Lab ke naukri tu saab ban ja (Find a job and become a saheb).”

In college, Saab and Param would jam with others — boys and girls from college interested in hip-hop in Moga’s Dana Mandi, the local traditional grain market that came with a large open space — and indulge in freestyle rap to create reels. These reels eventually went on Saab’s page, named ‘Malwa Hood’ with the username ‘cypher.pb29’. While 29 is Moga’s pin code, cypher internationally refers to an official gathering of rappers where they vibe together and bounce energy off of each other to create freestyle verses.

The Dana Mandi is where Param’s melodic hip-hop was first “discovered” on Instagram. Her style was gritty, the notes straight as an arrow, and every bar had a certain attitude and power. “Girls around us aren’t into the cypher culture. Her reels really worked on our page,” says Saab.

On her own Instagram page, Param would often record herself holding a guitar and singing songs — mostly by Satinder Sartaj and Sidhu Moosewala — alone on her unplastered terrace.

In ‘That Girl’, Param talks about not needing anyone and carrying a gun in her bag. She also drops a reference to Jeona Morh — a Robinhood-like figure in Punjabi folklore who was born into a poor family but was known for being the champion of the oppressed: “Jatti kalli hi batheri na hi chahida Sahara… Muh di mitthi hoke hallan mainu lorh nai/ Ve main Anakh Aa Paa Lyi Jeone Morh Jahyi (This Jatti is enough on her own, I don’t need support… I don’t need to be sweet-tongued to get by/ I have adopted the pride of Jeona Morh).”

Off the microphone or the cyphers she attends, Param is just another girl from a village. Her voice softens as she talks of becoming a musician so she can build a “proper house” for her parents. “I just want to support my family. I want to build a really nice house for my parents. I want them to sit at home and just relax,” says Param in a BBC Punjabi documentary on Moga’s rap scene.

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