Features: India’s Gangsta Girl....Hard Kaur

Features: India’s Gangsta Girl....Hard Kaur
(NSI News Source Info) November 14, 2008: The spunky lass, who grew up watching Bollywood movies, is now a part of it.
She is the first-ever female Sikh rapper and her songs are featured in hit Bollywood movies such as Singh Is Kinng. But Britain-based Hard Kaur had to overcome a mountain of objections to get where she is today.
“Some of the Asian community was not happy as this has never been done before by an Indian girl, but I wanted to prove that we women were not here just to cook, clean and make babies,” the 29-year-old Indian tells The Straits Times in an e-mail interview.
The spunky lass, whose real name is Taran Kaur Dhillon, was born in Uttar Pradesh, India. She relocated to England with her mother after her father was killed in the riots triggered by the assassination of former prime minister Indira Ghandi in 1984. “I hardly knew how to speak any English and was bullied at school,” she recalls of her early days in Birmingham.
"And now being a part of it and being respected is the biggest buzz."
But her poor grasp of the language did not stop her from falling in love with hip-hop culture and the works of her favourite rap stars such as Nas, Guru and KRS1.
“The rappers were saying what they wanted to, wearing what they wanted to, and I thought it was great. It was a form of street art and it gave rappers a voice to tell stories of people’s struggles. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could do the same,” she says.
Besides female empowerment and partying, she also tackles social issues such as women’s rights and domestic violence in English, Punjabi and Hindi songs.
She built her reputation by performing at open-mic events and challenging other rappers in ad-libbed freestyle ‘battles’.
In 1995, she started releasing her own singles, which were warmly received by the Asian music fraternity in England. Last year, she released her debut album, Supawoman, which a BBC reviewer described as “an energetic offering from a gifted singer/songwriter”.
Not long after that, she played at major festivals like Glastonbury and opened shows for pop stars such as Justin Timberlake and superstar producer Pharrell of The Neptunes.
Bollywood came a-calling last year and the producers of the movie Johnny Gaddaar used her songs in the soundtrack. Other movies such as Kismat Konnection, Ugly Aur Pagli and Bachna Ae Haseeno also featured her songs, boosting her popularity among Indians around the world.
“I grew up watching the Bollywood films and admiring the stars. And now being a part of it and being respected is the biggest buzz. Especially for my mum, now that she sees me hanging out with the stars themselves,” she says. (By EDDINO ABDUL HADI In Singapore/ The Straits Times/ AsiaNews)