This week You! features Eva B, the first female rapper from Lyari, Karachi...
city girl
This week You! features Eva B, the first female rapper from Lyari, Karachi...
Lyari is notorious for its gang wars, guns and violence. However, there’s one more thing Lyari has produced in abundance: talent. And one of those talents is rap.
In 2010, a group of young boys who met online came together to share their lyrical skills and talent to form a hip-hop rap group, ‘Boyz in da Hood’. Today, the group goes by the name ‘Lyari Underground’. The group initially made Balochi Rap that gained popularity within their vicinity of Kalakot, Lyari. However, the group hit it big with their song ‘Lyari Underground’. The Balochi rap hit the market with a storm becoming a household name in the world of rap.
“We hid our identities until 2015 after which we finally came out in public. The reason behind this camouflage was the fear of gangsters in Lyari. Had these gangs known our real identities they would have had forced us to make songs for them ridiculing other gangs. We rap because we want to become representatives of our locality. We use our rap to condemn violence and instil peace in our community,” revealed DJ Khalifa.
Recently, another rapper from Lyari who has taken the hip hop market in the city by surprise is the female rapper, producing rap under the pseudonym Eva B. Eva has been rapping for the last five years with her cousin Meer, who is also a rapper. However, her first song came out earlier this year titled ‘Gully Girls’, a female rendition of the famous ‘Apna Time Ayega’ from the movie ‘Gully Boy’. The song roared in the market because of its lyrics that are every girl’s questions to the society that doesn’t let her grow. The song’s opening lyrics are “Jab zindagi apni hay to marzi doosron ki kyun”.
Along with her name, Eva chose to hide her identity from the world as well. She raps with her veil on, and thus has been nicknamed as the ‘Secret Super Star of Karachi’ by Fifi Haroon, a reporter at BBC.
“The first time I heard rap, I was 14. At first, I couldn’t decipher a word because rap is really fast. I instantly fell in love with this style of music. At that time, I didn’t even know this was called rap. My cousin Meer told me about it and explained the entire science behind it. In the truest sense, my journey kick-started from there. I would download entire albums of Eminem and Tupac Shakur and memorise entire lyrics even if I didn’t understand a word,” Eva reminisced.
For Eva, the journey was way tougher and challenging as compared to many other rappers in the city. She blames her gender for this struggle. When Eva discovered her true potential as a rapper, the first hurdle she faced was a downright boycott from her family.
“When I told my family that I wanted to rap, my father and my brothers instantly said no. They told me that rapping would bring nothing but disgrace to the family. Demotivated, I gave in to them and decided not to pursue this passion. It was Meer who talked to my parents and my siblings. He actually persuaded my family for allowing me to rap. However, I couldn’t use my real name nor could I reveal my identity,” said the rapper.
Eva got her first song on ‘Patari’ which she performed for Zari Faisal. Making a track independently is very difficult for Eva due to the lack of resources in her locality. Lyari does not have any recording studios; all Eva has are few apps on her phone like FL Studio and Beatwave that give her a standard beat on which she can place her lyrics and rap.
While shedding light on the obstacles she faced before her first track, Eva told us, “The first single I did for Patari was a difficult one. I had written the lyrics but rapping on a beat without any technical help was like a nightmare. With zero options left, I recorded my song sitting inside my cupboard on a mobile phone. It was tough, but we somehow worked it out.”
In the brief time she started rapping, Eva has garnered a fair number of fans following from both genders. Socially active, Eva makes sure she remains in touch with her fans through Facebook and Instagram live chats. In all these interactions, Eva comes across one question repeatedly; when will you reveal your face and identity to us?
“As far as my real name is concerned, I know for a fact that I can’t hide it for a long period of time. However, my veil is something I would never give up. No matter wherever I go or whatever I do. My veil is something I like to keep close to me. As a rapper, there are few things that become a part of one’s personality; it becomes the rapper’s identity. For me, that thing is my veil. I want people to know me for my lyrics, and my veil keeps that element alive for me,” concluded Eva.
Photography by S. M. Ali Zaidi & Shehzad Muhammad Ali
“Hip-hop is a powerful form of protest music that can help spread awareness on why people are frustrated,” said Virinder Kalra, a sociology professor at the Manchester University who has extensively researched on South Asian music and culture.
The wave of hip hop music has taken a leap among the youth of Pakistan. Although rap has thrived for more than three decades, it was the Bollywood movie Gully Boy that played a vital role in reigniting this passion in the youth. Rap, like any other art form, is a medium of expression. It’s called the language of the rebellious and the outcasts. From the starting point of its ongoing history, hip hop music or rap, as it has become known, has confronted different impediments. At first, rap was considered as a passing prevailing fashion, an energiser and for a brief period, a dark social structure that steamed off the melodic energies of urban, dark-minded teenagers. As it ended, it became clear that rap was digging in for the long haul, a perpetual apparatus in a dark ghetto youth’s melodic scene, the responses changed from rejection to denigration, and rap music went under assault from both high contrast quarters. Rap, was certainly here to stay. Most people attracted to rap are youth. In Pakistan, rap has enjoyed a rise over the last ten years, with groups and solo artists emerging every now and then. Some of the household names in the rap industry of Karachi are Talha Anjum and Talha Yunus (Young Stunners), Faris Shafi, Lyari Underground, Burhan and Sami and several others.
