There is something about records that use storytelling to create a musical landscape suited to the narrative they are going for — and Baijoo Bawra’s debut album, Baijnaath, is one of them. A few months ago, when I had interviewed him, he had stated, “Baijnaath is our protagonist, he is a really balanced person. However, there is this conflict within him — he has this “gangster-esque” persona too. There are a lot of people around him, some are good, some are bad. Also, he might be from Noida. The primary reason is, I am from Noida, I was born here – hence it will have some extremely region-specific characteristics. The album has been in the works for almost a year and a half. I have added and removed tracks over time, I have learned new things. I focus on both lyrics and production. Firstly, I take on production. Lyrics are very important to me. Writing becomes very boring for me if I keep writing about the same stuff : that I have fallen in love, that I have done a few shows — I only find it interesting when I am talking about my kind of stuff. It is a lyrically heavy album. For me, I think it is necessary for the madness to get an outlet. Today, I am making music, tomorrow I might go and take an exam for a government job, I might get training for the military. As I said, it is more about the outlet for me,” — now with the release of the album, one gets to see that vision translate into a tangible album that has the quality of an anthology, or an oral history project.
The album begins with Babu Pistol, which is accompanied with an official video. Right from the start of this project, one can easily make an obvious incision into the artist’s brain and see how visual his entire line of thought is. Babu Pistol is gritty, cut-throat, and has the construction of a chase sequence, as “Ek kahaani toh sunte huye jaa, bohot samay pehle” transposes into echoing distorted yells of Baijnaath. A few minutes into the record, and it is revealed how almost every track is a story, with its own characters — and they are mostly delivered with bitterness, tongue-in-cheek humor, with the artist snickering. Surrounded by an air of grimy suspicion, something far away from clean, arthouse music-making but leaning on themes drawn from something out of B-Grade Bollywood, using metaphors and arcs weaponising plot-twist endings — this album is a reflection on the artist’s personality as well as his strength as someone who is in control of his vision for what he wants his project to be : in this case, a folklore of his own, with the folk being the multiple people he bases these stories on, and the lore drawn out of all the places that he has been in, and his perception of Noida — elusive, mysterious, and banal, all at once.
With characters like Bilaal, Monty Shankar, Vivek, Ayush, Ranisa, and the eponymous Baijnaath – the artist has created a universe of his own. The presence of these characters is also proof of the artist’s filmic thinking. Almost every track follows a chain of events, and sometimes it does border on becoming slightly tiring, but Baijoo keeps the album at a tight length of 23 minutes and 39 seconds, which prevents the project from becoming difficult to follow or too muddled with its individual plotlines. The track Ranisa almost functions as an interlude of sorts, although the second last on the album – it features Darzi, one of the artist’s frequent collaborators, and evidences some of the best lyricism on the record : “Ab khoju sirf teri hasi ka taaj/Tu firdaus naa teri chaahat mohtaj/Mahal ka raja jisko bol le tu khandar uska.”. However, the undoubted standout is Baijnaath, the closing number, in terms of production and vocal delivery — one can also see the mental mapping finally coming full circle on this in terms of building the legend around this project.
Tales of pimps and cheating grooms-to-be, Noida roads, drunken hysterics, a plundering king, an evanescent queen and the sexual and romantic exploits of uncles and nephews. interweaved with the artist’s palettes of jazz, rock, and synth-y electronic music forms a cohesive album that entertains you right from the start. Although the essence of the project is primarily hip-hop, one can cut through its layers, and see the multiplicity of influences that form Baijnaath as a record, it is as much literary in its composition as sonic. It would be interesting to see the artist to further develop his universe of sleaze and grit, do more with characters, move ahead of conclusive plot twists, while also imbibing the soundscapes with more ambitious, elaborate, dramatic production, that he shows hints of in tracks like Mehfil. There is promise in this album, and with overtones of intriguing multidisciplinary-ity, making one curious about the prospects of all that the artist could do in the next project.
