Urban Buddha, the moniker of Mumbai filmmaker and musician Kshitij Singh Rawat, has been bubbling under the radar for a minute, blending roots music with contemporary hip hop. Known for crafting grounded, character-driven stories, Rawat’s latest drop is easily his most ambitious yet. It’s a dual-headed audiovisual project featuring a short film called Guddu Ki Duniya and its musical sibling, the EP Guddu Ke Gaane.
Set against a gritty, real-world urban backdrop, the film tracks Guddu, a 17-year-old high schooler trapped in the modern hyper-masculinity matrix. Convinced that he needs to become an “independent adult mard” to earn respect, the film follows his psychological tailspin over three chapters. Instead of acting as a basic background score, the EP serves as Guddu’s literal inner monologue, capturing all the quiet anxieties, fake bravado, and eventual regret that a camera lens can’t quite catch.
This sonic journey kicks off by leaning into classic, sample-driven hip hop. It relies on dusty loops, crisp boom-bap drums, and a nostalgic grit that puts you right there in Guddu’s everyday school-life environment. Lyrically, the opening bars establish his baseline as just a regular 12th-grader dealing with peer pressure. The pen game here is incredibly relatable, capturing the casual, conversational slang of a teenager standing on the edge of adulthood, totally unaware of the heavy mental toll of the identity he’s trying to force on himself.
As Guddu starts chasing clout and validation, the jazz-leaning textures begin to sour, introducing a subtle, uneasy dissonance. The groove stays infectious, but the instrumentation gets more fractured to signal his growing internal chaos. Collaborators shauharty and MC Kode are deployed perfectly here, bringing an urgent, underground rap energy that feels like the chaotic external voices feeding Guddu’s ego. Lyrically, this phase cuts straight to the performance art that is modern masculinity, showing how Guddu distances himself from who he really is just to buy into a toxic blueprint of adulthood.
The project reaches its peak with a massive sonic shift where the sample loops fade out to make room for a live, instrument-led setup. Driven by Aron Nyiro’s dynamic drumming, the arrangement opens up into a sweeping, blues-rock landscape with heavy, expressive guitars that carry the emotional weight of a full-blown identity crisis. Lyrically, Guddu is finally forced to face the wreckage of his choices. The writing shifts from street-level bars to a super vulnerable, raw exploration of losing yourself, delivering a heavy dose of reality right when the illusion of being a “tough guy” completely shatters.
Guddu Ke Gaane hits differently as an EP because it refuses to just be a side-piece to the film. As a standalone project, it flows beautifully, using a smart sonic arc that mirrors a real human breakdown, moving from the comfort of structured hip hop to the wild, unpredictable emotion of live blues and jazz. This project marks a major turning point for Urban Buddha, proving he’s moving away from just making tracks and stepping into the role of a true storyteller creating immersive worlds for the Indian indie scene.
