Eminem always claimed he inspired a generation of white Americans to dive headfirst into hip-hop, but we're guessing he still doesn't realize the impact he's made in India.
The Times of India recently published a story about The Indian Rap League, a "chatting app" that features 40 members from across the country who bust rhymes with each other.
According to the story:
Hip hop, as an art form, has been around for years. But in India, it became popular after rapper Eminem hit international the music scene in a big way, so much so that many kids aspired to be like him and tried rapping.
Slim Shady pops up again later in the piece, when female rapper Harshitha Shashidhar calls herself a big Eminem fan.
"Hip hop has to be promoted in regional language as well," she says. "There are several crews in Bangalore, and in ours, we rap in Kannada, English, Hindi and Tamil. I find it easier to rap in Kannada as it is easier to rhyme words."
Fellow countryman Shubhankar Das (a.k.a. Rapper Zombii) decided to write lyrics after going through some painful relationship issues. He also likes Kannada dialect.
"If you have to rap in Kannada, you can use words like gotilla, madilla, yetilla, etc.," he explains. "The suffix illa stays the same, and you just prefix different words. It is the same with Hindi, in which you can rhyme words like gaya, khaya, soya, etc. But English words are very different, so it's not as easy to get rhyming lyrics."
Don't look now, but a whole legion of Indian rappers might be hitting the charts in five years.
"One needs to practice to get better at rapping, which is why we have what we call rap cipher, by which one person raps after another," Akshay Solanki says. "We even go to malls in a group, form a large circle and take turns to rap. This helps us train and that's how we get better. This happens once or twice a month at a randomly chosen place."
