Dub Sharma

In early 2016, Chandigarh-based producer Siddharth Sharma aka Dub Sharma released a track called “Azadi” which sampled a speech made by student-activist Kanhaiya Kumar and followed it up with a blog post that was titled ‘I hope my song dies’. In it, Sharma hoped that people saw the song in its right context.

Nearly three years on, there is an actual new context to “Azadi” thanks to Sharma’s involvement with hip-hop Bollywood film Gully Boy, which releases on February 14 and has a soundtrack that features India’s rap talent across 18 tracks. Interestingly, Sharma says over an email interview that the film soundtrack’s music supervisor, singer-songwriter Ankur Tewari, got in touch with Sharma after hearing “Azadi”. Sharma recounts, “It sounded absolutely interesting to me but honestly, I had no idea how far it could go. Then I met Ankur Tewari and (Gully Boy director) Zoya Akhtar for a listening session. I played all that I had in works at that time and that opened way for some more tracks.”