Armed with brazen rhymes and catchy hooks, a new tribe of hip-hop artists emerging from the South Asian diaspora is using the power of conscious rap to challenge preconceived notions of identity (across race, class and gender lines), and fearlessly speaking of diversity and egalitarianism to a world that remains marked up like a Pantone shade card. GQ speaks with three first-gen American and Canadian rappers who are keeping things real, #nofrontin'

Anik Khan, New York

The first time Anik Khan encountered hip-hop was in the early Nineties, when his older sister came home with "one of her jeans rolled up like LL Cool J." Soon after, he says, "I was with my father at a Bengali market [in New York] and in the midst of all the Bengali cassettes, there was one that drew my attention: It's Dark And Hell Is Hot by DMX. I bought a Walkman, and got completely addicted." Soon, says the 29-year-old emcee, "I found Nas - and felt like he was my voice from the borough." He hasn't looked back since.

Khan is a Bangladeshi-American born in Dhaka and raised in Queens since the age of four, after his father (a poet and freedom fighter in the Liberation War of 1971) switched continents in pursuit of "better prospects". In Khan's case, that translated not just into access to a better education, but also exposure to the cultural melting pot that is Queens.

"It forced me to be around cultures I'd never heard of before, and learn about them," says Khan. "Eat their food, listen to their music. In the house were my conservative Bengali parents, and outside there were the homies who taught me about how things work. My friend circle was like the United Nations."

This multiculturalism is what gives his music its cosmopolitan, "resident of the world" flavour - most evident on his 2017 LP Kites, which he describes as "the soundtrack of New York City. Hip-hop that likes to travel." The album opens with his sister talking about gratitude; then, a train screeching to a halt, before you dive into an AR Rahman sample from "Jiya Jale" for the opening track "Cleopatra".

On "Columbus", which Khan made to take back the "tired" narrative that surrounds the founder of America, he raps: "America was made from black backs and brown shoulders/ Yellow and beige arms, we brought culture/ We brought order, we brought fortune, we crossed oceans and taught for ya." It ends with his father reciting Priyotomanshu, a poem about war and longing, by the famous Bengali author Sukanta Bhattacharya. In America's current political climate - characterised by "ignorance and a severe lack of understanding from those who don't come from the same communities" - it hits all the right notes.

Throw in a little Diwali riddim, soul jazz samples and some boom bap, and you could call Kites a Nas-esque "genesis" for Khan, where he fuses his own story with the environment he's a product of: This culture of all cultures. Since Kites arrived last May, Khan has travelled across the US, performing solo and support acts (for the Swet Shop Boys and the American-Nigerian rapper Jidenna), spouting rhymes about the immigrant experience - warts and all - often sporting a gold jersey emblazoned with "Mashallah Mafia". He remembers a fan telling him, "I finally have someone who looks and talks like me." But it isn't just the colour of his skin and the accent. "People thank me for providing them with music they've been waiting for their whole lives," Khan recalls. "That's wild to me."

Noyz, Brampton, Toronto

Amrit Singh is often told his music "doesn't sound Punjabi enough." And he's tired of hearing that he should, maybe, add some Indian instruments to his beats, or rap in Punjabi. "If someone like Big Pun could rap about being Puerto Rican without having to rap in Spanish," says Singh, "why can't we have a Punjabi rapper who loves being Punjabi but translates it through [English] rap music?"

Singh, who goes by the moniker MC Noyz, has been a part of the Greater Toronto Area's underground hip-hop circuit for over a decade. His rap - as in the popular track "Degrees Of Freedom" - combines cerebral lyrics with melodies and beats reminiscent of a Nineties-era Wu-Tang Clan: more jazzy, more synth-heavy, more "hood" than Bollyhood. Growing up in Malton, a small neighbourhood right by Toronto's international airport, might have something to do with this.

"A lot of immigrants who arrived in Malton - from the Caribbean, South Asia, East Asia, Africa - worked labour jobs in factories, or drove cabs or trucks," Singh says. "Most of us grew up in multi-generational households. I feel that my generation wants to accomplish things worthy of the sacrifices our parents made."

In 2016, a cypher in Brampton put together by California-based online hip-hop movement TeamBackPack, featuring a visibly diverse crew of rappers, went viral on YouTube. Noyz took the mic after Pryde, a Brampton-based emcee of Filipino descent. "You call 'em refugees, I call 'em survivors," he speed rapped. "The irony of ya colonisers deny immigrants, right?"

He speaks about the experiences his parents had coming to Canada, his journey growing up in the West and "not really fitting in" - all things he dwells upon on his forthcoming album Lo Fi Glory. Another project, Movin' Cool, a collaborative effort with Norway-based rapper B Magic, which he describes as "a great balance of conscious rap and ignorant music," is as provocative as it is danceable. But besides all the freestylin' and stage time at big arts and tech festivals like SXSW, Singh also deploys hip-hop's curative powers to counter the global epidemic that is depression.

A mental health advocate by day, Noyz has created an interactive workshop where "people can use rap as a vehicle to express themselves," by writing and performing poetry in closed groups, with the ultimate goal to feel less isolated. And, crucially, to battle the stigma that exists around mental health in South Asian families. "A listener once sent me an email about how my song 'Happy' stopped her from attempting suicide," Singh says. "It showed me that these words have weight, and the way people connect through music can be surreal."

Raja Kumari, Mumbai/Los Angeles

"Growing up in America in the Nineties, we'd watch Gwen Stefani wearing bindis and shooting music videos in auto rickshaws, absolutely in awe of this culture, mostly because she was smitten with Tony [Kanal]." Svetha Rao rolls her eyes. "And for some reason, that was the best chance for us diaspora kids to see ourselves in pop culture." Which is why Raja Kumari, as Rao is known these days, literally wears her Indianness on her sleeve, pairing gold temple jewellery with oversized denim jackets and sweatpants. Her look, like her music, is meant to convey the essence of her being: A fusion of cultures, of Telugu-Indian and American heritage, of hip-hop and Hindustani classical art, influenced as much by AR Rahman as by Beyonc?.

Hailing from a family of doctors and lawyers who migrated to LA in the Sixties, Rao was a prodigious dancer - she performed Kathak, Bharatanatyam and Odissi for large audiences in the US and India in her childhood, once raising enough money to build a hospital wing in Bengaluru. Yet, by the time she hit adolescence, she'd begun to feel it too: that sentiment of "not wanting to show your culture outside because it made you different." She found answers in The Fugees' The Score. "The miseducation of Lauryn Hill was my education," Rao says. "The rhythms of rap felt similar to the jathis and taals of Carnatic music. Hip-hop felt like a bridge."

Rao went on to make a successful career in song-writing, with credits for pop anthems by Iggy Azalea, Fall Out Boy, Fifth Harmony and, yes, Gwen Stefani, and a ?BMI Pop Award to boot. Having a ringside seat to the American pop music-manufacturing industry meant watching her own "culture being put on like a costume."

Later, when Rao was ready to release her own music, and signed to Epic Records, she decided to go hip-hop. "They wanted me to be a Meghan Trainor," she recalls, "But I gave them: Thought that the curry was soup/ I had ?to feed these fools/ Had to go home and regroup/ I'm running back with the goons."

Mute, Raja Kumari's debut EP, arrived at the end of 2016 as an independent release, her face draped with the American flag and that ubiquitous gold jewellery on the cover. She moved to Mumbai soon after and collaborated with local gully rap hero Divine.

"I get these messages from girls in America, saying: 'My little sister wanted to begin ballet class and I sent her your music video and she started Bharatanatyam today.' ?I just want be relevant, to be able to represent this beautiful culture of ours," shares Kumari. "So that being different is an option."

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