Jaan Nachdi - Sevaqk (2022)

Euphoric, slapping Punjabi drum and bass by a producer normally known for UK rap that caught me by complete surprise. Ideal for adding energy to your day or car cruising at night

When rapper Mist first pierced mainstream recognition in June 2016 with his anthem Karla’s Back, my friend and I were hanging out on a Friday evening watching YouTube music videos on a second hand HD projector that I’d bought from eBay.

The algorithm blasted the video huge onto my living room wall. Its euphoric production quality combined with Mist’s Midlands accent and bold, cheeky lyricism meant that it would end up as one of my most played song’s of the year, a memorable shift in the power mapping of UK rap, as artists from cities outside of London started making bigger waves than ever before.

It was the first time I came across Mist, but also the song’s two producers, Steel Banglez and Sevaqk. Mist’s use of Punjabi in his lyrics, reflecting the south Asian locale of his Birmingham upbringing was a win for multicultural representation in British hip-hop. The fact that Steel Banglez and Sevakq both have Punjabi heritage, too, made even more sense.

I later interviewed Steel Banglez for the Complex US music platform Pigeons & Planes whilst eating dinner with him at Tayyabs, the famous karahi house in Whitechapel, east London, in the summer of 2018. By then he’d become the hottest producer in UK rap (he recently released his latest album, One Day It Will All Make Sense, on Nas’s Mass Appeal label).

Banglez explained that for songs like Karla’s Back and his other hits, he’d slowed down the core elements of UK garage to make them catchy and dance floor-friendly. To do so, he’d taken inspiration from DJ Mustard’s method of doing the same thing with Chicago house music to make US rap beats.

In one line of Karla’s Back, Mist goes: ‘Just made a banger with Sevaqk’ - shouting out the second producer on the song. For a time, this line would go on to become Sevaqk’s tagline. I followed him on YouTube and Spotify and later recognised his name on various rap tunes over subsequent years, from Chip’s Marijuana to Mist’s Let It Breath.

Then out of nowhere he dropped Jaan Nachdi — ‘jaan’ means life or soul, and ‘nachdi’ means dancing, in Punjabi — in 2022. It is an epic, drum and bass roller with relentless, machine gun drums which sound subtly inspired by the thwacks on the edge of a dhol, and impassioned vocals from Santokh Singh.

It’s a rare thing to hear such slapping, crisp dnb fused so authentically with south Asian elements, especially in more recent years (this type of hybrid experimentation was big in the 1990s/2000s after the birth of the Asian Underground movement).

I regularly stick it on when I need to source some motivation and energy in my day, or when I’m driving at night time.

Enjoy.