Southern hip-hop has given us subgenres including chopped and screwed, trap, crunk and more. But when rising rapper Hanumankind delivers the line “I come from the southside, southside baby”, it’s something of a double entendre. Yes, he’s got a deliciously accentuated Project Pat-style drawl (the Tennessee artist is one of many to co-sign Hanumankind). But his tracks are just as likely to showcase a different kind of south: take the Parimal Shais-produced beats on Go to Sleep and Ayyayyo, with their coiling nadaswaram, a south Indian wind instrument.

Hanumankind (whose real name is Sooraj Cherukat) spent his formative years in Houston but was born in Kerala and has lived in Bangalore since 2012. He first started freestyling in high school; nearly a decade later, in 2019, he began to release his own music. Soon he was signed to Def Jam India, the fledgling branch of the famous multinational label.

Indian hip-hop has been in rude health the past decade, but Hanumankind is perhaps the first rapper to receive global recognition. His track Big Dawgs, with producer Kalmi, is a chart fixture the world over, partly thanks to its staggering video in which Cherukat drives on a “well of death” motordrome. The song itself brims with swagger, heat and possibility. It’s no wonder Arsenal recently used it for an official pre-season video, even enlisting Gooner Cherukat for a voiceover. With some hush-hush big name remixes on the cards and an album slated for later this year, it seems that Hanumankind is just getting started.