On most days, Krishna Kaul thinks in moves. The Delhi rapper, better known as KR$NA, speaks like a chess player, describing positions on a board — how to open, when to bait, where to trade, and the line he’ll walk when the middle game gets messy. He’s not evasive; he’s deliberate. In the studio, he can come across as quiet, almost reserved. On record, he’s exacting and surgical. And when the industry spins up a storm around him, he falls back on the only variables he can really control: the writing, the delivery, and the plan. Even in person, at the cover shoot, he carries the same composure — scanning the room, making a small adjustment, then locking back into focus like the next move is already mapped out in his head.
It’s almost as if he’s clear-eyed about what’s within reach and what isn’t. As he puts it, the only thing he can fully command is his own output. The response to it — “whether critics dismiss it, fans celebrate it, or the internet picks it apart” — will always be out of his hands. The lesson he’s carried forward is that if you let outside voices dictate the work, you’re no longer creating for yourself or for the people who genuinely connect with you. “Some people will always think I make the worst music in the world, some will think I make the best,” he tells Rolling Stone India. “All I can do is focus on the process.”
That patience and detachment are the through-line of his career. Speaking to him over an hour-long phone call, it felt as if they were forged in frustration. When KR$NA released his debut album Sellout in 2014 with Universal Music, he believed it could be the start of a major career leap. The first video made some noise, but when it came time to push the next single, the label balked. “I put all the money I had from that deal into another video, and everyone said, ‘Wow, what a good video,’” he recalls. “But then the label came back with a marketing plan for 10,000 rupees on Facebook. I was like, ‘You have to be joking.’” He put his own advance into another video for the title track, only to find the same lack of support. The mismatch between his effort and their backing disillusioned him. For two years, he barely released music. “It felt pointless,” he says. “Whatever I made would belong to them, and they weren’t going to push it. I was so irritated with the business that I stopped wanting to make anything.”
The irony was that Sellout arrived at a time when English-language rap in India was only just starting to gain visibility. He had built an identity as one of the few Delhi MCs fluent in both English and Hindi, and his debut could have positioned him as a pioneer. But instead of momentum, he found himself locked in an agreement that left him powerless. In hindsight, he views those two lost years as a crash course in how the Indian music business actually operates: majors were eager to sign rappers, but they lacked the infrastructure and long-term strategy to nurture them. For a young artist who had already been writing since the mid-2000s, it was a lesson that stung.
The break turned into a reset. When he returned, he tried something different. Together with a friend, he launched Right Now Entertainment. It wasn’t designed to topple the industry but to test a model: could a small, hip-hop–literate label take artists from nothing to the point where majors were forced to take notice? “We didn’t have the money to spend like a big label. But we understood rap, we knew how to spot talent, and we could build someone from zero to fifty. Then a major could take them from fifty to two hundred.” Nobody wanted to be the “guinea pig,” so KR$NA put himself through the wringer first. Within two singles, bigger offers arrived. He soon joined AK Projekts, which later evolved into Kalamkaar, a label that became a cornerstone of Delhi’s hip-hop scene.
What made Right Now Entertainment radical at the time was that Indian music still revolved around Bollywood hits. There were no real models for independent hip-hop labels. His idea of building artists up, then partnering with majors for scale, was the kind of hybrid approach that only became common years later with outfits like Kalamkaar, Gully Gang, and Azadi Records. In some ways, KR$NA was ahead of the curve, but the pressure of running a label while also trying to grow his own career proved unsustainable. Eventually, Right Now went dormant, but its blueprint foreshadowed the indie ecosystem India now takes for granted.
Still, the path wasn’t linear. 2018 was a limbo year. “I didn’t know which direction to go,” he admits. “Bombay’s scene was taking off, Delhi’s wasn’t visible, and I was trying to figure out what would make me stand out.” Then, he put out a mix of sing-song cuts and sharp free verses. Both kinds found listeners, telling him there was space for duality. By 2019, he’d narrowed the lane and released “Jaanta Kyun” with Deep Kalsi.
This Delhi–Mumbai divide weighed heavily on him. Mumbai had already produced Divine and Naezy, artists whose stories were crossing over to mainstream audiences and even Bollywood films like Gully Boy. Delhi, despite having a vibrant underground, lacked that visibility. For a Delhi rapper like KR$NA, the question was existential: should he conform to the Mumbai template or carve out a new Delhi identity? His eventual answer was to double down on technical lyricism, the kind of bar-heavy rapping that Delhi audiences valued. That decision set him apart, even if it meant a slower route to mass recognition.
Then came 2020. While much of the industry went quiet during lockdowns, KR$NA accelerated. “Some songs we’d finished before Covid, others we recorded badly at home,” he recalls with a laugh. “But we kept releasing. The 2020 track ‘Quarantine’ was literally shot just as the pandemic hit—that’s why I’m in a mask in the video.” Financially, it was a grim year. No shows, no brand deals, no outside revenue. But musically, it was productive. Audiences were stuck at home, listening intently, and he kept feeding them material.
The pandemic exposed how fragile the business side of Indian hip-hop still was. For stars, the disappearance of shows and brand campaigns suddenly cut off their income. For smaller acts, it was even more brutal: no venues, no festivals, and no safety net. KR$NA admits that while he managed to keep putting music out, it wasn’t a great time financially. “We did a few brand projects, shot them ourselves at home, but mostly there was nothing. It was a tough time money-wise, even if the music itself was doing well.” What saved him was the captive audience. Streaming and YouTube numbers climbed across the board in 2020, and rappers who had catalogs to lean on found their listenership expanding. For KR$NA, it reinforced the importance of consistency—if you had material ready, people would find it.
That period cemented his view on virality. For most of his career, he didn’t have viral hits; what he had were songs that built slowly, gathering streams over months and years. He thinks that’s more valuable than a quick spike. “I was late to the viral party, and until the last couple of years, I had no viral tracks. But songs like ‘No Cap’ or ‘Hola Amigo’ are still streaming heavily years later. I’d rather have that than something that blows up and disappears.”
It’s a position that also reflects his strategy: build a catalog, not a moment. Viral fame in India often comes from one-off tracks boosted by Instagram reels or TikTok-like trends, but many of those artists struggle to build on that momentum. KR$NA, by contrast, points to his discography as evidence of longevity. He prefers songs that pick up slowly, keep streaming consistently, and find new listeners months or years later. In his view, that’s how you sustain a career in a market still learning how to value rap.
Strategic thinking is also the driving force of his collaborations. When he wanted to try drill, for example, he didn’t just rap over the template. “Indian rappers just rap really fast on drill beats. But drill has a certain cadence. I wanted someone from the U.K. to bring that.” That’s when KR$NA connected with French the Kid, met him in London, and cut “10 Pe 10,” a track that stitched Delhi to the UK drill scene with ease. When he wanted to bridge India and Pakistan, he linked with producer Umair. “Umair is a prodigy. I told him, I want you to produce this whole EP. It was meant to show unity, not just be another project.”
He also leaned into his visual instincts. With “Joota Japani,” a playful flip on Raj Kapoor’s “Mera Joota Hai Japani,” he knew immediately the video had to be shot in Tokyo. “I sent the director reference pictures, explained exactly what I wanted. Japanese crews are efficient, they move fast, and it came out exactly the way I pictured it.” His interest in architecture and design bleeds into these decisions. He often sees the visuals as he’s writing the song.
Not every collaboration has been universally embraced. His international link-ups, particularly the multi-artist “Asian State of Mind” featuring Awich, Jay Park, Masiwei, and VannDa, drew excitement overseas but a tepid reception at home. “Outside India, people loved it. Here, I think listeners aren’t always open to foreign languages yet,” he reflects. Still, he sees them as essential. “These tracks put us on the map internationally. They make people pay attention to Indian rap in a bigger context.” But for KR$NA, building a catalog and chasing international collaborations was only one side of the journey. Just as important was learning what not to chase—letting go of distractions that could derail the long game.
Where many rappers fuel themselves on conflict, KR$NA has learned to move past it. His years-long diss cycle with Emiway Bantai is part of his story, but he has no interest in revisiting it. “It’s been years. I’m not in that space anymore. I want to write about other things.” Rumors about tensions with Seedhe Maut strike him as absurd. “We’ve done so many songs together. I literally put out a video with them two weeks ago playing golf. Why would there be beef?”
Beef, media noise, even political commentary—all of it, to him, is a distraction. He acknowledges that battle rap and diss culture are part of hip-hop’s DNA, but in India, he feels it sometimes becomes the only lens through which outsiders see the genre. “If people reduce the scene to just disses, it misses the bigger picture,” he says. A past interview headline once claimed he thought India should “stop obsessing over Eminem.” He laughs at the distortion: “What I actually said was, if you love Eminem, cool—but also listen to the artists Eminem loves. Don’t stop at one person and expect them to cover every subgenre. Hip-hop is huge.” And as for topical rap? He’s done with it. “Topical music dies with the subject. Nobody cares about all that shit now. I’d rather make something people can still play ten years from now.”
This pursuit of longevity isn’t just personal—it mirrors how the Indian rap industry itself has evolved.
When TuneCore launched, he used it to self-distribute his music—something almost unheard of in India at the time. “People didn’t even know what digital distribution was then. I was probably the first to use it here.” Back then, discovery was difficult. YouTube wasn’t huge, internet penetration was limited, and there were few paths to find new rap. Today, platforms and tools make it easier to reach an audience. “It’s not about education—it’s about means. Now, if you’re talented, you can distribute yourself. Back then, you had to wait for a label to like your demo.”
This evolution—from a gatekept market to a more open one—has defined his generation. Younger rappers today can bypass labels entirely, something KR$NA could only dream of when he was starting. It’s why he emphasizes consistency and catalog-building: with more access comes more competition, and the artists who endure are the ones with depth, not just a single viral hit.
But longevity also comes with pressure, and managing that emotional cost has been its own journey. He admits he’s sensitive by nature, but has taught himself to disentangle emotion from action. “Sometimes you think nothing will happen with a song, and it blows up. Sometimes you think it’s a sure thing, and it doesn’t move. The outcome is never in your control. The process is.”
When he needs to step away from it all, he leans on golf. He first played as a kid but let it go, only to return to it a couple of years ago. “When rap became my full-time job, I realized I didn’t have any other passion. Golf gave me that. On the course, I’m not thinking about anything but the game. It looks slow, but it’s mad psychological.” Golf, he says, is the rare place where he can switch off completely. “As a rapper, you don’t have off days. Even when you’re not writing, you’re still thinking about it. Golf forces you into the present. It’s only about the next shot.”
He also thinks about how to give back. “I’ve thought about creating infrastructure for kids who want to record but don’t have resources. Something practical, where they can just come and make music. That’s been on my mind.”
From there, the ambitions widen. His 2023 projects, Far From Over and “Time Will Tell,” were compact, tightly curated bursts. Then came Yours Truly in 2025, his most ambitious project yet: fifteen tracks, Mass Appeal’s involvement, and features from Delhi to the UK. “It’s meant to be a body of work people can revisit. It’s not about chasing trends.” Meeting Nas through the Mass Appeal connection was a personal milestone, and he hints at wanting more collaborations that elevate Indian hip-hop on a global stage.
In many ways, Yours Truly was the culmination of years of deliberate strategy. It combined the catalog-building of his independent years with the scale of a global partnership. It also placed him in a lineage of Indian rappers reaching outward, positioning Delhi rap not as a side story but as part of a wider South Asian hip-hop narrative. For KR$NA, global link-ups aren’t just experiments—they’re part of the same long game he’s been playing since the start.
All of this makes him deliberate about what comes next. “I know what my listeners like, but I also want to experiment. Right now, I’m figuring out what my next sound should be.”
Spending time with KR$NA, one thing became clear: what comes next is something he won’t rush. He seems to know his listeners, but he also knows the value of surprise, of testing new flows and reaching for new territories. His career so far has been defined by patience and precision, and his ambitions now stretch beyond himself—to building infrastructure, global outreach, and giving Indian hip-hop the visibility it deserves. It looks like the long game is still in play, and for KR$NA, the next move is always the one that matters most.
Directors: Peony Hirwani & Shamani Joshi
Creative & Executive Producer: Dushyant Tak
Stylist: Rushi Honmore
Styling Assistant: Jhanvi Khatwani
Production Manager: Lakshay Malik
Art Directors: Dushyant Tak & Rushi Honmore
HMU Artist: Kajal Saroj
VFX: Ayan Khan
Video Team: Parth Khalodia & Suraj Seksaria
Production House: Dushyant&Co.
Outfits: Look 1 Jacket @evemen.co; Jewellery @diesel; Shoes @lussolifestyleofficial, Look 2 Jacket @projektdraw; Shoes @lussolifestyleofficial; Shades @gucci
Location: Vitamin Studios
The post COVER STORY: KR$NA’s Rap Legacy Is Calculated, Not Chanced appeared first on Rolling Stone India.
Leave a Reply