The King's Gambit

YUNG RAJA, RAPPER/PERFORMER

YUNG RAJA'S FIRST BRUSH WITH FAME happened when he was 13. In a tiny role on the local TV show Fighting Spiders, he had one line: ''Hey, there's a cockroach in my soya bean.'' It's a forgettable line, bordering on camp. But the journey towards getting that line was anything but.

As he tells it: ''I had locked myself up in the toilet and cried on a phone call with the casting director. I'd told her I'd do anything to get on the show. I'd told her that I'd come down and do any role without getting paid.

''I was desperate,'' says Raja, who is today Singapore's hottest young rapper, putting the island on the global hip-hop map.

The casting director relented, and he soon found himself on the film set with several other young extras. The director Glenn Chan needed just one of them to say that fateful ''cockroach'' line: ''And he picked me. Because he thought I was special,'' says Raja, now 26.

When the episode aired on TV, he was overjoyed. He bragged about it to his friends for months. He went around school telling everyone he was ''going to be the first Indian guy from Tamil Nadu to win an Oscar.'' Even as a self-described ''short chubby kid'', he had ambition and swagger to burn.

By the mid-2010s, however, the late-teen Raja had lost some of his confidence. He had gone to almost 500 auditions and failed to secure more than 20 mostly small roles. He feared he had to give up his dreams of becoming an entertainer altogether - until his best friend Fariz Jabba (who is also now a professional rapper) told him that maybe his ticket to fame was not his acting talent, but his rapping prowess.

Raja had always rapped eff ortlessly and joyously in front of his friends. He could easily memorise hiphop lyrics and mimic popular performers, ''getting the enunciation, the ups and downs, the tonalities, the diction, the fl ow and switches, all fl awlessly'', he says. Heck, his friends used to parade him in front of girls and made him rap just to impress them.

So why couldn't music be his bread and butter?

VIRAL SENSATION

That piece of advice pushed him to a turning point. He changed his stage name from Rajid Ahemad to Yung Raja (pronounced ''Young Raja''). He rewrote English rap songs in Tamil that instantly went viral. He released his first single Mustafa in 2018 as an ode to the 24-hour shopping centre and its video drew 2.3 million views on YouTube.

The music world seemed more welcoming to him than the movie world ever was.

Now signed to Def Jam South East Asia, Alamo Records (US) and Third Culture (India), he is the first Singaporean to be promoted globally by parent record label Universal Music Group. Alamo Records, in particular, has several young hot hip-hop stars in its roster, including Smokepurpp, Lil Durk and Comethazine. Raja is its first Asian signee.

2021 is set to be a big year, with the release of three new singles and a debut EP comprising five or six songs. The first single, Mami, released three weeks ago, has racked up over 100,000 YouTube views. And he's just been invited to be part of this year's National Day Parade - his third consecutive appearance since 2019.

Raja says: ''You have no idea how proud my parents are that I'm appearing in NDP three times in a row. They cried at the last two concerts. As immigrants from Tamil Nadu who moved here in 1992 because Singapore was the equivalent of the ''American Dream'' for South Indians, my parents are just so thrilled that this country has embraced their son.''

Raja says he has a lot to thank his parents for. He grew up in an extremely cultural household where his father, a science tutor by profession, writes and paints in his spare time, and his mother exposed him to a variety of South Asian music and movies.

When Raja began pursuing the arts, his parents were instantly supportive, ''which is very unusual for Indian parents''. His second music video Mad Blessings even opens with a shot of his parents as he sings about all the things he's grateful for. It drew over 1.7 million views, with fans from Singapore to India to the US calling him a ''blessing'' to the music scene.

BOLDLY BICULTURAL

Raja's appeal stems not just from his extraordinary gifts as a rapper, but also his proud celebration of his bicultural identity. His English songs are peppered with Tamil and ''Tanglish'' words, and his splashy videos brims with images of Indian culture, from its classical dance to its food.

Raja himself displays a relaxed confidence about his identity, and a clear understanding of how he wants to present himself to the world. When it comes to fashion, for instance, he says: ''I like to wear anything that makes me feel fl y. I like being bold and turning heads. I never shy away from something like a super-tight netted top or a neon green jacket or a fur coat. I like loud clothes that most people would never think to wear. I like to make a statement.''

His confidence extends to his career strategy, which he chooses to manoeuvre diff erently from other rising stars: ''People tell me that maybe I should go abroad, gain some traction, and then come back to Singapore. That seems to be the route taken by many of our artistes such as JJ Lin and Alyph. But I've thought about this a lot and I think I have all that I need to do my best work right here in Singapore. I don't need to go somewhere else and come back.

''I've been in the entertainment scene since I was 13 - since that time I appeared in Fighting Spiders - and I think the industry has changed. There are now support infrastructures and new technologies that have emerged to help me spread my music out to the world from this island I call home. I can make magic right here.''

Speaking of Fighting Spiders, Raja says that, in 2015, he reunited with the show director Glenn Chan for a TV commercial: ''Glenn asked: ''Do you remember me? Do you remember your role in Spiders? Do you know why I picked you to say that line? Because out of all of those kids, you looked like you wanted to be there, not because your parents wanted you to be there. I could see from your eyes you were diff erent, you were determined.''

Raja says: ''I had goosebumps all over my body. I was turning 20 then and I'd been thinking about my career. But that moment made me realise I was meant to do this, that it was my destiny to make something of myself. It was my destiny to entertain.'' - HELMI YUSOF

Yung Raja's latest single Mami is out now.