intimate fan event<\/a>\u00a0hosted by DHL at London\u2019s Village Underground, where the breadth of his musical roots was truly on show.\u00a0<\/p>\nBelow, we dive deeper into those inspirations via six of the songs that shaped Raf-Saperra, in his own words.<\/p>\n
Raf-Saperra: \u201cIf you ask me to bottle my adolescence into one song, it\u2019s this.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHimesh wasn\u2019t just making hits. He was having one of the most ridiculous runs Bollywood has ever seen between 2005 and 2008. Every taxi, every wedding, every family party, every corner shop\u2026 his music was everywhere. As a British Asian kid growing up in south London, those songs became timestamps for my life.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Aashiq Banaya Aapne\u2019 still feels like a time capsule. It instantly transports me back to that era. Before I ever thought about becoming an artist, before any career ambitions existed, there was just music finding me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raf-Saperra: \u201cMax B was the soundtrack to my sixth form years. His music taught me that charisma can be just as important as technical ability. Everything sounded effortless. He made melodies feel conversational and his confidence was infectious. You could hear someone completely comfortable in their own skin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I think about my late teens \u2013\u00a0getting into fashion, discovering New York rap properly, figuring out who I wanted to become creatively \u2013\u00a0Max B is playing in the background somewhere. \u2018Sexy Love\u2019 is still one of those records that never gets old.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raf-Saperra: \u201cThis song genuinely changed my life. When I was working as a delivery driver, I\u2019d have \u2018Naag\u2019 blasting through London with the windows down between drops. Around that same time I was building a following by posting Punjabi covers online. Then I uploaded my version of \u2018Naag\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt spread like wildfire. Jazzy B himself reposted it and showed love. For someone I\u2019d grown up listening to, that wasn\u2019t just a surreal full-circle moment, it was one of the first times I felt the bridge between generations. The music I grew up idolising was suddenly looking back at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoments like that stay with you forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raf-Saperra: \u201cThis is the record that opened the Griselda [Records] universe for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWestside Gunn is my favourite MC alive. Eggz became the soundtrack to one of the hardest periods of my life \u2013\u00a0when I was broke, cynical and trying to build something out of nothing. There was something about the atmosphere. The dusty loops. The luxury references sitting next to raw street stories. It felt cinematic.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat whole Griselda movement completely shifted my perspective. It reminded me that authenticity ages better than trends. You don\u2019t have to smooth the edges off your art to make people pay attention. Without records like this, there probably isn\u2019t a 5 Deadly Venomz or Venomz Vol. II.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Raf-Saperra: \u201cNusrat Fateh Ali Khan is the undisputed emperor of qawwali.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis version of \u2018Kinna Sohna\u2019 from Magic Touch (1991) was constantly playing around the house when I was growing up. It\u2019s probably one of my earliest musical memories. Looking back, that album almost predicted the direction my own career would take. It fused traditional South Asian music with contemporary production without compromising either identity. That\u2019s something I\u2019ve spent my entire career trying to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s another layer that means a lot to me too. The album was recorded at Planet Studios in Coventry by the legendary Tom Lowry. Years later I\u2019d end up recording my own music there and working with Tom myself. There\u2019s something really beautiful about following those footsteps. It reminds me that some of the most important chapters in British South Asian music weren\u2019t made somewhere else \u2013\u00a0they were made here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raf-Saperra: \u201cThis record represents an era where UK rap stopped asking for permission. Giggs and Blade Brown created something timeless. There was no compromise, no chasing American trends, no watering anything down. It sounded unmistakably British because it refused to be anything else.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor my generation, records like this gave artists permission to embrace where they came from instead of looking across the Atlantic for validation. UK rap wasn\u2019t an imitation anymore,\u00a0it had found its own voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve carried that mentality into everything I\u2019ve made. Whether it\u2019s Punjabi folk, qawwali or hip-hop, I\u2019ve never wanted to dilute any part of my identity. The goal has always been to make music that\u2019s rooted in where I\u2019m from while speaking to people everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raf Saperra, DHL Fast-Track Gallery \/ 7 images When it comes to music taste and inspirations, growing up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21057],"tags":[925,2604,2603,2605,2606,2607,2608,2609,21073,21072,741,1238,2601,2602,41],"class_list":["post-70412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dhl","tag-art","tag-dazed","tag-dazed-confused","tag-dazed-confused-magazine","tag-dazed-and-confused","tag-dazed-and-confused-magazine","tag-dazedconfused","tag-dazeddigital","tag-deutsche-post","tag-dhl","tag-fashion","tag-film","tag-ideas","tag-ideas-sharing-network","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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