What do you get when a Chennai-based rapper and a Mumbai-based electronic music producer join forces? It turns out that the ‘Vibe’ is straight-up infectious. Anish, who goes by Paal Dabba, teams up with Sarvesh, better known as SickFlip, to deliver a genre-blending track that is part rhythm, part riot, and 100% replay-worthy. Created for a Kingfisher campaign, the song mixes Tamil bars with slick electronic beats in an animated video. If that was not enough, another short video features the Sunrisers Hyderabad squad busting moves like it is part of their training regimen.
Discussing their cross-city collaboration, Sarvesh says, “Music is a transcendent language — region did not matter. Paal’s from Chennai, I am from Mumbai, and of course, he brings in Tamil. But what clicked was the vibe — we just connected creatively.”
Relieved by a promise to skip the over-asked ‘Why Paal Dabba?’ question, Anish opens up about the music instead of the moniker. “When I heard SickFlip was producing this, I was genuinely excited. We would never worked together before, and honestly, I would never collaborated outside Tamil Nadu. So yeah, this was my first project with him, and it felt like a whole new creative space opened up.”
Sarvesh elaborates, “The goal was to create a track that felt true to us as artistes while still aligning with the campaign’s sound. We worked closely with the agency to blend our creative world with theirs, and the result felt like a perfect middle ground.”
Unexplored genre
Speaking about the collaboration, Anish admits he was both excited and slightly unsure at first. “I am the kind of person who loves to explore different genres. SickFlip is a crazy producer and DJ, he understands music so well, and is good at electronics and sounds — I have never touched that genre before. In the beginning, we had planned to do it in amapiano music but changed our mind. Once Sarvesh sent over the track, I was all in and immediately started writing it.”
The lyrics, Anish says, came straight from real life. “When I heard the music, it had such a vibe,” he explains. “So I decided to write about the things I do every day — hanging with friends, riding my bike, going to clubs. Just random moments. If you listen to the lyrics, it is all that — my daily scenes, pieced together into a song.”
For Sarvesh, collaborating across languages and cultures is familiar territory. “Coming from the electronic music space, I have worked with artistes from all over — an Irish MC and songwriter, five songs with Prateek Kuhad, and even tracks with Shruti Haasan in Tamil and English. I love blending regional languages into music that sounds global. That has always been the goal — to create something rooted yet international in vibe.”
Sarvesh blends traditional sounds into his modern electronic compositions. “I love working with traditional instruments — both melodic and percussive. While I make music digitally on a laptop, I always aim for it to not sound machine-made. There’s something beautiful about earthy, organic textures, and I enjoy bringing those into my tracks.”
The Tamil vocals shaped the core of Vibe. “Once Paal sent his parts, I built the sound around his energy,” says Sarvesh. “We went back and forth online between Mumbai and Chennai until it clicked. For me, vocals lead — everything else follows.”
Sarvesh feels it is fun to roll things out step by step surprising people with something new. “We dropped the song on streaming platforms first, followed by a lyric video and an animated version. The Sunrisers Hyderabad video — featuring both of us — just released on YouTube and hits national TV. We have also created social media content, especially for Reels, since that’s where a lot of our audience is.”
On naming the track, Anish says, “The hook’s Vibe, right? It keeps repeating throughout the song, so we thought — why overthink it? Let’s just call it what it is,” he laughs.
Published – April 09, 2025 02:04 pm IST