Meet the celebrity Deccani rapper

A 27-year-old rapper cum music composer Adil Bakhtawar aka Syed Shakeer helped pioneer Ruhaan Arshad with making music for 'Miya Bhai,' a humorous and infectious 'Deccani' song which received over 400 million views on YouTube and went viral over the internet.

Shakeer who is popularly known as Adil Bakhtawar composes beats for the Deccani Hyderabadi rap songs. He has already carved a niche for himself – he has created beats and music for more than 60 rap songs. Proficiency in Dogri language, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Jamaican, Telugu, Urdu, Deccani, and English came handy and turned him into a rap producer, songwriter and lyricist.

Adil Bakhtawar is, indeed, the boy behind the popular Hyderabadi rap songs. He has even developed his own music for Deccani rap. This earned name and fame in as a popular music composer. He just recently received got an opportunity to compose music for a Bollywood song.

He hails from a middle-class family and is a resident of north Lalaguda in Secunderabad. He says he is over the moon, fulfilling his father's dream: "My father was a singer at Vividh Bharati radio, but he could not make it further. While I was in my mother's womb, my papa used to play harmonium and tabla," shares Shakeer. Maybe this explains his natural flair for music.

On adopting the artistic name 'Adil Bakhtawar,' Shakeer revealed that when he was born his father got a job opportunity and for this reason, his grandmother called him 'Bakhtawar' meaning lucky.

While he was in schooling, he along with his friends happened to visit a music store to purchase song CDs for the Independence Day celebrations at the school. "There I noticed the store owner editing the music and composing all songs on one CD. I purchased a CD for me and kept listening to the songs for more than a year. Then I found my liking for music just so amazing and decided to learn but my parents could not afford a music course. My father only taught me singing and music," he recalled.

He started listening to American rap songs then Shakeer shared with his father his passion for hip hop, the latter made him think: "My father asked me do we see dreams in English? No right, we see dreams in our own mother tongue which is Deccani." He started taking a liking for Deccan rap and even started writing lyrics for the genre. "I produced my own songs with my own music using basic audio software at my house. When I uploaded the first song, it went viral and received over 40 lakh views in a short time," says he animatedly.

His songs addressed themes such as brotherhood in Hyderabad and various other genres. He composes music by recording sounds of things that we make in our daily life like trimming machines, bell, door opening and closing, other various things. He is the only Hyderabad rapper who produces his own music, writes lyrics on his own, and does vocal composing, mixing, editing, cinematography for Hyderabadi rap songs and he has become one of the most popular music composers for rap songs in the field. Now Adil has his own music system worth Rs 10 lakh at his studio which he set up in his room.

He is an avid learner. He travels around the city and keenly observes how Hyderabadis talk, behave, and how Deccani lingo is used in various parts of the city. This, he either reproduces or adapts for his rap songs. He is also supporting young talents from the city. Whoever wants to do a rap, he trains them, polishes their voice, teaches them tempo, and even composes beat and music suitable for the song depending upon the lyrics. His popular songs include 'Kaali Car, Paan rap' in this song he conveys through his rap how a Hyderabadi orders a Paan, a song on 'Alhamdulilah,' 'Kaiko Tamacha.'