Supawoman
Label: Saregama
Length: LP
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Supawoman
As a member of rising U.K. desi hip-hop crew the Sona Family, MC Hard Kaur made major waves with her turn on “Glassy,” a club-banging bhangra anthem devoted to the pleasures of getting paralytically fucked up. While nothing on Supawoman rises to the heights of that transcendent track, the album nonetheless shows a strong and quirky artist prepared to push diaspora hip-hop out of its comfort zone. When HK weighs in with club-friendly cuts like “Sexy Boy” and the dancehall-flavored title track, the results are blisteringly effective; they display far more allegiance to hip-hop than to any notion of what South Asian music should sound like, all while employing dhol-heavy beats and occasional Hindi rhymes that mark her as a resolutely desi performer. Any shortcomings on the album are more than made up for on the album’s undeniable highlight, “Bombay Deewana.” Over an appropriately crazy, Bollywood-flavored backing track, Hard Kaur deftly rhymes about the city’s gangsta party scene; it’s tight and fun, rooted in home culture but streaked with a contemporary, urban-global reality – sort of like Hard Kaur herself.
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2007.