 "Singer Baba Sehgal says Mani Ratnam and AR Rahman's song 'Rukmani Rukmani' was 'cheap', reveals 'I understood then that they didn't like me and...'")
Singer Baba Sehgal is also a rapper and a very popular one at that. His catchy lyrics are hard to forget. In an interview with Siddharth Kanan recently, he recalled the time when he met AR Rahman and Mani Ratnam for the song Rukmani Rukmani from Roja for the Hindi version.
Sehgal said, “I had a show in Chennai. Somebody from the organising team told me that some director wants to meet me. There was an assistant director who came and played Rukmani Rukmani’s Tamil version.”
He added, “I didn’t pay much attention to it and just said ‘yes’ to the song. AR Rahman was also there. He was very young at the time.”
“I called my friend Atul and gave them Shashi Gopal’s number from Magnus Sound. They connected and eventually decided to do a Hindi version, on one condition that one song would be sung by me. I understood then that AR Rahman and Mani Ratnam didn’t really like me.”
Calling the song cheap
The rapper said, “When I saw the Hindi lyrics, I was like, ‘Kitne vahiyat lyrics hai yaar. Kisne likha hai ye?’ (How cheap are these lyrics? Who wrote this?).”
Sehgal continued, “The problem is, when we listen to songs in another language, they sound fine. But in our own language, we grasp the meaning. I don’t think Rahman or Ratnam knew what those Hindi lyrics meant.”
‘Thug Life’ director Mani Ratnam made an amusing revelation recently in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about his actors. The veteran filmmaker said, “Not everyone. Some people you have to threaten. I’ve promised people that I’ll throw them off the fourth floor if they don’t do what I’m asking them to do.”
He added, “Sometimes, you have to tell an actor that if a five-year-old child can work at odd hours, so can they. There’s no one solution. But, if you have a good actor, and if what they bring in adds value…”
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