Nikesh Shukla

“We'd taken up our positions on the benches between the school hall and a newly-installed outdoor basketball court. Being hip-hoppers, we were obliged to be obsessed with basketball. None of us had a ball.”

“I was proud to be brown in my own way. Well, I was at school; at school I was brown about the funky stuff that came with being vegetarian, like being really arrogant about it, declaring proudly to a room full of beefeaters when Mad Cow disease initially broke that it was 'Vishnu's way of telling y'all to stop eating and start worshipping'.”

“Tell me about Gang Starr,' said Nishant, in an effort to start a conversation I'd be interested in. 'One MC, one DJ...' 'Classic combo,' Anand affirmed.'No hype man?''No.''What do we need Anand for?' Nishant shrugged, ever the pragmatist, never the catcher of feelings.”

“Anand finished up his cola cube transaction. I stepped up and slammed three pound coins on the counter like an oppressed inner-city youth born with the skills of rhythm and rhyme.”

“Yo, bredren, we be the illest,' went my proclamation. 'We be the dopest,' Anand would follow. 'Our tunes are going to be good,' Nishant would finish with.”

“While 'Rap Trax!' recorded, Neel found some scrap paper and we started writing our first lyrics. Bandying about subject matter and title, we got stuck on the idea of 'cool', so my first rap song became 'Pretty Cool'. It was a symbol of our confidence. We weren't awesome cool or mega cool. We were only... pretty cool.”

“I dodged him for a few months with excuses about not being able to, not having the time to, not being bothered to tape it. When I was out of sensible excuses, I played the race card and told Paul Fine straight: "Taping the album for you is selling out to the white man, letting him have our music. Nah, man. For us by us..." "But you're not black.""Fuck you, Fine. I'm politically black from an oppressed race. Don't speak to me about no race politics or I'll lynch you like you done to my people.""I'm Jewish...""Whatever man. I ain't got no tapes.”