Punjabi Rocker Hard Kaur
Taran Kaur Dhillon aka Hard Kaur is India’s first female rapper. This Punjabi girl is no novice to the music industry; she has been around for the past ten years. She has been rapping in UK and it was not until songs like Ek Glassy and Move your Body from Johnny Gaddaar that she became noticed and popular in India.
After spending most of her life in England, she came back to India to rock the place with the song Ek Glassy with her music group; The Sona Family. She didn’t realize when she did Ek Glassy, that it would be such a big hit. The scene in the video where the auntie drags a girl out of the club was Kuar’s idea; she had actually witnessed such an incident in Leicester, UK. Hard Kaur later split up with the Sona Family due to the restrictions of her starting a solo career simultaneously. She started playback singing in Bollywood and some of the movies that she khas sung in many Hindi films like Ugly Aur Pagli, Singh Is Kinng, Kismat Konnection, Dil Bole Hadippa and Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani.
Kaur wants to see more female rappers in India and she advises them to be thick skinned, as the industry is currently male dominated. She admits that in India she had to work that much harder to get recognized and have people like her music as people here are usually not into a particular artist or song until they hear it in the clubs or on music channels all day. Often called the Desi Missy Elliott, Hard Kaur has the hip-hop confidence because of her street swagger and talent. She believes that as long as a person has talent and passion, nothing should stop them from chasing their dreams.