Music Nerd 13: Q&A with Cartel Madras
The South Indian-Canadian rap group discusses the Calgary music scene, their love of cinema and MF Doom, and their unique brand of feminism
An exclusive MUSIC NERD Q&A with Cartel Madras
In the two weeks leading up to their first show as “Goonda Rap” duo Cartel Madras in 2018, sisters Eboshi and Contra quickly cobbled together a hodgepodge of songs that could sustain 45 minutes of stage time.
That short but high-energy first show went well. Their contemporary punk sensibilities and music — which combines elements of hip hop, house, South Indian music, and electronic — got the crowd’s attention. The sisters are from Chennai, India, are half Tamil and half Malayalam, identify as queer, grew up in Calgary, and love hip hop artists like MF Doom and Freddie Gibbs and DJ/producer Flying Lotus. All the various facets of their lives feed into their music and onstage persona.
They put a few songs up on Soundcloud, then released their debut mixtape, “Project Goonda Part 1: Trapistan,” in 2018. They signed with Sub Pop records, toured with Stones Throw artist Sudan Archives, and have collaborated with Zambian-Canadian producer Backxwash and Los Angeles experimental hip-hop group Clipping.
Covid forced them to cancel a European tour, but they recently released a new EP this Fall called “The Serpent & The Tiger” and are shooting a new video this month.
MUSIC NERD recently spoke with members Contra and Eboshi over the phone. Below are excerpts of our conversation, which has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
CARTEL MADRAS music includes trap, rap, punk, house, South Indian music, and other bits. What about those music styles speak to you both?
Contra: We take in a lot. A lot of people say they listen to “everything,” but we really do, from MF Doom to [Japanese film composer and music director] Joe Hisaishi, who did the soundtracks for the Studio Ghibli films, to movie soundtracks of 90s South Indian cinema. We’re all over the place. We grew up in Calgary, an indie rock and punk city, seeing these weird bands come up. All of that fuses into our strange sound that we are pioneering, which is a weird intersection of punk and rap and whatever else.
What about hip-hop resonates with you both?
Contra: I remember when I was very young, and we had just immigrated here. My mom’s coworker brought home CDS from Lauryn Hill, Public Enemy, and 50 Cent. She was like, “Your daughter likes music, here you go.” It blew my mind. Coming here as a young immigrant and being South Indian, South Asian, in Calgary, it's a super strange place. When you're young and an immigrant, you pick your lane, and typically what you are thrown into is hip hop and rap.
Eboshi: Another huge tie-in is cinema. Films from the late 90s and early 2000s had hip-hop soundtracks, and we were always listening to movie soundtracks and then followed the composers. We grew up in the Texas of Canada, very redneck. Alberta as a province is so conservative. Growing up in that cowboy culture wasn't conducive to seeing ourselves as creatives or making art , so we really lived on the internet. That was our passport to different modes of living, that’s how we mapped out what we wanted.
What made you both want to make music? What planted that seed?
Eboshi: We were always making music growing up. We were always writing rap for ourselves, maybe we’d play it for a couple of friends. It was just Song Note recordings or headphone speaker recordings. This one summer, we were writing a lot, it was sounding good, and we were going to shows every weekend. There was a lot of energy that summer, and we really wanted to put our stuff into the mix, but we weren't sure how to do that. We were two brown girls in Calgary, it’s like, this scene doesn't look like it has a spot for us. But we were like yo, what if we made a song together? So we did, and we thought, this is sick, let’s keep it going, we have something here. We applied for a festival with two Soundcloud songs, and after seeing the response to our live show, we were like ok let’s make this happen.
What was your first show like?
Eboshi: We wanted people to get fucked up and we wanted it to pop off. The reception was amazing, in a way we couldn’t have imagined. After that we got booked every weekend. It was crazy. It was like oh shit we did it. We did a lot of shows that were not a good fit for us. The scene was figuring out what to do with us. So we started throwing our own shows and realized, oh this is our space: an eclectic crowd, queer kids, punk kids, a lot of newer hip-hop kids into Soundcloud rap, and some old head stuff.
Ishmael Butler from Sub Pop records, Digable Planets, and Shabazz Palaces saw you perform and signed you. Can you talk about that experience?
Contra: it was incredible, we opened for Shabazz Palaces in 2018. We had been touring a few months at that point, but we were pretty fresh. It was [The Sled Island Music & Arts Festival], a very big music festival in Calgary. Deerhoof was the curator that year. I have no idea how we got into the festival, I think it was word of mouth or buzz. We were like whoa this is crazy we’re opening for Shabazz. We had no idea he had seen us play. We grew up knowing about [Digable Planets] and the lore of him in hip hop. We heard from him and he was like, what do you think about Sub Pop, and we were like huh? Cuz we love Sub Pop, and we were like, we’re from Calgary, so it's hard to see your path out of this city.
There’s always debate about what is “real” hip hop. Do you feel pressure to slot into the hip-hop community in specific ways or do you not really care?
Eboshi: It’s such a layered question, and important as an artist to ask yourself. Music has so many goals, we’ve always been storytellers and writers, telling stories through lyrics, trying to take people to different places and think outside where they are comfortable. If music isn't taking risks, it isn’t doing much. If you’re not rapping your own lyrics, what the hell is that?
How do you go about writing your lyrics?
Contra: we’re always pulling from our own life, literally our day to day and our past, and our experiences, and things that inform us. Our stuff is littered with weird references to books and films we grew up with. With hip hop, the hard thing to do is rap about your average day but with style, to talk about a harrowing experience and also what you ate for breakfast. We’ve taken that from MF Doom and Freddie Gibbs, that mix of serious and comical, the hilariousness of being from Canada.
You really lean into that hilariousness in a punk sort of way. You’ve thrown underground trap shows dubbed ‘SANSFUCCS’ and your management is called the “THOTNATION.”
Eboshi: We’re really invested in the story of Cartel Madras and those characters, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. We’re constantly shitting on ourselves. The humor is really just about us taking the piss out of the industry, the tropes we’re surrounded by, and just everything we’ve been through with an analytical lens, but also the absurdist nature of everything we’ve been through. It comes through in our philosophical tone, our various degrees of imagination, and also just us saying really stupid shit.
You must get some strong reactions to your music, both positive and critical.
Contra: Oh yeah we have haters for days. There’s the weird right-wing Indian troll, or there's always some brown guy. Nine times out of 10, it’s like people who saw you come up and see you ride your wave and figure it out. That’s a crazy thing to witness coming from this city, cuz people here feel like you don’t have many shots to take, and us being two girls. It’s quite an anomaly where we are from. I don’t think a lot of people thought it would work, but that's how contemporary music works. You can’t rip off music that already exists. There are tons of people online who are like, “what do they think they’re doing?” It's like, get fucked, Jesus Christ. But we have a good group of people. We move in a pack and know how to deescalate those situations.
Can you talk a little bit about your dynamic as sisters? How do you work together?
Eboshi: We take it for granted that we get along. We’ve always done projects together, writing together, curating, doing nonprofit stuff. It's great to have someone directly making art with you, and you can be like yo, that sounds like shit, bro. It’s so much more honest and less pussyfooting around the point. There's very little compromise, it's always like let’s do this or let’s move on.
Can you talk a little bit about your connection to Chennai, India?
Eboshi: Our connection is pretty strong and intense. Every time we go back, it's about uncovering more about where we’re from, and discovering. Our immediate extended family, they are crazy people with so many stories. We write that into our stories for the universe we’re building. There’s so much to unpack with our family history. Every time we go back, there is some crazy fucking secret or story we hear about and have to talk about. And every time we leave there is unfinished business.
The British called Chennai “Madras.” Is it safe to assume that “Cartel Madras” was a way of reclaiming that word and putting a punk spin on it?
Eboshi: Totally. It’s both of those things. It was still called Madras when we were born there. Calling someone a “Madrasi” in India, the connotation is that you're less civilized. It’s pretty hilarious, because it's not true, and it’s a shitty internal stereotype. Bollywood comes from the north, but the south is where the real story is and where the cool shit is from. We want you to know we’re from the south. It’s important to put that out there, even though we are not a representation project, but want to make it clear who we are and that's what home is. It's cool to us and [Cartel Madras] sounds sick.
You could argue that Cartel Madras is like a working feminist thesis or premise. Do you agree?
Eboshi: We think about that. There is a strong underpinning of feminism in so much of what we do. Its about exploring the visuals of Wong Kar-wai and femme fatale tropes and making it modern. All of our visual output fits into one overarching cinematic universe that we are building. As soon as a song is done, we start thinking about the visual treatment of it. We did those videos on a total shoestring budget. I’m glad that message comes across, it’s an extended feminist manifesto. Less girl boss, and more feminism for the revolution.
Last question. Why does the “enter” tab on your band website go to a “young Steve Buscemi” photo page?
Eboshi: [Laughs]. Oh my god. I love that. It looks like you're about to enter something important. It’s just a nice little Rick Roll for the people. We’re like, don’t even worry about it, it’s good. Our website used to be full of PR dribble. We were like, “should we update our photos more?”, and we’re like, no. It doesn’t get old for me.