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Irfana is the first female MC signed to Def Jam India

Straight outta Tamil Nadu

LiFTED | Marcus Aurelius | 4 Apr 2023


Irfana has been on a roll lately. She got the title track, ‘I’m Your King’ on the popular Netflix show, Masaba Masaba. She was featured in a Vogue article called Emerging Women in Hip Hop. She also wrote the English verse on Vishnu Vijay’s ‘Thallumaala.’ On April 1, Def Jam India announced that she was the first female MC signed to the Hip Hop label.

After publicizing that Def Jam was going to have an imprint in India in February of 2022, the first two MCs signed were Dino James and Fotty Seven. Now Irfana is out to show the guys what’s up. She plans on focusing on the themes of femininity, anti-fascism, as well as Tamil and Muslim culture.

Irfana wasn’t always a fierce MC. She started with Carnatic vocal and veena training, played the trumpet, and then everything changed when she got a pen drive full of Eminem tracks that was making the rounds in her friend circle. She taught herself everything from rapping to producing to marketing and business management to put out an EP, Ko-Lab, with her childhood friend, Taslina.

This EP, plus the smooth rhymes on ‘Southside Menace,’ caught the ears of the heads of music at Def Jam India, and now their roster is looking real good for the foreseeable future.

Check out Irfana’s EP, Ko-Lab, below.