‘Believe in yourself... and no amount of trolling can stop you’
Oshin Fernandes speaks to internet’s favourite musician, Anshuman Sharma, the man behind MujheDrugsDo mash-up featuring Arnab Goswami
Touted as the guy who made a Ritviz song in two minutes, Anshuman Sharma is much more than his viral mashups and an Instagram account which doubles as a thirst trap. Delhi-born Sharma, moved to Mumbai after he was discovered by Indian music composer duo Salim–Sulaiman.
The 24-year-old, who went back home amid the lockdown spoke to The Free Press Journal about his newfound fame on social media. Sharma’s love for music began at the age of nine when he started playing the keyboard, transitioning from classical to the western genre. Unlike his stereotypical showbiz contemporaries, the budding musician is mostly self-taught, and like any ambitious lad Sharma planned on pursuing MBA. Little did he know, things were about to change.
He states, “Salim Merchant sir discovered me through Instagram after which I asked him for an internship and he gladly accepted my request and made me shift to Mumbai to work with him! That moment changed my life and since then I’ve been working on projects with Salim Sulaiman. At the beginning of the lockdown I came back to Delhi for the time being and started uploading more videos once again, which led to the Ritviz video.”
Speaking about the Mujhe drugs do mashup featuring Arnab Goswami, Sharma says, “I saw a lot of people sharing that video on Twitter, and a lot of them tagging me in the video requesting me to create a remix using it. It was already sounding like a song even before I’d put music in it, so I was more than happy to produce it!”
Despite garnering attention on social media, Sharma adds that it is tough to impress people on the virtual platform, but asserts that “if you work hard and believe in yourself and your product, then no amount of trolling can stop you.”
As an artiste who predominantly made the cut for his remixed meme-like content, Sharma maintains that Indian musicians aren’t out of originality despite the industry using a standard formula to promote a film’s album by re-packaging classics.
He says, “This has just become a formula now where it's thought that since a remix is already a known song it’ll be a hit, therefore they’re sticking to that. I don’t mind remixes at all since there are good remixes too but unfortunately, we're getting to hear the not so great ones these days. Though I would definitely love it if there were more original hits out there and trust me there are a lot of wonderful musicians in India producing fine original music, we just need listeners.”
Speaking about his post-pandemic plans, Sharma added, “I plan to go back to Mumbai to work at the studio, do non-virtual collabs with people, release some original music and if possible, do live shows.”