Meet Psychs, the rapper ‘Spreading’ awareness about coronavirus pandemic

It feels good to hold the light, when there’s a lot of darkness around,” says 18year-old rapper Rashid, aka Psychs, whose recent single, Spreading, which talks about the ‘virality’ of coronavirus, has gone viral. The single — which has the Britisher rapping about everything related to Covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus — has already crossed 1.2 million views on Twitter, and has close to three million views on YouTube alone, ever since its release last week.

“I am completely shocked by the sort of response I have got so far. The idea was to engage with people of my generation, the ones on social media. And to give them some information about this thing, that they can consume in a medium they like. It feels great when people are messaging me and telling me that they have learnt a lot from the song, and how it has helped them sort of cope with all of this,” he says.

The song, as Psychs puts it, is a mix of “things that people could relate to” and “something that creates awareness” on a social level.

“The lines about the football or the NBA being called off, or the bits about schools getting shut down and things like that, were all written so that people could relate to it,” he says.

“But at the same time, the message of social distancing, which is the most important message right now, had to be conveyed as well. Hence, the bits about don’t touch me, maintain a distance and things like that,” Psychs adds.

However, perhaps, the most important bit in the entire song is the part where the rapper sends “love to the families who have been infected”. “It is very important to not discriminate those who have been infected with this. You can’t even imagine what they must be going through. Even those who are helping and doing their bit to combat this situation, we have to send our love to them,” he says.

RAPPER

Samarth Goyal