Emiway Bantai has never sounded interested in fitting neatly into anyone else's idea of what a rapper should be. In his own telling, that is exactly the point. "Fans bolte hain GOAT, toh waqt ke saath GOAT ho gaye apun," he says — fans call me the G.O.A.T., so over time, I became the G.O.A.T. It is a line that captures the Mumbai artist's long-running persona: playful, defiant and fully aware of the mythology he has built around himself.
Born Bilal Shaikh, Emiway took his stage name from two of his early inspirations, Eminem and Lil Wayne, and began releasing music independently in 2013. His early track 'Aur Bantai' helped put him on the map, while 2019's 'Machayenge' became a breakout hit that widened his reach far beyond the city's hip-hop circles. Over the past decade, he has emerged as one of the most recognisable voices in Indian rap without ever fully surrendering the outsider energy that first made him stand out.
That tension between independence and mainstream visibility sits at the centre of his latest release, 'Safal', which he has brought out for Season 4 of Red Bull 64 Bars in collaboration with Def Jam Recordings India. The series is designed to bring together artistes rooted in distinct regional identities, a format Emiway says reflects something that has always been true about Indian hip-hop rather than something newly discovered by the industry.
"Indian hip-hop has always been diverse from day one," he says. "It's not like rap is not made in Hindi. Some are doing it in English, some in Hindi, even Marathi, Gujarati, and Punjabi." For Emiway, the shift is not in the existence of those voices but in the scale of the audience now able to hear them. "What has changed is visibility. Every language is getting its own shot. Especially since Red Bull's 64 Bars is a heavy platform, where all languages are getting the limelight properly, along with the emerging artistes."
That broader visibility, he says, also shaped how he approached 'Safal'. The goal was not simply to satisfy his existing fan base, but to make the mechanics of rap legible to new listeners as well. "I aimed to make sure my fans could understand it, while also helping the new audience coming in understand how we engage people through our words, our flow, and our skills," he says.
For Emiway, the process of writing remains deliberately fluid. Sometimes the beat comes first, and sometimes the street does. "For me, it's different every time," he says. On his upcoming project, he says, he did not write anything down at all. "I put on the mic, played the beat and didn't write anything. Nothing on paper, nothing in my notes. The beat was playing, and I was freestyling straight into the mic. Beat batata hai ki humko kya chahiye," he says — the beat tells us what we want.
At other times, inspiration arrives in the form of overheard conversation or a passing remark from someone on the street. "You think, 'Arre bhai, what an interesting thing he said.' It stays in your mind. When you get back to the studio, you put those words down on paper," he says. That instinct has long been central to his music, especially the Mumbai street slang that became one of his signatures.
As Indian hip-hop moved into the mainstream around 2019 and 2020, helped by the success of tracks such as 'Machayenge' and the cultural moment created by Zoya Akhtar's Gully Boy, some observers wondered whether the genre's local flavour might be diluted in the push for wider appeal. Emiway rejects that concern. "When 'Aur Bantai' came out, not many people were using slang like that. The Bombay street slang I was putting into my songs was very new for the scene," he says. "Now I see so many people rapping using the slang from their own gullies, streets, and areas. Everyone has their own style, and I really like that."
That same logic informs his view of diss tracks, a form that has often generated as much controversy as attention in Indian rap. His first official diss track, 'Samajh Mein Aaya Kya', released in 2018 in response to fellow rapper Raftaar, became a flashpoint in the scene. But Emiway says he does not believe diss records should be treated as a marketing tactic. "Many rappers think that doing a diss is marketing or promotion, that will take us forward. But I don't believe in that," he says. For him, the form only works when it comes from a real grievance. "If something has happened to you, and you felt bad about it, then you..."
Even in that unfinished thought, the principle is clear: Emiway sees authenticity as the only currency that matters. Whether he is freestyling into a mic, borrowing from the street or staking his claim as the G.O.A.T., his career has been built on the idea that Indian hip-hop does not need to imitate anyone else to matter. It only needs to sound like the people making it.