Tamil Nadu

Director Pa Ranjith hits out at Rolling Stone and Maajja over Arivu's exclusion

Arivu had penned lyrics for the songs Enjoy Enjaami and Neeye oli, which were part of the story by Rolling Stone India, but the cover photo only featured singers Dhee and Shan Vincent de Paul.

Written by : TNM Staff

Tamil film director Pa Ranjith on Sunday, August 22 strongly condemned Rolling Stone India magazine’s recent cover and AR Rahman backed music platform Maajja for failing to credit lyricist, rapper and singer Arivu in its latest cover story. Arivu had penned lyrics for the songs Enjoy Enjaami and Neeye oli, which were part of the story by Rolling Stone India. For singing Enjoy Enjaami and Neeye oli, Rolling Stone India interviewed singers Dhee and Shan Vincent de Paul and featured them on its August cover. However, Arivu who is the lyricist of Enjoy Enjaami and co-lyricist of Neeye oli with Shan, and known for his strong anti-caste lyrics, was not featured on the cover.

While the cover story only has one small quote from Arivu, the cover photo only features Dhee and Shan Vincent de Paul. Taking to Twitter, Ranjith said, “Arivu, the lyricist of Neeyaoli and Singer as well as lyricist of Enjoy Enjaami has once again been invisiblised. Rolling Stone India and Maajja, is it difficult to understand that the lyrics of both the songs challenges this erasure of public acknowledgement?”

Several others also lashed out at the magazine and the music label for excluding Arivu from his own work. Director CS Amudhan tweeted, “If the Arivu erasure wasn’t a deliberate and blatant move, singer Dhee, music composers Santhosh Narayanan and AR Rahman should speak up, otherwise it will go down as a historical injustice. These are people we believe are on the right side of the good fight, I really hope they do the right thing.”

After backlash from many including Ranjith, Rolling Stone India put out a tweet, listing the names of artists who are part of their cover story and named Arivu, besides music composer AR Rahman, Canadian hip-hop artist Navz-47 and music producer Santhosh Narayanan.

This is not the first time Arivu has seemingly been deprived of credit for his work. Though he wrote the lyrics of Enjoy Enjaami and appeared in the song alongside Dhee, he was dropped in the remix version of the song by French producer DJ Snake that only included singer Dhee in it. A Times Square Billboard had only featured DJ Snake and singer Dhee, excluding Arivu, who wrote the song on his grandmother Valliammal, who also featured in the original song that recorded over 300 million views.

Also Read

Gautam Adani met YS Jagan in 2021, promised bribe of $200 million, says SEC

Activists call for FIR against cops involved in alleged “fake encounter” of Maoist

The Jagan-Sharmila property dispute and its implications on Andhra politics

The Indian solar deals embroiled in US indictment against Adani group

Maryade Prashne is an ode to the outliers of Bengaluru’s software gold rush