Artist Spotlight: Dhanji turned Ahmedabad into a funk-rap city, and nobody noticed

Most Indian hip-hop you hear about comes out of Delhi, Mumbai or Bengaluru. Dhanji works out of Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, and he has built his own small label there, Thaltej Publishing Company, named after the neighbourhood he raps about. He switches between Gujarati, Hindi and English, and he surrounds his voice with saxophone, trumpet, trombone and live bass as often as he does with 808s.

If you came to rap through Kendrick's long-form albums, Tyler's genre-hopping or Kanye's sample-heavy early records, Dhanji is the Indian artist who sits closest to that way of building a project: the whole record is one idea, and the sound changes shape to serve it.

Start here

"Thaltej Blues". The lead single from his debut, made with producer Circle Tone and singer Neil CK on an 80s funk bounce, with a video that walks around Ahmedabad. It is the easiest way in.

"Teji". A track from the same album that he directed, wrote and edited the video for himself, which is the clearest picture of how he works: rapper first, filmmaker next.

"Keh Do Ki Ye Jhoot Hai". A later single from the Director's Cut edition of the debut, which he announced alongside the Teji video in September 2024.

All of Ruab. It runs 11 tracks and about 15 minutes, so it fits one commute.

Why him, why now

Ruab came out on 8 August 2023, his debut album after seven mixtapes, among them Lost in AMD, Boy Cut and DZs Control. It brought in Seedhe Maut's Encore ABJ, plus Gravity, Pho and Arpit Bala, and a spread of producers including Circle Tone, Sammad, Acharya and Blu Attic. Funk, jazz, boom bap and G-funk all show up. So do the themes he keeps returning to: desire, class, vulnerability, mental health and the cost of being an artist in a capitalist world, and his bond with Ahmedabad.

He took the album on the road before the videos. A 10-piece live band played it at Piano Man in Gurugram in July 2023, and he performed it at Zomaland Ahmedabad on 25 November 2023. The CDs and T-shirts sold out, and a vinyl pressing was planned. In 2025 came Drive-In Cinema 2.1, a 19-track project produced by Rasla, built around the drive-in cinemas he grew up near, with a fan listening session in Ahmedabad.

The through-line is control. He writes it, directs the videos and runs the label. For a reader used to hearing Indian rap through Delhi crews, it is a different model, and a good argument that the next big scene does not have to come from a metro.

His earlier mixtape Boy Cut is on Spotify too, for the deeper dive:

If you like him, try

• Seedhe Maut: Encore ABJ is on Ruab, and the duo is the obvious next stop for Delhi-side lyricism.
• Prabh Deep: another Delhi rapper whose albums reward a front-to-back listen.
• Hanumankind: the Kerala-born, Houston-raised rapper who took Indian rap to a global stage.

More from us: If you like Seedhe Maut, try these 6 Indian rappers, and our other Artist Spotlights.