When Raman Negi began penning 2024’s Chaltey Purzay, the follow-up to his 2022 debut album, Shakhsiyat, he wanted to make a record “that was the complete opposite”. The singer-songwriter tells Apple Music: “My first album was more about trying to do something I had been itching to do for so long—to present myself as true to what I am as a musician. That’s why it’s so in-your-face, raw and not polished.” For his second album, Negi aimed to write a “more modern record”. If Shakhsiyat was a heavier, rockier effort, Chaltey Purzay is more varied, with the artist traversing into pop and even electronic music territory. This, he says, was a natural consequence of the album’s subject matter being more outward-looking than that of its predecessor. “With Shakhsiyat, I was trying to address what I was going through and what I was thinking when I was talking to myself. It was mostly about me,” says the guitarist and composer who shocked the Indian independent music scene in April 2022 when he announced that he had quit as the vocalist of popular Hindi rock band The Local Train. “Chaltey Purzay is about me interacting with the world and what I think about modern life.” The title, which translates to “clever folks”, is inspired by “how you meet people and they have opinions about your life and your art and what is wrong and what is right”, explains Negi, who once again enlisted bassist Gaurav Chintamani to produce his album. “Chaltey Purzay is about my artistic evolution. If you want to know what I am about today, this [is the] piece of work [that] defines me.” Below, Negi takes Apple Music through the making of the album, track by track. “Darmiyaani Ungli Chronicles” “I felt really exposed after Shakhsiyat. I didn’t expect so much support, [nor did I anticipate receiving] so much criticism that’s not based on music but on my choices. I started [my career] putting out music on the internet, so criticism is not a problem. I’m very happy that people talk about me. How long can one ignore it or avoid it? ‘Darmiyaani Ungli Chronicles’ is a letter not to critics, but to somebody who claims to be a fan yet is not. They’re still living with an idea of me that doesn’t exist any more. I really wanted to address that and what better way than to write a song about showing a middle finger through art to people who say I can’t break the mould I created and I can’t be who I want to be today, tomorrow or whenever. The [aim] behind it is to tell people to let the artist be.” “Zeest” “‘Zeest’ means life. In April, I visited a college where I was invited for a Q&A. There, a young lady asked me: ‘What does life mean to you?’ I gave her the hackiest answer and I was so bothered about it afterwards. I said that life is about finding yourself, which of course it is, but life is also about hardships and love and one-night stands and paying rent. The song [was prompted by] my inefficiency in answering that question. I wrote like 10 to 11 verses, addressing so many things that I [later] removed. The idea demanded for it to be a poppy number or for it to be straightforward and more about the lyrics. It’s about living life one day at a time—and hating your life one day but also loving it [the next] day.” “Kismet” “I try to stay away from love songs—there are enough of them. This is not a song about losing somebody or being sad, but about how you meet some people and you feel free and not that jaded with the world. Some people make you feel like that. I think that’s also love. ‘Kismet’ is about being hopeful. It sounds arena rock-ish because I finished it in the summer of last year and started playing it live. Once you start performing a song, it evolves.” “Farzi Kirdaar” “The lyrics are about being in a very toxic relationship and dealing with it and overcoming it and realising what’s happening is not okay. It’s a very personal song that’s come from a delicate place as it’s about something you can’t really talk to people about—how you’ve been mistreated. I made it like a guitar song but I had the idea of a synth in my head. I’m glad it still captures a rock feel, but it has the most electronic elements [of any track] on the album. To me, ‘Farzi Kirdaar’ sounds like an old tune. It reminds me of many things—of electronic music but also of ’80s music. I realised those are my influences coming through.” “Berang” “I wrote this in 2021 during the Covid pandemic. I didn’t put it out because I thought it was the saddest song I’d ever written. I was in a different headspace [back then]. It’s been called ‘Berang’ since then and the melody and the riff are the same but the lyrics have been changed. Earlier, I had written it to myself. In this version, I’m asking for help and I’m also explaining how I feel about it. I’m telling my friends to save me—but in a very casual way. [Apart from ‘Darmiyaani Ungli Chronicles’,] the only other guitar solo is in this song and it’s my favourite piece of music on the album because I wasn’t trying to go for anything big. I was just going where the song was telling me to go after listening to [British guitar legend] Mark Knopfler and improvising.” “Maazi” “‘Maazi’ means ‘the past’ and the song is about moving on and not getting affected by it. I wanted to write a song that sounds gritty and has that vibe where I can really throw my voice around. It has a big chorus because it’s about changing your world and not being dictated by your past. It’s the closest to Shakhsiyat but it has punk sensibilities. I love to play it.” “Badshah Zero” “I feel the music business is now a social media content-creation business. An artist has to do so many other things. It’s so much less about the aural quality of the music than about how it looks. Some have become jaded about it. Some have become really bitter about it. It’s also hampering us from taking artistic leaps. You’re swayed by how the world operates now. This song became about how you want to pursue your art but also want to get famous, and about the imposter syndrome you carry and about the hypocrisy of modern life. You say something but do something [else]. You give gyan to young people but don’t really follow your own dreams.” “Hukkah Paani (A 21st Century Poem)” “‘Hukkah Paani’ was written in 40 to 50 minutes, in one go. The song is a sociopolitical commentary about how we talk about changing the world but we really don’t. All of us are sitting on our couches and claiming to be revolutionaries but we want the revolution to be home-delivered. I really think that’s who we are as people in the 21st century, not just in the country but in the world. It collects together all my thoughts across the album.”