When New Delhi hip-hop artist D₹V looked up the etymology behind his real name, Dhruv Rajpal, he found a prince called Dhruva. According to legend, this prince embarked on a spiritual journey to seek an audience with Lord Vishnu. For the rapper-producer’s second LP, NAKSHATRA, however, his protagonist takes a different direction—this is “why there’s debauchery and drugs on the album”, as he tells Apple Music. NAKSHATRA is a roving, psychedelic hip-hop odyssey told with evocative synths, striking beat switches and a liberal helping of guitar licks. For this album, D₹V says he loved working with producers who specialise in trap beats and adding his own distinctive flourishes across the record’s 13 tracks. He also adds that American rapper Gunna was a “big influence” when it came to the album’s sonic layering. The instrumental splendour of NAKSHATRA is due in no small part to the fact that D₹V is an accomplished guitarist. He peppers these trap, drill and experimental hip-hop beats with six-string flavour throughout, which only augments the distorted sounds and colourful storytelling—often rooted in the artist’s mumble-rap hooks, which took centre stage on his 2020 debut full-length Dhruv Rajpal—that are at the heart of NAKSHATRA. Here, D₹V walks us through the concept and production behind each of the album’s tracks. “Nakshatra” “I picked out the beat for this in 2020, even before I wrote the first track for NAKSHATRA. Just the sound of it—I was so sure that this was the direction of the next album. But lyrically, I only finished this song [in October 2022]. I knew the sound was going to be the direction of the album but I didn’t know what to say on it. I did the rest of the album first. Then I got back to this beat and thought, ‘Oh, that’s the one that started it all.’ I called my friend Boyblanck up and showed him the lyrics I had so far and he said, ‘What are you waiting for? This is the song.’ In the switch-up, you hear heavy breathing and this voice note at the end. That’s my grandfather’s voice from six years ago when he was on his deathbed, talking about the partition [of India in 1947] and how he rose from nothing. I just felt like there was a lot of power attached to it.” “Chadhai” “Me and Stunnah [Beatz] were talking and we’d been meaning to do a song for a couple of years. We stayed in touch and I asked him to send me some beats. One became my single ‘Candy Flip’ and the other was this. I heard the sample of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Californication’ and said, ‘Yo, we have to do this.’ I immediately knew it was for NAKSHATRA because of the depth. The song is just plain and simple about my experiences in the game. No one told me I could do this for a living. It’s the most personal I’ve been on a record, talking about my family situation and stuff.” “Man Down” “I was so into drill all of last year. I was going to make a drill album but I just felt quite negative in terms of the things we were talking about. I’d written these lyrics for a different beat but I switched it up a bit to make it more palatable overall. This feels like a war song. If the album is a spiritual journey, this is where you fight your demons. If you’re at the gym or running, it’s the perfect song for that. Definitely the hardest one.” “Coochie Wet” “The producer of this song, Smoxe Dawg, played this to me and I had the flows ringing in my head. I thought I should change the lyrics but as time passed, I realised it wouldn’t have the same effect. I figured, D₹V’s gotta be D₹V and it’s gotta be named ‘Coochie Wet’.” “Khoj (feat. Darcy)” “Me and Darcy love exploring new sounds. AAKASH, the producer, sent this beat to Darcy and he sent it to me and I knew I wanted to have a plug beat on this. I wrote the hook, and in the verses I wanted to tell a story to my listeners, like how I started my journey in music. When demonetisation [of ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes] happened in 2016, my dad gave me ₹10,000 and I had a week to spend the money. I bought a MIDI controller and a pretty bad mic. I had this shitty laptop. No one was trying to buy my beats and that’s actually why I started rapping on my beats—because no one else was. [In his parts] Darcy’s talking about his experiences growing up in Delhi.” “Shaayad (feat. mohit)” “I was in Chicago. My sister lives in San Francisco so I was visiting her and went to see mohit in Chicago. We had a local house party show we were playing. ‘Shaayad’ was created around then. mohit and his homie Monks are the producers on the track. mohit had gone to class and I was with his friend, a super chill dude. He whips out the guitar and I lay a couple of random vocal melodies and he chops them up and lays it over a skeletal beat. mohit comes back from class and adds drums to it and we just start trading bars. My voice is cracking on it. It feels like a scratchy throat but more like Kurt Cobain with a raspy voice vibe.” “MCB (feat. Uday Bakshi)” “This was supposed to be called ‘NCB’ but I didn’t go with that for legal reasons. There’s also a bar in there which says, ‘Baaton se deta hu trip main but nahi karta switch MCB’ (‘People trip on the things I say but don’t betray them’). The song is like a drug dictionary. Uday Bakshi is famous for that, so I had to have him on the track. A lot of people credit me for pioneering the new wave [of hip-hop in India] but Uday has been holding it down since way before, since 2017 with guys like Splash. We’d been talking about doing a song and when he sent me his verse back, he’d just straight up named every drug there is.” “Ajmal” “Ajmal is a fragrance brand but I do associate its meaning as just being ‘fragrance’. I felt like it was a beautiful word. I think it means ‘eternally beautiful’ or something along those lines. The first take I did was all gibberish. I thought I’d refine the text because it’s not as clear to understand. But it wasn’t hitting the same way, so I kept it the way it was. This song is more like driving at 5am, just alone with your thoughts. It’s like a dream sequence.” “Zaaya” “I did the guitars at the end of this track. Most production credit goes to mohit, though. mohit was at Raja Kumari’s studio in Los Angeles [in 2021] to work with her. He played me this beat while he was at her studio and I immediately did the hook on that and it just went. We dropped this song on a whim. We had no plan, no video or anything. It didn’t do much at first but then six or eight months later, it started picking up.” “Sapne” “Smoxe Dawg played me a trap beat. I loved the sample on it. I had the hook but I didn’t want it to be on a trap beat. I told him to send me stems. I took the sample and you hear Moog synths, distorted synth-bass and distorted guitars. I laid all of that. My favourite parts on it are the kicks and snares—it’s almost like [Led Zeppelin song] ‘When the Levee Breaks’. They come on really strong. Travis Scott’s Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight was actually a big influence for that in terms of my guitar style. I wanted those machine-gun type drums—super in-your-face. I knew it wasn’t like any other song on the album. The hook on it is like a rock song.” “Ranikhet (feat. Boyblanck)” “Boyblanck is fairly younger than me. He wanted [to create] a song with me and I invited him to the studio but I felt like he wasn’t there yet, even though he’s quite talented. I saw raw potential. Cut to six months ago, I saw that he was in Bombay. I thought he never used to leave Noida. Turns out he’s uprooted his whole life to move to Mumbai because he got a call from [director] Anurag Kashyap to work with him. I knew he had it in him. So, I happened to be in Mumbai for a gig and linked back and worked on [Boyblanck’s single] ‘Court Kacheri’ so he got on my track. The producer told me the sample on this is from a Japanese song from the ’70s whose title translates to ‘Help Me’. I thought that was beautiful because this song was also my cry for help. I’ve never been to Ranikhet, the place, but it sounds like a place where I’m finally at peace. Waking up in a mansion where I’ve finally won my battles.” “Zamana” “I wanted to have a family-friendly, palatable song on here. The rest of the songs on the album are super intense. It was going to be a catchy song with a dancehall beat. Maybe something people can make [Instagram] Reels on? Full disclosure: it might sound commercial but it’s still me, though. There were no love songs on the album, so I figured there’s gotta be at least one love song.” “Sawaalo (feat. Bombay the Artist)” “Bombay the Artist had sent me a song on another beat that she’d picked; this is after we did ‘Baat Kar’. I wasn’t feeling that. I had conceptualised the idea for NAKSHATRA but I didn’t have more than two songs for the album at the time. I was in Himachal Pradesh with my parents and it was super quiet. I just felt at one with the concept I’d written. The mountains in the artwork—all that is where the concept originated. I knew it had to be the album closer because on a spiritual quest, you’re always seeking answers to questions. But as I sing on the song, I still don’t have the answers because it’s an endless search, right? I was sitting on it for more than a year but then I traced back to one of my experiences in the mountains while I was travelling with my cousins. I happened to meet this stranger and just ended up having the most deep conversations about life. I don’t know his name to date because the next morning we went our separate ways. The three, four hours we spoke was one of the deepest conversations I’ve ever had. It was about how in life we don’t really know what we’re doing here but we’re somehow just going along with it.”