NEW ALBUM VEENA LP DUE AUGUST 23 VIA VEENA CO.
Himanshu ‘HEEMS’ Suri releases the third single from VEENA LP, his second album this year, and each of the three songs showcases a different sound represented across the album. New single “RAKHI” features fellow Queens natives Pavvan & Ajji, the former of whom first collaborated with Heems over a decade ago on “Jhootay Lare” from his 2012 fan favorite Nehru Jackets mixtape where Heems worked with local high school students in Richmond Hill, Queens to raise awareness about gerrymandering in a successful campaign to redraw city and state boundaries.
“This is what community work does,” Heems says of the collaboration, “they made us a district and gave us a star. My man went from a high school kid around recording equipment for the first time to a successful Punjabi artist representing for New York”. He went on, “this one for me was a bit of A&R work, some cultural engineering. I dealt with a lot of multicultural collaborations in the music business and now I have an example of how I would do it, centering it around an instrument used by two cultures”.
“RAKHI,” is produced by Evergreen Univerze aka Karan Dhillon, who also engineered LAFANDAR and the forthcoming VEENA LP. Asked about the collaboration, Dhillon said: “Panjabi music and Hip-Hop always inspired me. Heems asked for a tumbi drill beat and I got my boy Dilbagh (Nagi) to play in the studio. I laid the drill beat out and it was like magic. For me and my partner Barbados, working with Himanshu has been a dream come true.”
Heems adds on first connecting with Evergreen Univerze: “I met Karan at a family party when we were both helping the aunties clean up. He mentioned his spot in the neighborhood and it was important for me to be there – in my community, near my home, around Panjabi folk – while I made this music. I needed that security blanket of community, like the voicemails on the record, as I was coming back after 6 years“.
The track finds Heems contemplating drill through the lens of the Indian diaspora as well as its West Indian enthusiasts. He mentions not just Queens, but making it for Toronto and London as well, where Jamaicans and other West Indians live side-by-side with South Asians. “RAKHI,” the holiday where girls tie an ornamental string of the same name around their brothers wrist,wD siblings and named after the ornamental seeing a names after includes a tumbi, an indian string instrument known for its use on Punjabi MC’s “Mundian To Bach Ke,” played by Dilbagh Nagi. Heems dips into a lower vocal register, and speeds up his bars, sounding natural on the UK variety of the genre. VEENA LP explores genres within rap, like Tamil Pop Rap with Navz-47 on “Flowers,” Drill on “RAKHI,” or Jazz on his lead single “MANTO.”
VEENA LP is a confessional record confronting trauma across its many forms – generational, familial, and complex. Included in the upcoming album’s vinyl artwork is also a letter Heems’ mom sent him when he admitted he needed help and took some time off, a testament to the deeply personal nature of the album.
Heems
VEENA LP
Produced by Sid Vashi
June 26th, 2024
VEENA SOUNDS
1. VEENA
2. RATATOUILLE
3. MANTO with Vijay Iyer
4. BOURDAIN featuring Mr. Cheeks
5. UNDERBELLY
6. RAKHI featuring Pavvan, Ajji
7. FLOWERS featuring Navz- 47
8. JUHI with Hasan Minhaj
9. DAME
10. BANSHEE featuring Cool Calm Pete
11. RIGHTEOUS
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