Eminem adopted it to survive on the rough streets of Detroit, and Post Malone embraced it to blend in with an unfamiliar community growing up in Texas. Hip-hop, as we know it, has been a lifeline for many. For Andheri-based rapper Ashwini Hiremath aka Krantinaari, it paved the path to self-confidence growing up in a predominantly English-speaking friend circle at school. “Hip-hop changed my vocabulary. I was lucky enough to be in a city that was embracing the genre at the time,” the 29-year-old recalls. Fifteen years later, the IIT Bombay School of Design alumna and co-founder of rap collective Wild Wild Women, is preparing to set out on a bus journey across rural India, taking the hip-hop experience to those who don’t have luck on their side.

Young female artistes record inside the studio space housed by the bus