Twice as nice

The hip hop scene in the city is seeing an uprising of sorts, and riding that wave are the hip hop duo of Uneek and MC Mike. Collaborating for around two years now, the duo have been laying down successful tracks, both together and as solo artists, with their videos even featuring on national music channels.

A software engineer by profession, Harish Gorapalli, aka Uneek, began his hip-hop journey in 2008, when he started listening to old school hip hop — “The likes of NAS, Biggie, 2Pac, Notorious BIG and others from the hip-hop movement back then really influenced me. But it wasn’t until my graduation that I started writing my own stuff.”

Though he first focused on writing about contemporary, urban social issues, Harish then met Kanna Murali — or MC Mike as he likes to be called — at a friend’s party in 2013 and things took a different, but positive turn. “I knew he had the same kind of influences as mine, so we started working together to craft a sound unique to us,” Harish says, “We dropped our first music video Second Chance and it got almost 40,000 views on YouTube.”

Mike’s commercial influences brought a whole new level to the kind of music they were creating, and helped balance their style. “I write about my ambitions and dreams in life,” Mike says, “I mostly prefer writing about things that people can relate to, about some part of their life.”

While Mike has already begun working on his music career full time — he also writes Telugu hip hop and has solo and collaborative projects called Naa Peru MC Mike and Jimpak Chipak lined up for release — Harish still works as a software professional at an MNC in the city. But thanks to the power of the Internet, he will soon be bringing his music career in focus. “We’ve monetised our content on YouTube, and other multi-channel networks have also approached us for integrating content, so we’re working through the deals and should have one soon!” says Harish.