The Midas Touch

It features,among other things,a love ballad,a club mix and a trance number.

Already the single Phoolon Se Pooncho,which features RnB singer Jiddah,seems poised to soar to the top of the charts. Mentioning the singer gives Lahiri another chance to point out his ‘firsts’. “I’m the first in the country to get an African-American RnB rapper to sing for an Indian album. I’ve been a pioneer in many ways. Long before people brought down Kylie Minogue,I’d brought down singer Samantha Fox for my movie Rock Dancer. I’ve worked with many international artistes like Apache Indian,Boy George and MC Hammer.”

Lahiri’s music has an international following as he’ll be the first to admit. “Hip-hop artiste Dr Dre had used my song Kaliyon ka Chaman in a track called Addictive. He didn’t give me proper credit so I had to sue him. Since then people who’ve used my music have given me due credit. Like MIA who remixed my song Jimmy from Disco Dancer. In fact,that song was also used in the climax of the Adam Sandler movie You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.”

The disco king also claims to be the original ‘bling king’. “This is my identity — my gold jewellery and my dark glasses. Once in London,when it was very cold,I was standing outside a shop,zippered up to my neck. Some passers-by stopped and told me I looked like Bappi Lahiri but they didn’t believe me when I told them that I was indeed him. I finally had to unzip my jacket and show them my chains,which is when they believed me and even took my autograph.” The case against Dr. Dre,he says,led to his photographs — complete with bling and dark glasses — to be splashed across the Los Angeles Times. “My style became well-known there and the hip-hoppers took inspiration from it.”

That Lahiri’s appeal cuts across generations and regions is a known fact. A case in point would be the recent Channel [V Be the Change concert where fans went wild as he performed his popular songs like Yaar Bina Chain Kahan. As for rumours that music director Vishal Dadlani refused to share a platform with him as he’s a non-rocker,Lahiri rubbishes them. “Vishal is a good boy. He’s like a younger brother to me. He called me this morning and told me that all those reports are untrue and I believe him.”