Who is Hanumankind? Indian rapper's Big Dawgs surpasses Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us on global Spotify and trends on Billboard's Hot 100

Sooraj Cherukat aka Hanumankind recently released Big Dawgs on July 9, 2024, and the track has garnered a lot of traction worldwide, with more than 15 million views on YouTube. Big Dawgs surpassed Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us on August 8, 2024, as it held the 11th position on the Spotify Global Top 50 chart.

The track also surpassed Eminem's Houdini and it currently has over 900,000 searches on Shazam.

Rapper of the song with 11.5 million streams on Spotify, Hanumankind is a 31-year-old Kerala-born rapper. Due to his father's work in an oilfield company, the rapper grew up in countries like UAE and Africa, after which his family settled in Texas.

The rapper returned to India in 2012 to pursue business administration at PSG College, Coimbatore. Later, he undertook an internship at Goldman Sachs in 2014 and worked as an Operation Analyst in the same firm for more than a year from 2017.

While pursuing his job, he used to work as Hanumankind simultaneously and released his first single Daily Dose in 2019, which was a part of his debut EP Kalari.

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"It took some 30 minutes for us to put together the beat"- Hanumankind describes how Big Dawgs came into being

Hanumankind's Big Dawgs is not only being appreciated for the song's beat and lyrics but also for its unique video shot in the coastal district of Ponnani, Kerala. The track's video is shot inside what stuntmen call "the well of death," with motorcycles and cars riding parallel to the ground on walls made of wooden planks.

In an interview with Rolling Stone dated August 2, 2024, the rapper talked about the impact of the track and the video. Commenting on the same, the rapper stated that he was aware of the video having an impact because the team put their lives on the line.

He also addressed the YouTube comments under the Big Dawgs video and dubbed them as "one of the most wholesome things" he has ever seen.

Hanumankind also mentioned that "everyone from everyone came together," showing an outpouring of love that the rapper is in awe of and that he is glad of the impact his track was able to have.

On being asked how the song happened, Hanumankind shared that he was on a Zoom call with music producer Kalmi and they were trying to build a habit of making music without intention without any weight attached to it, just to see what would happen. The rapper told the publication:

"It took some 30 minutes for us to put together the beat, I wrote, and it rolled out. Now, of course, there were changes that we made as the song came to completion."

He mentioned that the process is on them "as artists to take pride in". Hanumankind also shared that the song has its transformative process but one can't lose the initial feeling which made the track the way it came to be.

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In his interview with Rolling Stone, the rapper was asked how it felt that people all over the world were listening to an Indian rapper that the rapper dubbed "crazy".

He told the publication that he is "just a rapper from India" but he is also someone who's making "art from a different side of the world," referring to his personal journey.