Q) First of all, could you tell us how Brassic Bhai started, and what the idea or long-term vision behind Insignia really was?

Brassic: Behind Brassic Bhai was a guy who wanted to somehow get into music but was unable to do so. I used to hum Bollywood songs from the 90s but received no encouragement from my family to go into music. Learning music or even buying equipment was out of budget.

In college, I saw boys picking up rock music, guitars, drums, et al. — which was again beyond me. The initial spark was the same immanent tendency in the under-privileged to create something out of nothing, which saw the rise of hip hop. Hip hop’s story of coming up from nothing was inspiring, and it just felt very natural and intuitive to get into rapping as a low-cost entry into the world of music.

Brassic Bhai, of course, happened before Insignia did. So, as Brassic Bhai, I used to roam online communities and noticed that there were few communities doing something exciting — i.e., battle rapping. It just felt so exciting, so alive, so close, and personal. It was using words to play a sport. It kicked off both the poet and the animal in me.

So, I got drawn into these communities but soon realized that either such communities were dying or had very poor quality of lyricism going on.

So, Insignia was formed primarily to enhance lyrical skills, knowledge of hip hop, and maintain authenticity to the art form. There was no long-term vision to it. It was like a bunch of boys playing a sport in a public park. At that time, rap was not mainstream. It was more of an outcaste thing. It used to draw stares and odd reactions from the public. Rappers were not wanted anywhere. They were considered as ‘noise’.

We had to face a lot of hate, opposition, non-acceptance, and the shame that comes with being considered unwelcome in gentler sections of society. So, when we were doing Insignia, we were actually sowing the seeds of the future without realizing it. We were simply existing and trying to convince people that even rap is music — that rap battling is an acceptable form of competition.

But to even be able to convince people that we were up to something good, we had to focus on lyrical content because musicality does not come as a default when it comes to rap, and it is the factor of lyricism that sets it apart from other genres. Of course, that time it was not like now — how rap has become more musical and less lyrical. Rap meant lyrical miracle, dope spits only.

Q) Who are some of the names still active in Indian hip hop that you personally saw/mentored during the Insignia days? And what were they like back then compared to now?

Brassic: As CEO of Insignia, I was ensuring battle momentum was maintained in the community and that activities kept happening. So, giving feedback on spits with the intent to improve the general level of skills was a normal and routine affair for almost everyone.

MWA, Ace, Divine, other ex-members of Mumbai’s Finest (like Kinga Rhymes, AP, Top Dawg), RaGa (as Ewill Myth), Emenjay (now in Punjab), Gaggy B (now GD 47), Kru 172, D’ Evil, Enkore, Evidence (Adro), Shreyas Sagvekar, Sez (shifted to dropping beats after doing poor in battles), 3ple Beat, Sikandar Kahlon, Rob C, and many that I am unable to remember have been either members, battled, or participated.

There are tonnes of other guys who also battled and made songs but could not carry the flame longer and have since retired from hip hop. I have personally trained a whole lot of them, but the extent of training differs, with some receiving minimal while some receiving extensive training. The exact specific details now escape my memory.

Despite all this, the movement was very small compared to what it is now. At its peak, Insignia had 1000 members in the community.

Q) In Insignia there used to be a lot of different battle categories — talk a bit about them and how that idea came to you?

Brassic: Essentially, as the CEO, my main job was to maintain activity and keep the flame of battling alive even as we sensed rappers were more inclined to make songs. At that time, the gatekeeping norms were that unless you had established as a battle rapper, you didn’t get the braggin rights to start releasing songs.

Accomplished battle rappers got a free pass to making songs, while those making songs with weak-ass lyrics used to be advised to go into the battlegrounds and improve first.

So, to maintain battle rapping as a “shiny new thing,” it was my goal to keep reinventing what we were offering and keep rejigging and renewing games, formats, and modes to maintain popular interest.

So, we had general battles, one-to-one, which could be set up after a ‘call-out’ was made. For these general battles, one funny side fact is that there were elite battle rappers who would not entertain a call-out from noobs, while noobs were novices who did not have enough experience to know what made someone a veteran, so they would be extra enthusiastic to straight away go for the top-ranking ones.

So, I developed categories to classify rappers based on their skills as demonstrated by their success win percentages. Higher win percentages — higher rank. This ensured that a rapper in the noob category (Beedi/Tobacco) did not make a call-out to veteran categories (Cigars, Cigarettes) unless they first battled in their own category and improved their standing.

Apart from the usual general battles which happened regularly, we used to organize tournaments cyclically. These tournaments differed either in formats (round robins/knockouts), content (poet battles or diss battles), or technique focus (multies battles, wordplay battles, story battles).

We also had titles such as Wordplay Wizards, Multies Machineguns, etc., and more, but my memory is failing me now.

Q) Who were the elite battle rappers from the Insignia era, and how many of them eventually transitioned to platforms like B3, SpitDope, etc.?

Brassic: Elite battle rappers from Insignia used to be ex-MWA, Big Nikk, Smokey, Brodha V (Big Nikk and Brodha V did not battle a lot in Insignia as he was more pre-Insignia forum blud), Speed Ice, H.O.D, TDA, Enkore, D’Evil, MASH, Kevin, Wrathchild, Quixotic, Hardknok, Infamous, Full Power (Yungsta Ash and Frappe Ash), Shaikshpeare, Sai, yours truly, and many more.

Poetik Justis used to be known as NV23 back then and later transformed into Poetik Justis. The entire B3 league was filled with ex-Insignians, and there were some additional troops built up by EMF.

As for Spit Dope Inc., Kode — I never had a direct touchpoint with him, although I appreciate that he has credited Insignia as his inspiration. Kode’s Spit Dope. is built up by him and did see some participation from ex-Insignians like Full Power, for example, although the majority of the battlers there were a new crop.

You see, B3 had started right after Insignia, but Spit Dope. came up after some time. By that time, Insignia’s influence had waned and was kept alive only through ex-Insignians battling in B3 or Spit Dope.

In short, the majority transitioned to B3 rather than Spit Dope, but it was not like a choice between the two or that these two leagues were in full-blown existence rubbing shoulders with each other. B3 was big when Spit Dope was not in full existence. So, it was a distance of time as well.

Personally speaking, the Insignian battling content philosophy is better reflected in B3 battles than in Spit Dope battles, and this was the case in the initial post-Insignia years. Frankly speaking, I am not too well aware of the Spit Dope side of things. Kode and EMF would be able to throw deeper insights and authentic narrations in the stories of B3 and Spit Dope.

Q) Were there any codes, unwritten rules, or cultural values inside Insignia that you wish still existed in Indian hip hop today?

Brassic: While I understand that a lot of water has flown under the bridge of Indian hip hop, and I wouldn’t want to wish an alternative history, I would be happy and find it more relatable if Indian hip hop goes more total into lyricality. Musicality is an appeal for sure — that helps make it one of the mainstream genres.

The appeal for people like me, who grew up as outcastes and underdogs of our societies, is the ability to express, and rap is a medium that prioritizes expression over musicality. That’s what helped the African Americans finally break through into national and mainstream consciousness in America. They dominated public and civil discourse with the help of this tool that they exploited very well politically in the realm of Black identity politics.

I believe this background lends to hip hop an innate and immanent quality which must not be dissolved in the pursuit of mainstream musicality because for me, and for Insignians, rap is not rhythm and music — it’s rhythm and poetry — and poems are best when they bring to the fore the innate churnings always undergoing in human souls over questions of purpose, identity, and existence.

Q) Why did you step away from hip hop? Was it a clean break or something that happened slowly? Also, do you ever feel a pull to return when you see how big the culture has become?

Brassic: It was never my plan to step away from hip hop. At the base of everything is ‘Economics’. Most decisions are economic in nature but rationalized morally, socially, or culturally.

So, after Insignia phased out, we were all really clueless. We had had all our battles, explored all the techniques that rap had to offer, and were up to date on all rap albums. Rap battling in general was going down as music production took greater primacy in the space.

I felt, being the leader of the Insignian hip hop community, it was my moral obligation to take the next step and show the pathway. So, I had decided to do a rap album back in 2013. This would have been the first hip hop album of the new phase of Indian hip hop, with the previous phase being Baba Sehgal/Devang Patel-led.

But fate had other plans. My project fell into bad days because of bad execution, malicious actors, poor decisions (young and dumb), and it had to be aborted at great financial loss to me — all of which sent me into mental health problems and depression. It took me four years to come out of that phase.

Then I had to get a source of income, so I joined the job market back again after having quit it earlier to do my rap album. Then while working, rap used to distract and disturb me a lot. It was a bad break up, PTSD, nostalgia, and a love-hate relationship situation going on for me.

I was trying to reconnect back to the community, but the heart stopped beating like it used to before. I went to Hauz Khas cyphers once but could not connect. I went to other parts of New Delhi, including East and West Delhi, but could not connect. I went to Connaught Place and tried to revive some spirits, but perhaps fatigue and a disconnect had set in. I could not follow the game anymore.

So, I tried to actively cut all cords. Even after having deleted all my online content since Insignia days, trying to forget the identity of ‘Brassic Bhai’, I could not stop myself from checking out Indian hip hop songs once in a while.

Then I found that overall lyrical quality was going quite down. That helped make up my mind that I would get back into it. But years of disconnect meant I could not do that immediately, and it took me writing only lyrics for two years before I picked up the mic again and released a bunch of songs in 2025.

Q) In your opinion, what did Insignia give Indian hip hop that today’s audience or even today’s artists don’t fully understand or acknowledge?

Brassic: Insignia was an attempt to keep hip hop as authentic as possible. It’s always a work in progress. Artists today also are trying to be as authentic as possible.

So, after 15 years, it now feels that Insignia was a community, and the understanding of authenticity is always specific to a community that is interpreting it. So, everyone should do themselves, but what set Insignia’s rappers apart from any other was its obsession with putting in excessive effort into crafting meaning, purpose, multies, and wordplays into lyricism.

The only flex allowed was ‘lyricality’, and no gate pass was given to BS, shallowness, weakness, inauthenticity, or mimicry — in general, Bakchodi was not zeitgeist in the community.

Q) Do you ever think about how much culture from that era got lost because nobody documented it? If Insignia had existed today, how would you want it archived or remembered?

Brassic: Yeah, agreed completely. We had so many live meet-ups, cyphers, and so much online content — all of which could have been showcase learning material for many to pick up from the heights that we had achieved.

However, as Insignia was formed on Orkut, its records are not available after Orkut was wiped out after remaining dead for some time. Its server support and online database were removed by their original founder.

A lot of personal data was deleted because of my active attempts to disconnect from rap, which had become painful for me during my years of depression and mental health issues.

Q) When you look at Indian hip hop in 2025, what excites you the most and what worries you the most?

Brassic: I can’t say much here actually. That’s because I actively disconnected from the space, only occasionally checking a song or two, which was hardly enough for me to get a sense of the general waves and trends.

I started actively following Indian hip hop only from early 2025 onwards, thanks to Navneet Mishra — one half of NAXP that goes back past with me to 2013 in Moti Nagar, Delhi.

If I have to speak on the basis of what I heard in 2025, I would say Indian hip hop is certainly now able to find its voice. If Insignia was an attempt at asking the question, ‘What is authentic?’ today’s bluds are demonstrating ‘What is authentic’. IYKYK 😉.