If there was a high school yearbook category for “Most Likely to be an Indian Canadian-Hip Hop-R&B-Reggae-Star Selling 1.3 Million Albums Worldwide,” Raghav Mathur would have been a shoe-in.
Alas, such a category didn’t exist at Sir Winston Churchill High School when the 27-year-old graduated. His classmates should be forgiven for their lack of insight.
“I was one of those cheesy 16-year-olds with a ‘91 Chrysler New Yorker with 12-inch subwoofers in the back,” says Mathur.
The car was not the stuff hip hop dreams are made of, but the Method Man and Redman Blackout! album blasting out of the speakers was, and it would prove to be a major influence in Mathur’s career.
Of course, the road to success is paved with many influences, including high school music teacher Brian Farrell who Mathur describes as “Mr. Holland’s Opus multiplied by a million.”
The vocal jazz, choir and musical theatre he studied under Farrell has little to do with the kind of music Mathur puts out now, but the discipline groomed him for what was to come.
“It put me in a great position in terms of being on time and making decisions that respect the music so the music will respect you,” Mathur says.
After high school, Mathur went to Los Angeles and studied under vocal coach Seth Riggs, who also trained Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder (the guy Mathur most wants
to be like, work effort-wise, when he “grows up”).
“I saw the level he was at and how he kept getting better,” says Mathur.
The next step was a move to Liverpool where he studied at Paul McCartney’s Institute of Performing Arts, followed by three years spent unemployed and writing his debut album.
Storyteller was released in 2004, sending Mathur into the stratosphere of success going seven times platinum in India. He’s had four top 10 hits in the United Kingdom and international concert dates across Africa, Asia and Europe in front of crowds numbering in the tens of thousands.
You can be forgiven if you haven’t heard of the hometown boy who made it big. Storyteller was never released in North America and any exposure he received here was largely due to Indian media.
He’s hoping to change that with his follow-up album.
Identity was released internationally at the end of November, including North America where he’s hoping it will enter the mainstream. The album brings Mathur back to the kind of music he grew up listening to including a collaboration with his idol Redman for the album’s first single, “My Kinda Girl.”
“For me to be in a video or making a track with Red was ridiculous and amazing,” says Mathur, whose manager and entourage recorded behind the scenes footage of the video shoot on their camcorders chronicling the realisation of a high school dream for the cheesy kid cruising around in a Chrysler New Yorker.
To watch the video, visit raghav.com.
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