Nikhita Gandhi releases single with Badshah featuring Mrunal Thakur

Nikhita Gandhi cherishes the feedback she is receiving for her recently released single ‘Bad Boy X Bad Girl’ with rap artist Badshah. The video features Toofaan-fame Mrunal Thakur sensuously grooving to this fun number.

“I have done singles before but this song is a class apart. This is the first non-film collaboration with Badshah. His music is always of international standard,” says the multilingual playback singer, over the phone from Mumbai.

Does Nikhita anticipate more offers to be the voice for Mrunal? “I don’t mind,” laughs Nikhita and adds, “I believe when I sang ‘Burj Khalifa’, Kiara Advani also liked my voice, especially how I started the song; she wanted me to sing more songs for her.”

The 2017 title song of Raabta, picturised on Deepika Padukone was the big-ticket number for Nikhita.

“I have had the pleasure of singing some phenomenal songs like ‘Raabta’ and a variety of others in Bollywood. My niche is my versatility. Sometimes people say ‘Oh my god, you sang this one? It sounds so different’,” says Nikhita whose repertoire extends to playback singing in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali films.

“It doesn’t matter who I am singing for, for me the song and the composers are important. I don’t pick according to how big or small the actors are, everybody starts from somewhere and becomes somebody.”

If you are a trained singer living in Chennai, you cannot escape the ARR aura.

Kolkata-born Nikhita Gandhi, while pursuing dentistry in Chennai, joined AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory to learn western classical music in her free time.

Looking back

She found herself spending more time there as part of the choir. As destiny had it, Rahman heard her voice and gave her a break in Kalyana Samyal Sadham (2013). What followed was a slew of offers from other film industries, an album in Bengali called Kotha and another biggie with Rahman ‘Ladio’ for Shankar’s I.

She entered the Telugu film industry with ‘Beautiful Zindagi’ in Yevade Subramanyam. “When a break came from AR Rahman I was not even planning to be a playback singer, I was more into rock, and may have pursued that. Thanks to him, I was put on the singing map and a career in Bollywood got launched,” says Nikhita.

With regional songs, what’s her trick to sound like a native singer? “I put myself in the person of that language and try to pretend. It’s sort of mimicry I suppose. I write lyrics in Hindi, it helps in being phonetically correct.”

While indie music is considered a stepping stone to Bollywood, Nikhita started her music career as a playback singer first and moved to make independent music, including collaborating with American singer-songwriter Pink Sweat for a remix version of ‘At My Worst’.

Nikitha rendered her part in Hinglish. “A lot of people listen to Indian songs even though they don’t understand them. This is a good time for a collaboration between Hindi and English,” says Nikhita who adds that she loves performing Latino numbers as well.