Big Deal

Early life

Mohanty was born in Puri to a Japanese mother and an Odia father. His mother first came to Puri while travelling as a college student and later settled there. She wanted to build a hotel for Japanese visitors but could not buy land as a foreign national, so she and her future husband went into business together and built a hotel called Love and Life. In 2024 Mohanty shared the story of how his parents met in an Instagram post that was widely circulated.

He grew up in Darjeeling and went to boarding school there. Other pupils teased him about his eyes and features, which made him feel 'un-Indian' and led to an identity crisis in childhood. He has said that watching Eminem's film 8 Mile at school turned him towards rap. After completing an MCA degree he turned down a job offer from Infosys to concentrate on music.

Music career

KalingaTV reported that he started rapping at 16, and The Week gives 2014 as the start of his career. His debut album was One Kid With A Dream. In October 2017, when he was based in Bengaluru, he released 'Mu Heli Odia', which KalingaTV reported as the first Odia rap song. It celebrated Odisha through references to the rasagola, the Rath Yatra, abhada bhog, Puri beach and Chilika, and passed 1.6 lakh views within a day. He followed it with 'Khusi Ta', another song about Odisha and its people.

In July 2018 he released the music video 'Are You Indian?'. Set as a rap conversation at a dinner table, it first voices the prejudice North-East Indians hear from other Indians and then gives their reply. Scroll.in noted that it drew on Joyner Lucas's 'I'm Not Racist'. Homegrown also mentions a later song, 'Dreamers', about academic and social pressure, which drew on stories from fans who had been bullied or were under pressure.

His songs deal with identity, racism, police violence in the North-East, student suicides and violence against women, and he has said most of them come from his own experience. In 2021 he was one of six regional artists profiled in the 'Emerge' campaign by Rolling Stone India and TuneCore India, and he releases his music independently. In August 2023 he worked with Pepsi on the Hip-Hop Day video 'Uthi Ja, Dhana' ('Rise up, baby'), a song about failing and coming through obstacles.