Tucked away in the Indian corner near the Himalayas bordering Bhutan and China, in the sweltering Indian heat of late 2016 in Guwahati, Assam driven by a desire to spread positive conscious music with a message along the principles of social justice, equality, freedom and respect, Spanish-American producer and multi-instrumentalist Lain joined forces with multi-lingual rappers Rocky Glock and Sikdar to create the hip-hop outfit Rain in Sahara, bringing their individual struggles and experiences to their music.

Their new release Black Water is based on issues about water, air and food pollution, environmental destruction, income inequality and corruption and materialism. The track has its foundation in hip-hop, containing elements from multiple genres and reaches out with an aggressive multi-lingual crafty word construct.

Composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and DJ Lain’s long introduction with Indian classical sounds may initially expose itself as an irritant in the beginning of Black Water but eventually takes off with a notably standard but interesting groovy production value, showcasing heavy influences of rock. Black Water is rapped in English by Sikdar, known in the northeast Indian hip-hop scene for his aggressive delivery behind his conscious flows. The Hindi rap is by Rocky Glock, a well-known multi-lingual rapper in the Assam hip-hop scene for his flows, unique metaphors, and a steady release of material since he started rapping in his high school days. Black Water feels lyrically engaging and the subtitled video adds to the curiosity about Rain In Sahara’s socially conscious issue based effort.

Black Water music video is directed, edited, shot and produced by Ankan Sunuwar and Lain. This being their debut video, interestingly, while location scouting and shooting the video, the band experienced the elements of the songs that they were trying to highlight as issues in their song mainly water and air pollution as they shot on a mountain of garbage in the landfill that burnt like a dormant volcano emitting air pollution.

Listen and watch the video below: