Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt-starrer Gully Boy has a lot of buzz going for it. The trailer, the music and now the early reviews post its screening at the Berlin Film Festival has created a lot of anticipation for this Zoya Akhtar film, which releases on 14 February. But how did Zoya, who’s been behind films like Luck By Chance, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Dil Dhadakne Do, zero in on Mumbai’s gully rap scene to make Gully Boy?
Speaking to The Quint recently, Zoya revealed that though she was always into rap and hip hop as a genre, she did not know about the sub culture of gully rap that existed in Mumbai’s chawls and slums till she saw Naezy’s music video Aafat, while editing Dil Dhadakne Do.
Zoya was so impressed and intrigued by Naezy’s video that she felt compelled to meet him. “So I got so hooked that I keep watching that video again and again and then I found him, I traced him and I had a meeting with him. I was just compelled to meet him and the minute I met him I knew that there’s a story, there’s an entire sub-culture and I am big on sub-cultures, so firstly I was shocked that I didn’t know that it existed and I had to know more of it,” said the Gully Boy director.
And from this meeting with Naezy - began the evolution of what we now know is Zoya’s fourth feature film with Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt.
Here’s a look at the Aafat music video by Naezy, which was published on YouTube 5 years ago, that blew Zoya away.
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