Four years ago, Youtube star Jus Reign posted a takedown of seven things wrong with the Punjabi music industry. In it, he railed against needlessly gritty settings and the fact that every UK producer seems to make the same song, and while a lot of his 555,000 subscribers agreed with his complaints, other folks were pretty upset about what he had to say. “Some people weren’t to happy with that,” Reign explained in a followup video. “I started getting comments like ‘Oh yeah? Well if you think you can make fun of them, why don’t you do a video yourself?’”
So he did. This weekend, Reign dropped “Kabootaran Di Shaan (feat. Raxtar & J-Statik),” which he is calling “The must UK Punjabi Bhangra song possible.”
It’s a perfect sendup, from the repetitive beats to the random pigeons to the backup henchmen to the inclusion of UK rapper Raxstar. Even better, not everyone seems to know it’s a joke. When it was posted without context by Reign’s label, comments included, “The so called ‘rapping’ midway absolutely killed the song,” “It’s a parody people, calm down!,” and “I don’t care if it’s a parody or not, I just love this song, it’s fantastic!”
Even better, the song is in the top five on the Apple Music world charts, meaning this Jus Reign’s KLF moment. Here’s hoping.