Khalbali Records lives up to its title in its very first episode. A rapper dies, a new music label is born, there are flare-ups and meltdowns, a family implodes – everywhere you look, there is commotion.
Like the American TV show Empire, the JioCinema Hindi series frames its exploration of the music industry as a family fight. Idealistic talent manager Raghav (Skand Thakur) goes against his rapacious father Manavendra (Ram Kapoor) and his conflicted sister Ananya (Saloni Batra) to set up his own label, Khalbali Records.
Manavendra’s Galaxy Records has been built on the backs of exploitative contracts. The rot within Galaxy includes the downplaying of a sexual assault complaint by singer Monali (Sanghmitra Hitaishi).
Inspired by the principled rapper Mauj (Prabh Deep), Raghav attempts to create the music Utopia that Mauj had dreamed of. The obstacles include Mauj’s girlfriend Lekha (Salonie Patel), who is suspicious of Raghav’s sincerity, and the outlier Phantom (Varun Bhagat).
Khalbali Records has Devanshu Singh as showrunner and director. A bunch of writers and creators has developed a concept by Shalini Sethi and Prateek Arora. The pulsating soundtrack, by Amit Trivedi and Azadi Records, suggests that rap and hip-hop are more vibrant and thoughtful than whatever is in the mainstream.
Like a rap battle spilling over with diss tracks, the eight-episode series is seething with blows and feints. There’s a hint of hyperbole to the opposition faced by Raghav, without much of a sense of the wider sub-cultures within the music industry.
Galaxy’s prowess is surely as exaggerated as is the public interest in Raghav’s every move. Television channels breathlessly follow Khalbali’s progress. Manavendra’s ability to block negative reporting and frighten lawyers parallels perhaps only a muscular government.
The show has nothing terribly new to say about the music business or the age-old conflict between commerce and creativity. Except for a couple of tracks in one of the episodes, there is little in the works by any of the rappers to suggest wholesale rebellion, let alone a call for revolution.
The family melodrama gets too much play in a show with a declared focus on artists. The series soars when it turns to the musicians.
There are heartfelt interactions between well-etched characters who care deeply about protecting independent thought. Khalbali’s roster includes the singer Rudra (played by real-life rapper EPR Iyer) and Fatafat (Aritro Banerjee).
The singer Prabh Deep makes a confident acting debut as the martyred Mauj. Varun Bhagat has sharp scenes as Mauj’s contemporary, who gives Raghav a reality check on his path to shaking up the music industry.
Later episodes slide into the garden-variety operatics found in plots about idealism running up against ambition. Having raised the stakes, Khalbali Records is hard-pressed to find a middle path between being plausible and audience-friendly.
Director Devanshu Singh does well by his cast. Ram Kapoor, Skand Thakur and Saloni Batra solidly play predictable characters navigating well-trodden paths.
