Meet the UIUC rapper balancing Computer Science and music

Few students at UIUC know what it’s like to lead a double life. For most, the dream of balancing your art and your studies is just that: a dream. But Indian born Computer Science freshman Mishul Gupta has been able to grow his rap career even while in college.

The rapper and producer of his own CD and EP, as well as a handful of singles, Mishul has made a name for himself in the Chicago rap world. While in college he’s opened for Illinois-based rappers Lil Durk and Dreezy at The Canopy Club, and he also performed around the Champaign-Urbana area.

Indian born rapper Mishul performs

“I feel like I can be the best artist in the world, yeah,” Mishul said. “I don’t want to label myself as just a rapper, I produce my music. Ninety-nine percent of rappers don’t do that. I make the music behind it, I mix the music myself.

“It’s like a painting to me. I see it as different colors, different colors are different feelings.”

Mishul Gupta first fell in love with rap music when his brother showed him an Eminem song at age ten. Since then, the New Dehli born Mishul began to explore the world of music outside the traditional works he grew up with. Music became a respite from his constantly changing home life. The son of a military man, Mishul’s family moved around India every few years.

“Music is like my best friend,” he said. I’m always listening to music, always have been, ever since I was a little kid. I used to sing when I was a kid. I would just sing all the time. That turned into playing guitar. That turned into producing and rapping.”

Mishul’s decision to become a rapper didn’t fully come to fruition until his junior year of high school. After a difficult move to Naperville, IL, Mishul saw rap music as a way to handle his depression.

“I always wanted to be an artist, but my girlfriend broke up with me and that hit me too hard,” he said. “She was in India and I was here, and I had nothing else to do, so I was like, ‘I’m going to start rapping,” and I got myself a mic and the basic setup and started recording.”

That year he produced his first CD, a ten track Eminem-inspired work called Math, Bitches and Rap. Always trying to perfect his music, Mishul would work hours into the night to make sure his art was exactly how he wanted it.

Since arriving at UIUC, Mishul released a single called OG Asian. Conceived as a way to combine his Hip Hop and CS life, OG Asian’s music video has gotten more than 14,000 views on Youtube.

“I have friends in the CS kind of field, and I have friends in the Hip Hop and Rap kind of field,” he said. “So bringing that together was OG Asian, because I saw people from both sides that had stuff in common.”

Mishul believes his connection to India sets him aside from other rappers working today.

“Hip Hop is like street,” he said. “It’s the drugs, a lot of dirty, illegal stuff, and growing up in India I saw a lot of that. Peoples’ mentality is similar. Your gang, that’s a thing in India too, your group of people is your group of people, if you have a feud with someone else, it’s kind of similar to Chi-raq but with different gangs.

‘It’s a lot of poor people in India too, so that’s how that street vibe comes in.”

Mishul’s success did not come without challenges. Trying to balance his demanding school work and music career has left him with little time to relax. He’s also had difficulty gaining the support of his parents.

“They don’t explicitly support it,” he said. “They’re not like, ‘Go out, do your thing.’ They don’t push me to go hard in music, but they’re OK with it. They don’t tell me not to do it.”

Still, with the support of his fans and a lot of hard work, Mishul hopes to be a voice to “connect India, and other such countries, to the Hip Hop World.”

Mishul will release his new single “Jiggy and Fly” on iTunes in early march. His other work can be found on Sound Cloud and Youtube.