Badshah agrees that there is a change of pace. “Right from sonically to whatever I’ve put out in the audio space, ‘Jugnu’ a visual spectacle. It’s a hugely VFX heavy video, budget wise it’s like the Baahubali of the videos. That just sets the scale of the song. And I’ve tried to dance!”

Badshah, while speaking to indianexpress.com, got candid about the song getting a release on YouTube shots, and whether or not platform matters for the success of a song. YouTube shots is the short format feature of YouTube. Badshah credits the app for “shaping up and helping artistes in getting a reach.”

“It’s happened in India for the first time. Globally, they collaborated with BTS for ‘Permission to Dance.’ So it’s a great choice for any artiste.”

Badshah opined that in the online age, artistes need to be thoughtful to partner with the right platforms. “It’s an online world right now. So, the platform that you put your song out should have the maximum reach because I would like maximum people to listen to my song, to see it, experience it.”

Badshah has more recently composed numbers in the original space, some even having a folk touch including “Genda Phool”. Explaining his own taste, he said he loves the music that he makes, and the music he makes is the music he loves! According to him an artiste’s best comes out when there’s no expectation from the song.

“The music closest to my heart would be the one that I just put out randomly on my YouTube channel without any video — the rawest raps. They are like barenaked emotions with no expectations. And when both you and your audience don’t have any expectation from each other, I think that is the purest form of art.”

He added that “Jugnu” is as original as he can get, because since he hasn’t learned music, “whatever I make is subconsciously a healthy mixture of all the music that I’ve consumed ever since I was a child. But what sets it apart is how I perceive that music, the environment I grew up in,” he said on a deeper note.

So has he ever created a song for money or due to project commitment? He said he has. But there’s a catch. “You must know why you’re doing this and shouldn’t live in a state of denial. As an artiste I shouldn’t compromise on the quality because it is going to hamper my body of work. You grow up, you make mistakes and you learn. The key is to make minimum mistakes and to realise that you’re making a mistake.”

Being around for nearly 15 years, Badshah has managed to stand out in the music trend. He confessed that the key is to “align the artiste in you with the person that you are and not to conform to the image that people have of you.”

On a philosophical note he added, “If Badshah is supposed to do rap songs or Badshah is supposed to appear in a certain way, then that’s a perception you’re being a slave to and as an artiste, I wouldn’t advise that. You have to evolve (as an artiste) with the person that you are evolving into. And that’s the way to stand out. So my songs are basically a reflection of my perception of the world around me. Which is as unique as my DNA.”

A genuine appreciation at a mass level is what satisfies Badshah. For him, creating music is never based on what his “competition” is doing because he believes in “staying honest to yourself with what you think deep inside,” he concluded.