‘Khalbali Records’ Series Review: A Safe and Shallow Musical Drama

Director: Devanshu Singh
Writers: Arati Raval, Sameer Saral Sharma, Garima Pura Patiyaalvi
Cast: Ram Kapoor, Skand Thakur, Saloni Batra, Sanghmitra Hitaishi, Kumar Varun, Prabh Deep, Saloni Khanna
Language: Hindi
Streaming on: JioCinema

Khalbali Records opens with a famous rapper, Mauj (Prabh Deep), being shot dead in the middle of his concert. This tragedy forces his close friend and producer, Raghav Rai Singh (Skand Thakur), to grow a spine. Raghav leaves Galaxy Records – the soulless music empire owned by his father, Manvendra Rai Singh (Ram Kapoor) – to chart his own path. He starts an indie label called Khalbali Records to honour Mauj’s dream of putting the artist first. Raghav’s girl-boss sister, Ananya (Saloni Batra), becomes the heiress of Galaxy Records, while Khalbali Records cobbles together a band of spirited misfits. The eight-episode musical drama revolves around the bitter family feud, unfolding like a corny Indian subreddit version of Succession and Gully Boy at once.

It also belongs to the multiverse of industry-insider dramas like Showtime. A sizeable part of the show’s appeal lies in sly approximation of real-life celebrities, controversies, tabloid gossip and power moves. It invites viewers to guess the real-reel connections, and, in doing so, distracts from the superficiality of the storytelling. There are plot points featuring troll armies, online hate campaigns, sexual abuse allegations, plagiarism lawsuits and corrupt journalists. The starry cameos — ranging from Palash Sen to Rekha Bhardwaj – are awkward at best. A former reporter runs a cafe and a podcast that can make or break the music industry. A South Indian mogul’s villainous catchphrase is “mujhe Hindi aati hai (I can speak Hindi)”. Ananya lights up a cigarette (never the same brand, mind you) the two times she feels smug.

Between designer clothes and designer conflicts, every other frame looks like a lifestyle advert. At one point, a saucy track scores a hotel brochure-styled scene of a lesbian couple holidaying together and chilling by the pool. The concerts and rap battles, in particular, lack the visual energy and sense of scale. You can tell that the camera is struggling to make a ‘crowd’ of 20 to 30 fans look like hundreds. No amount of editing and close-ups can hide the makeshift aura; at no point does the stage look convincing and alive to the world around it. The flashbacks of Mauj are ineffective, too, and not in the least because the character seems to be styled after cricketer Hardik Pandya.

There’s nothing wrong with the performances, which is another way of saying that there’s not much right either. Of the cast, Skand Thakur’s Raghav has the most interesting arc: he’s basically a nepo-baby striving to earn street cred in a field that resents his privilege. The actor, too, resembles Arjun Mathur in the handful of assertive moments he has. But the sanitised swag is hard to shake off. He suddenly transforms into a cocky guy in the last two episodes, a heartbeat away from saying “everything is planned” every time he enters a room. Most characters behave like first-draft versions of themselves. When someone speaks, the activity and body language in the scene are almost incidental.

The details are limited to the information — or drama — they impart, nothing more. It’s easy to watch, of course, but the simplification bleeds into the more complex themes and musical aspects of the series. A few Amit Trivedi-composed tracks sound like they’re on the brink of rhyming with Gully Boy’s “apna time aayega”. In other words, Khalbali Records is stranded between two approaches. In some parts, it plays out like TV soap entertainment that punches up and dares to be edgy: a new-age take on K-serials. In others, it plays out as a streaming-era product that punches down: a lightweight look at art, ambition and the business that connects them.

But the real problem with the modern Hindi musical drama — characterised by streaming hits like Bandish Bandits (2020) and Chamak (2023) — is its treatment of music as a physical aesthetic rather than a personal worldview. One of the several things Gully Boy got right was how the music and lyrics sounded like an extension of the protagonist; the songs became inevitable expressions of his working-class rage and indignations of social status. Ditto for the recent Chamkila. But Khalbali Records is only interested in labels; there’s little curiosity about who these artists really are, or what they stand for. Much of the conflict rests on the anti-establishment legacy of Mauj, but these are reduced to empty phrases. His courage is often mentioned without evidence. But who is Mauj? Why was he killed? What kind of political provocations did he represent? We never get an idea of rap as a protest genre. Lyrics like “khud mein khud ko dhund le (find yourself within yourself)” don’t amount to much when the default personality — the identity of their dissent — is so automated.

As a result, Khalbali Records is defined by some unfortunate ironies. Despite being shaped by the murder of a ‘disruptive’ rapper, the series itself is conservative and conformist. Despite being about indie musicians and their defiant talent, the language of the series is mainstream and glossy. Despite being about big dreams and cultural spectacles, the scale is painfully small. Despite having a subplot about a female artist demanding justice for being flashed by a predatory rapper, one of the show’s cameos features a prominent music director who has been accused of sexual harassment by multiple female singers. Despite being an Amit Trivedi musical, the playback songs — the score supplying narrative montages and emotional sequences — outshine the live tracks. And despite having a smart title (“Khalbali” means agitation), the A.R. Rahman composition it evokes belongs to a Hindi film that remains the last word in anti-establishment angst. After all, Rang De Basanti (2006) ran so that shows like Khalbali Records could crawl.