TORONTO -- A musician from Regina, Sask. has landed himself a new record deal with Sony Music India thanks to a hit TikTok song that remixed the Hindi track “Ramta Jogi” from the famous Bollywood film “Taal.”
In April 2019, Hitesh Sharma – who goes by the stage name Tesher – began working on a remix of rapper Lil Nas X’s song “Old Town Road,” which features country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. The remix, which sampled music and lyrics from “Ramta Jogi,” quickly became a hit on TikTok and on Tesher’s YouTube page, where he has been uploading his own mashups since 2009.
“In the beginning of the pandemic, one of my songs, the "Old Town Road" remix [...] it just started to randomly pick up steam on TikTok,” Tesher explained in an interview with CTV News Channel on Wednesday. “Before you know it there was like 500,000 videos of people doing this crazy challenge to [the song].”
“From there it kind of brought attention to my existing catalogue and a song of mine called ‘Young Shahrukh,’ and that in turn started to become viral as well, and one thing led to another and Sony Music India ended up taking it,” he added.
“Young Shahrukh” is Tesher’s debut single under a major record label. The cross-cultural song features elements of hip hop music and a catchy beat based on a sample of the Bollywood classic “Bole Chudiyan.”
Tesher says the song – which accumulated at least 40 million streams combined across platforms – is an homage to legendary actor and film producer Shahrukh Khan, who is often referred to by fans as the "King of Bollywood."
“The song is really just about me living my life in Toronto and me just feeling like I’m the man; like I’m the king of the world,” Tesher says. “I thought the most succinct way for me to put that forth in a song very quickly was to say that I feel like Shahrukh Khan.”
When asked about the power of TikTok to get diverse artists noticed, Tesher said, “It’s reduced the barriers to entry and democratized a lot of the process.”
“Everyone has almost equal opportunity for their song to be noticed by the masses,” Tesher added. “There’s not a lot of times where we have the opportunity to bring diversity into an industry in such a big way – in such an impactful way.”
Tesher’s newest single “Jalebi Baby,” is out now.
