Iconic Kannada song 'If You Come Today' gets a modern twist with Gubbi and Nithya Shri

Gubbi: In terms of the song itself, sampling is huge in hip hop. When Saregama approached me with this project, they said, “pick a song” from their catalogue. For me, If You Come Today is iconic because it’s the world’s first Kannada-English song! I worked with producer Synkflo from Madurai and he gave the whole thing a reggaeton beat. I wrote the first verse and added disco in the hook. Creating the song aspect of it became second nature after rapping for twenty years. But for the visuals, producer Nandith Jaisimha said we had to take it up a notch. We had tight deadlines, with the release date fixed and that’s when Niranjan came in and said, “cool, we’ll make it happen.” He created multiple script versions despite the logistical changes. We roped in Nithya in as the lead and she absolutely nailed it!

Before I got into the production aspect, I kept listening to the song over and over to soak in the whole essence of what they had done in the original. It does come in a comical way, but I didn’t want to make it comical because I wanted to still go in the same tone as the song — the whole spy-driven and ‘someone in love with the spy’ narrative. This had to be very pop; I had to simplify the writing. I knew one thing that had to be very strong was the whole aspect of time. If you look at the lyrics, I’ve tried to bring in all the references around time. That was the backbone — just to keep it around the language of time, apart from the obvious ‘tick, tick, tick’ and the whole ‘right now’ moment.

Nithya Shri: Growing up in Bengaluru and watching Dr Rajkumar films, while being closely associated with this industry, makes this song part of who you are, not just nostalgia. I’m sure many people recognise it. People from different walks of life and cultures came together to make this video, proving music has no boundaries and is a universal language. That alone makes it a pop culture moment. It’s wonderful to see people accept it, receive it and add their own spin. So many people around the world connecting through one music video is what true pop culture is all about. Also, this song came out in the late 1970s! Look how forward-thinking Kannada music, Dr Rajkumar and the creators were back then to make an English spy song! Dr Rajkumar doing it tops it off, as he was the icon of the Kannada film industry at the time and he said, “I’m going to try doing something different.” I remember hearing it for the first time and seeing the visuals of the song— he is wearing bell bottoms and red, the camera movement, the women in the song and the spy coming in with that chip in the spy-hole camera — all of it, brilliant! To be so forward-thinking in the seventies, for the Kannada industry to capture at least the feel of English music, is incredible. I don’t know if they had this in mind, but I think it paved the way for us.

Niranjan Kumar: I have friend circles who are not from Karnataka and when I would send them the track or share the idea for it, they’d listen to the sample and say, “wait a minute, I know this!” We’re talking about people who may not have grown up watching Kannada movies, but they still know the original track. That’s when I realised how iconic this track is. It has gone into other spheres, not just within a small circle here. That alone speaks to how much of a pop-culture value this song carries.

Gubbi had a very clear idea of what he wanted the music video to be. The first thing I did was sit and watch the original 1978 movie and I was like, “this is damn cool!” We had very cool discussions early on and tried our best to incorporate from the film as much as possible. We wanted it to have a very high-contrast, very film noir kind of look as much as possible. Now, that is not something we see done a lot today. Today we want to see everything in frame. Nothing can be in the shadows. But we were not afraid to embrace that because there was a time when we shot on film and the film noir look was based on that genre. Our idea was to include as much of the original one-liner as we could in our music video — in the costume, camera, lighting and characters.

I saw Gubbi’s casting call on Instagram and sent in my audition. He then reached out and shared the track. Once Gubbi and I started talking and I listened to the rough track, it didn’t feel like we were meeting for the first time. It felt like we’d known each other for a long time. What really moved me was that it wasn’t just about nostalgia — it was something through which I could be part of from my homeland. These visuals and ideas were new to me and slightly challenging. My work is mostly serious and character-driven, so this was very different. Kudos to Gubbi, Niranjan and Nandith for seeing me in that light. I’ve never played a rap artiste, spy or anything like that. My makeup artistes did a great job transforming me for the look and I learned from that. I asked Gubbi and Niranjan many questions to understand what they wanted and what the song meant to them. Once all that came together, it opened up like a map. I was initially dreading the rap, but thankfully I didn’t have to do it. My reference point was simple: if I were at a club or party, this is what I’d do.