Last November, it was a particularly stressful day for Tuhin Menon, CEO of Asiaville, a Chennai-based media-tech company, when he spent the entire day between work calls and duty delegation at his office at Palarivattom, Kochi, unable to take a break.
All Tuhin could think of was a plate of crisp, flaky parotta and some sizzling beef roast— a craving he satisfied immediately after work.
The next day, Tuhin, who was always fascinated by lyric and poetry, woke up with an ode to Kerala parotta and beef, which he immediately jotted down. “I remember waking up with a special feeling, realising how food can help you get away from the monotony of day-to-day life,” says Tuhin. This is how a stressful day led to ‘Parotta & Beef,’ a rap song which has garnered over one million views on YouTube. The track was produced by Sandeep Tulsidas a.k.a Yestey, and distributed by Divo Music.
From media mogul to rapper
“I am completely taken aback by the response. The most gratifying feeling is the outpouring of messages from people, my acquaintances,” says Tuhin, who founded Asiaville in 2019.
Tuhin Menon in ‘Parotta & Beef’
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SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“Rapping is something that I have liked since my early days. I earned a bachelor’s in communication and media studies from New York University. I was doing gigs in New York with my friends from India, Pakistan, Australia, and Japan. We used to go to underground rap sessions and participate in rap battles,” says Tuhin.
“When we founded Asiaville, I remember writing a few raps for one of the verticals too,” says Tuhin.
“Rap is the background music to my life,” says Tuhin, a fan of East Coast rap, which originated in New York. “Apart from The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur, I followed artists such as Big El, Rakim, and Jurassic 5.” Tuhin points out how the second half of the track belongs to boom bap, a hip-hop subgenre from the late 1980s.
“The first half of the song is a mass masala hook with parotta and beef, which appeals to the audience and their love for the combination,” says Tuhin.
The music video
The video is filled with loud colours and quirky settings to convey the “transcendental experience” felt by the protagonist after taking a bite of parotta and beef.
The video was shot in three days, across Chennai in April. “This was technically five days’ worth of shoot, but we had to control the cost,” says Tuhin, while lauding the efforts of Vijay Siddhartha Ravindranaath, who directed the video.
“This was also my first music video. The challenge was in getting into the minds of the three characters — an employee and two rappers. The fundamentals, like understanding a character arc and staying true to it, were the same. I realised, however, there is no room for subtlety, you have to have a certain swag, you have to come across as hard-hitting,” says Tuhin, whose other acting stints include a role in Mohanlal-directorial Barozz3D, and theatre with Chennai-based theatre artist Michael Muthu.
The undercurrents
When asked about the political undertones with regard to parotta and beef, Tuhin says his intention was not to push any narrative about the dishes. “Emotion is universal. The specific reference to parotta and beef resonates in Kerala. Disrupting the mundane with something magical is what I was trying to say with this song. Parotta and beef just happen to be that sort of mechanism for me, but someone else can switch it up with a food of their choice.”
Road ahead
“I was worried about ‘Parotta & Beef’, whether people would understand what we are trying to do with the message and the song itself. We have ticked both boxes,” says Tuhin, who has three tracks with Sandeep, who also composed the background score for the hit Kannada movie Su from So, lined up. “He and I have been cooking.”
“We know Malayalam hip-hop is blowing up, and we have so much talent. There’s a space for a Malayalam-and-English combination, which is a huge market to tap into. I have not had the good fortune of growing up in Kerala, so what I bring to the table is an appreciation for the sound. My influences are all American hip-hop,” says Tuhin.
Tuhin is currently working on AyeVee, an interactive entertainment platform that has produced multiple web series that can be played like a game. “We are also planning on including gamification and interactivity to microdramas, which are reel-sized content with multiple episodes.”
Published – September 09, 2025 06:43 pm IST
