Exam results depressing you? Tamil rappers Tupakeys tell you how to be Top Tucker

Half of India is below the age of 25 and the young guns are now exploring alternative professions rather than shuttle between Medical and Engineering. Chennai rap group Tupakeys and Super Singer's Soundarya, came together to compose a song to urge students to take up the career they thought was best for them. A body of professional accountants — Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) — launched the video Neeye Top'u Tucker'u (‘Believe in yourself – You are a topper– “A rockstar”) in association with YouTube channel Put Chutney recently. Put Chutney helped with the conceptualisation and creation of the video which has already garnered 344K views.

The rappers did not just take this as any other music project. They say it was very close to their heart and they believe in what they are saying. "Whatever you think you need, focus on that. When your parents or other people say differently you should consider that, but if it doesn’t feel right in your heart and doesn’t give you satisfaction, then don’t go for it — no matter what anyone says," said Syd-Ibu of Tupakeys. "We wanted the hook to have a proper message. We didn’t want it to be funny, or something very generic. ‘You don’t need wisdom, common sense is enough’ — that’s something we focused on a lot while writing this song. And if you do all this, you too can be ‘Top Tucker’," he added.

There are significant challenges that youngsters encounter in deciding their future, in talking to parents, their peers, and getting motivated. "The idea is simply to encourage and motivate them to choose a path of their calling," said ACCA’s Pulkit Abrol, Regional Head of Marketing and Planning. "We want kids to question and seek answers from their parents, their teachers, their peers and most importantly from themselves on what they want. We are only attempting to ask them to ask."

Talking about the engineering, MC Rude, Syd's bandmate, said that it's clearly not for him, "Engineering is very stressful. Getting up at 6 am and the whole deal. I was fine in a nearby college, having fun." Syd agreed and quipped, "Both of us haven’t studied [engineering], but our bandmate has and now he’s in Malaysia." NEET too brings out a similar reaction from the duo."NEET? No, we really don’t need it. It just puts a lot of pressure on students, and there are people who have died because of that," said Syd.

Rude and Syd are childhood buddies and they say hip-hop is the best thing that ever happened to them. "When we started out we never knew what hip-hop was. It was entirely new to us. When 50 cent and others came out with this new kind of music, what we thought was ‘Why isn’t this there in Tamil? Why can’t we try this?’ and that’s when we came to know about people like Yogi B — our first inspiration. We listened to his songs, and we used to try rapping," said Rude.

School life was fun for the Tupakeys. "My favourite teacher was Ms Esther. She let me off when I broke rules. She let me copy, but she also took really good care of me," said Syd. "I had a Ms Esther too, from a different school. But she didn’t let me copy," added Rude, with a laugh. Talking about how this initiative will help students, the rappers said that ACCA is very popular worldwide, and it’s great that it’s being introduced in India. "It’s going to be very helpful," added Rude