Priya Mehta

Priya grew up in a house where music was always on but nobody ever talked about it seriously. Her father played old Lata Mangeshkar records on Sunday mornings without saying a word about them, just listening. Her brother would come home on weekends and blast Sidhu Moosewala from his room loud enough that the whole building could hear. Nobody in her family analysed any of it. Priya was the one who could not stop thinking about why certain songs felt the way they did.

She studied journalism at Delhi University, which she mostly found useful for learning how to write fast and miss sleep. For two years after graduating she wrote lifestyle content for websites she would rather not name now. The work paid okay and bored her completely. She kept noticing that the only pieces she felt genuinely good about were the ones where she had managed to sneak in something about music.

Eventually she stopped sneaking and just started writing about music directly. She pitched a piece about Punjabi rap lyrics to a small regional blog, not expecting much, and the response surprised her. That was the turn. She wrote more, got better, started getting commissioned rather than pitching cold, and ended up at DJYoungster covering new releases, album drops, and the kind of lyric breakdowns that most outlets do not bother with because they think the audience is not interested. Priya believes the audience is very interested. The numbers tend to agree with her.