How Horsepowar fuels her rap with family values
Jasleen Powar wants her nieces to discover her music online someday and be proud of what they hear.
The Vancouver-born Desi rapper, who goes by the name Horsepowar, fuses Bollywood with rap and while she started off writing joke raps, she now writes more honestly about things such as race, identity and empowerment.
"I'm really trying to write music for my nieces so that they have a great role model to look up to who is strong-willed and ambitious," Powar tells Candy, of her driving force.
From her brothers' influence on her (her oldest brother introduced her to poetry; her other brother's death became her motivation to start writing) to her aim to tackle racism within her communities, Powar's inspirations and lyrical goals are definitely ambitious but they also come from a fairly internal place.
"I want to focus on breaking the situation inside the culture because we need to have these conversations within our households in order for these problems to be solved," Powar explains. "If there's racism happening inside our culture, how can we help racism that's outside our culture?"
WEB EXTRA | Watch Horsepowar's music video for Queen.
Watch Horsepowar on Exhibitionists this Sunday at 4:30p.m. ET/5 NT on CBC TV.