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I ran into MC Vikram at one of the local youth fellowship event in NJ recently. He was performing a few of his songs, and I had a chance to talk to him afterwards. The interesting thing was the audience reaction. Although everyone had heard of MC Vikram, I got the feeling, they weren't too familiar with his work. After all, if you can't sing along to "Welcome to India" you pretty much have no business pretending to be his groupie. "Welcome to India" is the consummate parody song of the South Asian music scene, that set the stage for all imitators and it was delivered in classic MC Vikram style, clad in a lungi over jeans. I suppose it was the pentecostal nature of the crowd. They're usually very big on separation, to the point of ignoring the world around them whenever possible.

MC Vikram performed a new song that night; a song he wrote the week before, some would say a song written specifically for the event, and it was what the christian music industry likes to call holy hip hop. The best part of this song was the line, my title for this post, "You better get away from me". By all accounts, he has called down the wrath of God on any who make fun of the song. His exact quote included the words "If they make fun of me, they'll go to hell...(because i wrote a song about being a christian)"

Aside, I've always wondered why and how journalists used () when quoting people, and I've always wanted to do it. This seemed like the time to go for it.