Raja Kumari reflects on her ‘traumatic’ experience after India tour cancellation: I felt lost and confused

In 2025, rapper Raja Kumari completes 10 years as an artiste in the music industry and as she reflects on the last decade, she has some mixed emotions. “When I think back on the last 10 years, I realise everything happened for its reason. All the struggles have made me into the person I am today. I do think of my art as an offering at the altar of Goddess Saraswati. In the last 10 years, I feel that I have created a safe place, and I hope that I can create that for others too,” Raja Kumari says.

However, the rapper admits that the last three years have been pretty difficult and transformative for her. “In 2023, I released an album independently and learned so much about the industry and its politics. While the world was seeing me have a very positive and exciting phase going on with Jawan (2023) and Baby John (2024), and whatever things were publicly happening, I felt like my own music wasn’t being heard. So, I took an year off before releasing my next album and I spent the entire year learning the business. I wanted to figure out how all the energies that I have were just leaking and the things that I wanted to do were not happening,” she shares.

Raja Kumari informs that she was supposed to embark on a music tour in India and the US around the same time, however the Indian leg of it was cancelled. “It was a very traumatic experience from me. I felt lost and confused. I felt like I had done everything that I could, yet it wasn't working. I started getting with vision of Kedarnath. So, I went there, and it began this entire fascinating relationship with this new music,” she shares revealing the origin of her entry into devotional and spiritual music.

During her visit to Kedarnath, Raja Kumari had an epiphany: “I asked Shiva what do I do, and the only thing that played in my head was ‘surrender’. It was such a profound moment because I realised that I couldn't control this transformation. I understood that in the path that I was going on in my hypermasculine state of conquering everything, I was burning out and I was losing that ability to receive this flow of music. So, there was this feeling of acceptance and when I was walking around the temple, I felt why don't I make songs for myself and this idea started playing in my head and I attempted different kinds of music to figure out what is my next sound.”

And that is how her recent album Kashi To Kailash came into being. “In the 10 years of me being an artiste, I feel like this is the album I was always meant to make. And we got the entire album ready in just 28 days. This is my version of gospel, and it was the most serene experience working on it. I feel like I have opened something and there's so much more I want to explore through my music like the Ramayana, Mahabharat and Hanuman Chalisa,” she ends.