Tabia

On his debut full-length Class-Sikh, Prabh Deep revealed a penchant for lyrical wordplay and grand, ambitious narratives. For sophomore album Tabia—released on 4 March 2021—the Azadi Records poster boy shows that he’s developed the production and composition chops to match. “I’ve been writing this album for so long,” says Prabh, who recorded half the album at Karma Studios in Thailand over two sessions a year apart, and the rest in Mumbai. “It’s about the different personalities you develop as you grow and change as a human being…about your evolution as a human being.” Prabh Deep guides Apple Music through the 15 tracks on Tabia and charts a journey of self-discovery that inspired this soulful and introspective release.
Tabia “I wanted to layer this album with a lot of different meanings. So ‘tabia’ is a time in a chess game where a lot of moves open up for you as a player, and you can go anywhere. That’s the whole concept—the world is infinite and everything depends on your choices. I knew this was a conceptual album, and [for the title track] I wanted people to have this euphoric experience, like you’re entering a dream. I played around with some synths and a lot of percussive sounds as well. I’ve used lots of Turkish percussion because I’ve been listening to a lot of different sounds and trying to put it into my music.”
Qafir “Half of this song was written in 2019 and the other half I just finished recently. The song is about being in this very dark zone. Only I knew it was dark—everyone else just saw it as me being famous and believing my hype. Sonically as well, the bass is so sad/heavy it brings out that emotion. I’m not upfront about it, there are layers to it. Even in terms of the melody of the hook, or the things I’m saying in the song, it’s not being said aggressively.”
Paapi “This song is about being in a very f****d-up mind space, but still woke. When you know you’re on the wrong path but it takes a lot of effort to get off it on your own. It’s about that, and it ends with [the idea that] it’s really important to forgive yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’ve asked for forgiveness from the people you’ve wronged. Unless you forgive yourself you’ll always be at battle in your head. Sonically, it’s so aggressive—the guitars, the synths, the saxophone, that slap-bass section. It has all the aggression I wanted to articulate.”
Preet “This is the part of the journey where I understand how love is really important. If ‘Paapi’ was me committing to sin, ‘Preet’ is the understanding of how important it is to be with someone for the long term. It’s about two people who have been through similar kinds of stuff, who have both f****d up, but now we’re meant to be together. The beat came from Lambo Drive, this 15-year-old kid from Dwarka who keeps sending me beats. One night, I asked him to send me something romantic and switch it into a minor key at the end. In just half an hour, he sent me exactly what I wanted. Then I just got into the booth in Bombay, and wrote the rest of it and recorded it there.”
Taqat “The whole concept is that you can only have power over yourself. You can’t control what others do. Because no matter how much power you think you have, someone can come and put a gun to your head and take everything you have. It’s more aggressive, it’s more gangster, it’s about the hunger for power. I wrote half the song in Thailand in a session with Richard [Craker]. The rest just came to me when I woke up one morning. IDEK?, an 18-year-old producer from Chandigarh, sent me a beat and I loved it. So I got the stems from him, played some more synthesisers on it to add some more aggression.”
Alope (feat. Zan Twoshadez) “This song is really special to me because it’s with my mentor Zan. I was working on a project with him which was just one-minute beats that he’d rap over. This was one of those beats but I liked it enough that I asked if I could have it for the album. So he wrote the hook, I wrote the verse. This is probably the second-most detailed verse on the album conceptually. I talk about how I want to leave, that I’m working to disappear while everyone else is working to be seen. I don’t want to be famous, I just want to make money and disappear. You don’t want to be stuck in this system. [There’s] a lot of producer talent on this one. The whole FTS crew co-produced it with me. I made a scratch and sent it to Zero Chill, who sent it to Tienas, who sent it to RaySon. The whole FTS crew sat on it and messed around with it, and came out with this.”
Antar (feat. Richard Craker) “This song used to be called bipolar disorder because it switches from one personality to another. That’s how I’ve felt many times when I get really, really angry at something and five minutes later I’m feeling like a different person. It’s this switch that happens and the idea for the song came from that. I went to Thailand the day after finishing the K I N G tour, and when I got there I was exhausted. I wanted to take the day off. But the minute I entered that studio, I decided I had to write music then and there. There was all this amazing gear and these amazing musicians, it was a rush. I wrote the first half of ‘Antar’ almost immediately and then for the second half we decided to switch the whole vibe. I had this gut feeling that something new had started, a fresh sound. That’s where this album really started for me.”
Abaad (feat. SYPS) “We wrote ‘Antar’ and ‘Abaad’ on the same day. I was talking with SYPS, who wrote the hook, and he told me about this Egyptian myth where there’s this gatekeeper of the afterlife who weighs your heart on a scale. If your heart is heavy, you have to go back and figure out your sins to make your heart light. I really liked the concept of ‘Won’t you trade your heavy heart for happiness?’ I brought it back from the afterlife to where we are right now.”
Qaabu “I sent Lambo Drive some Flying Lotus last year and a little while later he sent me this. I just love this beat. I’d already chosen ‘Antar’ as the interlude for this album, but then I was scrolling through my WhatsApp and found this beat and I just decided to keep it as it is. I wanted to keep the focus on just the music. It’s my personal favourite track, I think it’s meant for a museum. Everything is so precise, there’s not a single sound that doesn’t grab your attention.”
Huqum “‘Huqum’ is me saying, ‘I can show you the way.’ Now I’m enlightened. And this enlightenment came from the love around me, from the people who love me for who I am. It was a gradual process of realisation…and I went to a lot of people and apologised for not appreciating what they’d done for me. And nature helped me a lot. Just going to the mountains and meditating, no judgement around of any kind, it was a beautiful process of learning.”
Babur “‘Babur’ Prabh is telling ‘Huqum’ Prabh to shut the hell up. Like you think you know everything, but you’ve just uncovered the tip of the iceberg. You don’t know enough to tell people the way. Your path is only correct from your perspective, but other people have different experiences. Every perspective is different, everyone’s path is different and you can’t know everything. I’ve been listening to a lot of Amon Tobin and that’s where the drum-and-bass came from. Rich and I were jamming in the studio one day and I told him, ‘Let’s make some 160-170 bpm drum-and-bass or jungle s**t.’ And this guy started finger-drumming on a piano, making jungle. I couldn’t even see his fingers.”
Waqaf “I wrote this whole song in my head in 2019, on my birthday in Goa. I was on the beach and felt so small in front of nature. And if we’re small then our problems are small, too. And that led me to this deep-thinking space where I analysed my whole life. I decided I don’t need money to be what I want to be. It’s about you entering the room and having the same worth, even if you don’t have anything in your pocket. Sonically, this one is also in that euphoric zone. And Hashbass, again there are a few parts where it feels like he’s playing art on the bass. He took one take to kill the song. Single take. It was crazy.”
Gyani “This was my second trip to Thailand, a year later. I know a lot of different things now and I’m in this zone where I don’t want to be bothered. Take everything but I’m not going to give you my peace. I was meditating on fleek at the time so I was fully at peace. It was that mentality that came exactly as I neared the end of the album. Richard took this exactly to the realm I wanted, with the string sections and the keys at the end. That’s actually this 18-year-old kid, Shreyas [Murali] from New York. He was just passing outside the studio and we grabbed him and asked him to play the part. And he just walked in, played it in 10 minutes and left. It was really, really fun working with these guys in the studio.”
Sthir “‘Sthir’ compares the two worlds—pre-‘Antar’ and after ‘Antar’. The first half is about controlling money, love, fame, lust, everything. And the other half is letting go, trying to understand love. So more inward than outward. And ‘Sthir’ is about comparing those two worlds. This was a really calculated song, it’s like maths. I’ve literally made graphs to write these verses, like a full chart of what goes where. So to properly execute it, I had to make a whole blueprint of it.”
Safar “This song is about me learning so much over the course of this album and then next morning you wake up and feel like you know nothing. You have to start over again. And the message I’m trying to give is to start every day like this. And lyrically it ends with me saying that I’m saving my breath. It’s like a ‘to be continued’ sign. I’m saving my breath to go hard after this for something more crazy on the next project.”