Imagine holding on to a song for three years and then be rewarded with 600k streams a day for months after releasing it. When Arjun Sunil aka Arjn, Kiran Das aka KDS, along with Vishnu V aka Fifty4, Suhas Moideen and producer Ron Vinod aka Ronn, released Kalyani in November 2025, little did they expect that the song would become a pan-India viral hit.While Arjn and KDS already had hit rap tracks like Nera and Sheriya, to their credit, they were keen to bring a “different flavour to the south Indian music scene”. “We had Kalyani on hand for three years, but we released other tracks, including Nera and Sheriya, in the meantime, going back and forth with Ron, who worked on the sound, for a year. We needed to find that sweet spot and kept working till we got what we wanted — a song that cannot be placed in any particular genre, with a mix of Afro, pop and Mallu traditional elements. Maybe that’s why it’s gotten so popular at a pan-India level — the Malayalam elements worked here, while up north, the Afro beats were popular,” says Arj.
The soundscape came from music influences that they received when they moved to Canada, where Arjn studied physiotherapy and KDS was a business management student. “We always wanted to make a song that was Afroesque, but with Malayali elements. We never expected this kind of reception. We knew it would be adipoli in Kerala, but didn’t imagine it would be such a hit across the globe. We are getting 600k streams a day consistently, and after Kerala, Bengaluru records the highest streams,” shares KDS.The musicians are now working on “something different again”. “We make songs about what we want, things we achieve. We hope to motivate the youth through our music. Kalyani was to show people that we can also do this, too,” says Arjn.‘A 9-to-5 work ethic’Arj says that their motto is to work consistently without worrying about the result. “We dropped 20 songs before Nera. So, we have been consistent, without worrying about the result. I love making music, so does KD, so does Suhas. We are just focused on the craft. I knew we had the potential to find success, as we had a different sound. We worked consistently on it like a person would do on a 9-to-5 job,” he says.
