Authentic hip-hop grows roots in Pakistani cities

How a teenager chose hip-hop over medicine

Muzamil opens by introducing his guest, a figure he has followed for years, describing him as a very smart guy and a doctor. But Osama’s path was not linear. Born to a retired Pakistani military officer and raised in Orlando during the late 90s, he grew up in a household saturated with pop culture. His sister played Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and boy bands. He heard classical Urdu singers at home. The influences mixed into a “kichdi,” he says, a blend of everything.

Hip-hop came later, almost by accident. MTV’s Total Request Live showed him a world where rap was creeping into the mainstream. “Let’s do a rap, let’s do a little,” he recalls thinking as a 10 or 11-year-old, when nobody helped him sing. He started with stage names: Kara-Z (a play on his last name Karamat), Prophet, eventually settling on Com Laude. In early 2000s, still in high school, he set up a home studio with a Windows 2000 PC and a table mic. “One take in full song,” he remembers. Windows Sound Recorder. No edits. Raw.

The rawness that works

Muzamil asks why that early rawness produced something the current market, saturated with tools, often misses. Osama believes rawness forced fundamentals. When you have one take, you cannot hack it. You must sing or rap well. “I feel like they fancy Gen Z particularly, they’re more interested in like this edgy, raw… Windows Movie Maker feels,” he says. The market craves authenticity because it connects with people in ways polish does not.

He kept his first music video on YouTube, edited in Windows Movie Maker. Never make yourself forget where you came from, he insists. The journey matters more than the finish.

The shark in a pond

After years in the US, Osama returned to Pakistan alone. He came to Rawalpindi Medical College, studied, graduated in 2016. But he stayed. When Muzamil asks why a talented young creator would not chase American opportunity, Osama names it plainly: “Here, I’m a shark in a pond. But there, I’m sort of a… small shark in an ocean of oceans.”

More than that, it was about opportunity itself. “Purely as a businessman, it’s purely about opportunity. Why would you go in a place where all the problems have already been solved? If you’re a problem solver, you go to a place where problems need to be solved, and that’s where the opportunity lies.” He wanted to bring a wave of positive change, to shift how celebrities carry themselves in Pakistan. He is a big believer in mystery. Old-style celebrities, he notes, you knew nothing about. That mystery kept you curious. Social media has erased that. Everyone performs.

Pakistan’s growing hip-hop wave

Osama credits Bollywood’s “Gully Boy” film for putting the subcontinent on the map for hip-hop. But he and his peers were there first, he insists: Talha Yunus, Talha Anjum, Faris Shafi, Adil from Islamabad. “We were there. We were doing it.” The film simply turned all eyes on what was already happening.

Now, five years later, hip-hop has momentum. He sees Karachi boys at the forefront: himself, Hashim, Dar, Adil, and younger names like Fadi, Ziru, Shujah, Hamzi. Yet there is no dedicated category at Pakistani award shows. “I would love to see a separate category for hip-hop… why not? It’s exploding.” He wants battle leagues and platforms built for the form, like Indian counterparts.

The money is still coming. Not “fuck you money,” he says, but sustainable income is possible in one or two years if streaming platforms like Spotify arrive and local apps like Bajao scale. The future depends on which direction monetization takes.

Being yourself is not optional

Osama’s biggest song, “Pindi,” dropped on Valentine’s Day 2020. Within a month, it hit 2.5 million views organically, with zero push, no influencer sends. He did nothing but make it and put it out. Muzamil’s observation cuts to the core: a celebration of something authentically Pindi, raw and jokey, made it work because it was real.

Osama nods. “If you are yourself, it will resonate automatically. Your audience will automatically resonate. It will be relatable.” He grew up with his boys Devin and Mike, a melting pot in Orlando of all cultures and races. He has seen the struggle, the lived experience. When rappers in Pakistan copy American narratives of drugs and danger that are not theirs, they blur their own story. “Just be your damn self,” he says. “Do something unique. Do something different.”

This is the core of his message to younger artists: confidence in who you are. “If you don’t have your confidence, I’m talking about new wave, that positivity… be confident in yourself, who you are.” Pindi worked because they were themselves, and everyone wanted to be a Pindi boy.

The art of expressing what matters

Hip-hop carries aggression because it was born in struggle, Osama explains. The core is fight, oppression, the African-American experience in America. That root runs deep. But in Pakistan, the form offers something else: a way for people to express controversial truths that a Facebook status might get them called horrible for. In rap form, those same words feel digestible. “I would love to see a lot of this coming out of Pakistan,” Muzamil says, trusting marginalized voices to use the form to bring their anger and their truths to the people.

Osama agrees. Hip-hop artists have become the rock stars of this time. Rebels. The music asks for authenticity and punishes imitation. That is the real gatekeeping, and Muzamil says it plainly: “Never piss an artist off.”