Mainstream recognition has done little to dilute Karun’s affinity for experimentation. The rapper, singer and songwriter expands his canvas even wider on Chehre, his longest effort since 2022’s Qabool Hai which housed chart smash “Maharani”. The album brings together multiple moods and genres—occasionally in the same tune. There’s hip-hop and pop, for sure, but also strong influences and elements from Hindi film, Indian classical and qawwali music as well as electronic, R&B and jazz. The fervent “Zubaan”, for instance, will remind some of “Satrangi Re”, the A.R. Rahman classic from 1998 movie Dil Se…. With such a variety of styles—and a posse of collaborators old and new at hand—Karun carefully constructs musical confessions of affection, regret, anxiety and envy, all delivered in his distinct baritone, with the grace, guilelessness and lyrical skill of a lovelorn poet. The artist says that “each song is a room in the same house,” adding that “some rooms are loud, some are hauntingly quiet, but all of them belong to the master key I hold. The album is my master key.” Listeners will unlock a collection of 14 intricately assembled compositions that emerged from a period of intense introspection. “The project came from a place of deep confrontation with myself, with memory, with expectation,” Karun says. “It’s my most personal work to date but in making it, I realised it’s not just my story. These are emotions all of us carry but don’t always speak about.” Here, Karun takes Apple Music behind the creation of five of the album’s standout tracks. “Mere Chehre” Karun calls this quasi-title track the album’s “soul”. “It’s the mirror I kept avoiding until I couldn’t any more,” he says. “The song is about confronting what time, love and loss have done to me. It’s a conversation between me and my reflection, sometimes tender, sometimes brutal.” The lyrics, which he co-wrote with singer-songwriter Viepsa Arora, “whisper a quiet ache, born from my imagination of a parallel world, one untouched by the weight of daily struggle, where love, not money, is the only true currency. Viepsa’s haunting vocals flow through the song like a breeze from that world.” The challenge, Karun adds, “was to not hide behind layers of production” and present just his “voice—exposed, which felt vulnerable, but right”. “Zubaan” “‘Zubaan’ is the sound of a scream swallowed,” says Karun about the tune that features rapper Pho and singer-songwriter Pahaad. “This one’s about the things left unsaid, in love, in conflict, in silence. It explores the tension between wanting to be understood and fearing the consequences of honesty. I spoke, perhaps for the first time, about things I’ve always kept quiet, like how I shy away from cameras [and] how being truly seen in a crowd unsettles me. And yet, I know even that discomfort is wrapped in privilege. It’s a strange conundrum to crave invisibility in a world that only validates what it can see.” Accordingly, he “wanted the beat to feel restrained, like a breath held too long”. “Mazza” “‘Mazza’ [speaks of] the chaos of wanting something that’s clearly bad for you and still diving headfirst because it brings an adrenaline rush. It’s playful on the surface but there’s a darker subtext. It’s about addiction, not just to substances, but to people, patterns, habits. It’s the track where pleasure and self-destruction shake hands. The most fun and the most challenging to perform, it demanded energy but also nuance. I had to keep it light without making it hollow. Uniyal’s vocals and lyrics bring a sense of resilience, like the quiet strength it takes to carry grief and still find joy in the process. And Ghildiyal’s fiery rap verse, in Garhwali, is raw, unfiltered and somehow telling my story. It’s his interpretation of the album’s emotional core—and he nails with uncanny precision my own reflections on navigating the noise and backtalk I dealt with.” “Tere Hothon Pe” “‘A love song about being consumed by someone, but in the most passionate and pure way possible” is how Karun describes the feature-heavy “Tere Hothon Pe", which includes contributions from singer-songwriter Abhijay Sharma, rapper Nanku and The Shams duo—and was produced by Lambo Drive, who’s behind the beats of nine of the albums’s 14 cuts. “The line ‘You are the fruit to my prayers’ captures that sacred obsession, the kind where longing feels almost holy. The lyrics flirt with desire but they also linger on the fragility of memory of how love fades, reshapes or sometimes just lives in echo. We kept the arrangement almost cinematic so the emotion could breathe and bloom.” “Stressed Out” “It’s messy, vulnerable and real,” Karun says about the album’s penultimate track. “We kept the beat intentionally jagged, like a mind in overdrive. I think a lot of people will see themselves in ‘Stressed Out’. There’s a collaborator on the hook whose vocal texture brought it to life. I’ll let listeners figure out who it is. Let’s just say his voice didn’t just complement the hook—it completed it, adding a whole new layer to the track.”