Baba Sehgal, the popular 90s artist, is now a popular YouTuber. He is also quite active in the Southern film industry (in case you are wondering what he is doing nowadays).
Sehgal is best known for songs such as ‘Thanda Thanda Paani’ (Hindi re-creation of “Ice ice baby” by international rapper Vanilla Ice).
Here are his popular songs from the 90s.
His real name is Harjeet, but because his mom used to call him Babu and few others would call him Baba, he carried on with the name Baba Sehgal.
Baba Sehgal is quite active down south; he has been associated with the Telegu, Tamil and Kannada films almost for a decade now. Baba Sehgal has sing for several films (he had sung the Hindi version of Rukmini song from Roja). He has sung over 100 songs and has even acted as a villain in a bilingual film.
So work wise, he is busy!
So how did he become a famous YouTuber?
“I had just tweeted something about Chris Gayle and whale few years back and it got a huge response (This tweet: Gayle is a whale and nobody can fail.)” That is how the floodgates opened for him.
We don’t have any music labels here unfortunately, that’s why a lot of artists of my generation left to do independent music, some vanished, some went to Dubai. Luckily I was also VJing, I was part of MTV, Channel V and Doordarshan so I knew what I had to do. Few years back, he wrote ‘Going to the gym’ and released it himself.
When ‘Going to the Gym’ hit the market, he got a call from YouTube and they asked him to make video. I thought, “video mein kya hai”. That’s how it started.
Baba Sehgal now understands how social media works and has even learnt to deal with the brutal negative comments. He understands that the game isn’t to analyse the polarity of the comments, but look at the sheer numbers: that’s what determines his popularity.
In fact, he even finds inspiration from what his followers comment. “You see, a girl had commented on the Rihanna o Rihanna song, saying, ‘Arre, isko koi Grammy de do.’ So I picked that up, and now we have a new song.
While he has made several songs for YouTube, they haven’t yet captured the attention of social media, nor the advertisers.
There are a few advertisers (Brands) who call him to ask if they could use lines from his songs. “I simply say, ‘Paisa rakho aur use karo’.
