When someone remixes a song, they alter the lyrics, beat, voice tone, accent, and other elements of the song to his or her liking. Some famous songs that have been remixed include “I Wanna Go” by Britney Spears, “E.T” by Katy Perry, and “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. Junior Fardin Haque has been remixing famous Billboard chart-topping songs since the spring of 2019.
Haque first got into remixing after he and his friends listened to the song “Black Beatles” by Rae Sremmurd, Haque said in a Zoom interview. Later, his sister sent him a remix of “Black Beatles” called “Brown Beatles,” which motivated him to create another remix of the song, Haque added. It was easy since he had already learned how to remix songs in middle school from his technology teacher, Haque elaborated.
“It is one of my hobbies,” Haque said in a Zoom Interview. “My goal with remixing is probably just to give people a laugh. I’m not trying to make anything … too sophisticated. I am trying to make … something relatable that people will listen to … for fun.”
His target audience is Southwest and South Asian people, Haque said. Haque said he tries to make his songs relatable by having his lyrics, voice tone, and accent revolve around the Desi culture. He tries to have things similar to what someone hears and sees in a typical South Asian household, such as grades, samosa, tea, and computers.
“I got good feedback from people after I did the first song, and I noticed that people were … actually kind of digging it and they were like, ‘It is kind of funny and stuff.’ I was like, ‘Okay, maybe I could keep doing this,’ and I kept on getting good feedback. … If it’s working, don’t stop,” Haque said.
Haque said his first song was a remix of Lil Pump’s song “Gucci Gang,” which he named “Gupta Gang.” However, before he made songs, he did audio snippets. He made an audio snippet with an Indian accent, even though he is from Bangladesh, not India. Then he sent it to his sister on iMessage, Haque said. He and his sister found his Indian accent very funny, so he decided to incorporate it into “Gupta Gang,” Haque added.
“For choosing which songs I would want to remix, I probably would check the … Billboard Top 200, and then I would take songs that have a lot of listens,” Haque said. “Or some people … request me for songs sometimes.”
“So I take the song, I listen to the song, I take the lyrics, and then I take the beat and vocals, and I separate them. So I take the original song and… keep the same rhyme scheme, but I fit my lyrics into the rhyme scheme and then try to make all the syllables and the rhyme scheme work with my lyrics, and I use the same beat. So it’s a complete remix,” Haque said.
Haque said that when he has to rewrite lyrics, he usually just picks a word that has a lot of rhymes and puts it at the end of each line. If he cannot find a word that rhymes, he tries to pronounce it in a way that it seems that the words are rhyming, Haque added. Sometimes, he also uses the same rhymes as the original artist.
“To remix a song, it really takes … three days,” Haque said. “The lyrics … would take the longest time, but then producing it goes really fast … because the recordings for … the chorus, and then the verse and then maybe the bridge [take only a few takes]. So … the vocals could be done in like 30 minutes or 45 minutes, and then producing it takes about one or two hours, and then writing the lyrics takes the bulk of the time.”
He uses a platform called Audacity to record his songs, Haque said. He records his vocals on his phone, and then he sends them to his laptop so that he can use the program, which helps to mix and render his music, Haque added. The reason he likes Audacity is that it is free and very easy to use, Haque further added.
While many of Haque’s friends’ favorite remix is “Gupta Gang,” Haque’s favorite remix that he has created is either “Mango Lassi” or “Rebel,” Haque said. “Mango Lassi” was a remix of “Blueberry Faygo” by Lil Mosey, and “Rebel” was a remix of “Suge” by DaBaby, Haque added.
“I would say pop and rap [are] probably my main genres [to remix] because it’s just funny to do that in [an]… Indian way, because you … don’t see a lot of Indian people rapping or doing hip hop … and when you mix it with like, South Asian lyrics, it just makes people laugh,” Haque said.
His goal in the future is to improve from the feedback he is getting and continue to make people laugh, Haque said. Two major things he wants to improve on are his work with the microphone and making his newer songs sound more like “Gupta Gang,” since a lot of people liked it, Haque added.
Aarsh was also an essential part of Gupta Gang as he helped record the ad libs and wrote 1/5th of the lyrics.
I think he deserves some credit in this article too
Go aarsh!