Jailer 2: How singer MS Krsna landed a song with Rajinikanth and Anirudh

Jailer 2 has thrown up a few unlikely heroes. Actor Namo Narayana is stealing the show despite the presence of big superstars. In the music department, singer MS Krsna is grabbing attention for his work on the theme track and the ‘One Moon, One Sun’ number featuring Rajinikanth.

“My DMs have been flooded with texts that I’m unable to respond to all,” admits Krsna, an independent musician who sang the track along with composer Anirudh.

The 27-year-old has been quietly making inroads in the indie music scene, with songs like ‘Odathey Oliyathey’ and ‘Piravi’. But no song has come even remotely close to his work in Jailer 2 in terms of popularity. “Many people are saying that this is a big break and that I’m getting the spotlight that I deserve, but the biggest high for me is that I can tell my grandchildren someday that I sang the main song in what could become one of Rajinikanth’s biggest superhits. It’s a blessing; we cannot plan these things. It’s about being in the right place at the right time,” says Krsna.

Krsna was actually in the middle of planning a video for a track from his upcoming album Nejama when he received a text from Anirudh’s violinist and close aide, Ananth. “I was thrilled as I’m a massive Anirudh fan. I knew he was working on Rajinikanth’s Jailer 2 though I didn’t know if I was being called for that project. When the scratch played and I heard the famous ‘Hukum’ horn, I had goosebumps as I realised that this was a song for Rajinikanth. It was a crazy moment for me.”

A few days later, he got called in to record. “He (Anirudh) was a genuinely nice person, and encourages you to become to best version of yourself,” says Krsna, who finished the recording within an hour.

The emotional link

That hour in Anirudh’s recording studio has changed his life in ways he can hardly imagine. He realised it twice; once when he heard the track, and subsequently when he watched it unfold on the big screen.

Krsna has a theory. “The film has a Rajinikanth who is subdued; he has an army of people ready to do everything for him the second he removes his glasses. Throughout the years, as audiences, we have seen many shades of theme songs for him and now withJailer 2, I feel the emotional arc of the Rajini fan in you gets amplified,” says the musician, whose first Superstar film on the big screen was Padayappa (1999) that his mother took him to when he was a baby.

Past forward

Krsna hails from a generation of musicians on both his paternal and maternal side. His great grandmother is the late Seetha Doraiswamy, popular jalatarangam exponent. “She is a big inspiration. For her to choose such a rare instrument and become the best at it is hugely motivating. I had the privilege of learning from her for a short while when I was a child,” he recalls, “As a tribute to her, I have played jalatarangam in a track using the same bowls that she once used.”

That song features in Nejama, his upcoming six-track album that he says has “transformed him as an artiste.” Besides ‘Ennama Thozhi’, a song he has heard since childhood, it also contains numbers like ‘Creatures’ and ‘Paati song’. “It’s a compilation of songs I wrote from when I was 18 to 23, an intense period of my life,” describes Krsna.

It was difficult to let go of songs that he wrote for personal consumption into a tracklist for the public, and he has John Mayer’s album Continuum to thank for that. “Listening to the songs from Continuum, I felt like I knew this person. He was like a friend on my iPod that I could access whenever I wanted to.”

Closer home, he felt something similar with AR Rahman’s ‘Kun Faya Kun’. “He is the GOAT(Greatest of All Time), and his songs are extremely personal. It has taken many years for me to come to terms with the fact that being an artiste means releasing what is most personal to me. I feel Nejama will give you a deep experience of my life and artistry that feels almost tangible,” says Krsna, who will soon debut as film composer with Yogi Babu-starrer Kaagangal.