INSIDE THE MAKING OF THE TUMULTUOUS ‘LUKKHE’ SOUNDTRACK

From explosive rap cuts to aching love ballads, the makers and musicians behind Lukkhe break down how the show’s soundtrack became its emotional spine

- By Shamani Joshi

In one of the definitive moments of Lukkhe, the Prime Video crime thriller directed by Himank Gaur that sinks its teeth into a chaotic nexus of drug lords and rogue rap stars in Chandigarh, protagonist MC Badnaam, played by King, says, “Yaha pe rap aur badla, dono loud hai” (“Here, rap and revenge are both loud”). Amid its high-speed car chases, Euphoria-tinted lighting, and coming-of-age character arc, the eight-episode series’ soundtrack emerges as a beacon. Swerving as easily between explosive rap verses and tender love ballads as it does between action sequences and moments of silent reckoning, the musical drama’s tracklist becomes a pulsing throughline, often unmasking emotional beats the script alone can’t. That’s mostly because the show’s creators and executive producers, Agrim Joshi and Debojit Das Purkayastha, intended for it to be that way.

“The keyword was ‘Polarity,’” Joshi tells Rolling Stone India. “We started there in terms of what the music of Lukkhe should evoke, driven to create a mix-tape, where one couldn’t preempt the genre of the next song.” Joshi, who features on tracks like “Ruh Teri” with OAFF, Savera, Ruaa Kayy and Manreet Khara, “Haal” and “Bhaari Pangey” alongside Sunny M.R. and Abhinav Sharma, worked closely with music supervisor Mohan Nerkar to give the story’s soundtrack more legs. Even before the screenplay was set in motion, the makers of the show knew they wanted the music to do much of the heavy lifting in cracking open the characters’ deepest, darkest desires and needs.