कह दो कि ये झूठ है

Keh Do Ki Ye Jhoot Hai (कह दो कि ये झूठ है) is a landmark desi hip-hop single by Ahmedabad rapper Dhanji, written and performed by him and produced and engineered by his longtime collaborator Circle Tone. Released on 30 August 2024 under Thaltej Publishing Company and later folded into Dhanji's album RUAB (Director's Cut), the roughly three-and-a-half-minute track pairs Dhanji's dense, Hindi-Gujarati wordplay with a live saxophone by Harmish Joshi and a swaying vocal hook sung by Tshering Bhutia, Jananta Juri and Meera Desai. Its ambition and accessibility earned it a place on Rolling Stone India's list of the 10 Best Indian Songs of 2024, cementing Dhanji's reputation as one of the most inventive voices in the country's independent rap scene.

Producer Circle Tone builds Keh Do Ki Ye Jhoot Hai on a beat that leaves room for organic texture: rather than a purely synthetic trap chassis, the track threads a live saxophone line by Harmish Joshi through the low-end programming, and hands its hook to three vocalists — Tshering Bhutia, Jananta Juri and Meera Desai — whose swaying, melodic refrain offsets the density of Dhanji's rapping. The result is a production that reads as jazz-tinged desi hip-hop, prioritising musicality and space over sheer bass weight, and giving Dhanji's cadence-heavy delivery a warmer, more human backdrop than the genre's default.

Dhanji, who both writes and performs the track, is celebrated for a rapid, multi-layered lyricism that folds Gujarati inflection into Hindi rap — and the hook 'keh do ki ye jhoot hai' ('say that this is a lie') frames the whole song as a challenge: dare to call his ascent, his confidence, his claims a fabrication. It is the poetics of self-assertion that defines the genre, but delivered with the internal rhyme, wordplay and regional cadence that make Dhanji distinctive. The line works as both boast and provocation, a rapper insisting the listener confront a truth they might rather deny.

Keh Do Ki Ye Jhoot Hai is a non-film independent single, not tied to any movie soundtrack — part of the wave of artist-owned releases that has driven India's desi hip-hop boom. It arrived on 30 August 2024 as a standalone track and was subsequently included on Dhanji's album RUAB (Director's Cut), whose title — 'ruab', meaning a commanding, imposing presence — captures the record's self-possessed tone. Dhanji, based in Ahmedabad, has spent years building a following on the strength of his lyricism rather than film playback, and this release, made entirely within his own creative circle alongside producer Circle Tone, is a statement of independent ambition. The accompanying music video, directed by Meghan Katti, presents the song back-to-back with the track 'Yogdan' as a single visual chapter from the album.

Placement on Rolling Stone India's 10 Best Indian Songs of 2024 — a list dominated by names like Anuv Jain, Sai Abhyankkar, W.i.S.H. and Hanumankind — marked Keh Do Ki Ye Jhoot Hai as one of the year's defining independent tracks and a high point of the RUAB (Director's Cut) project. In the publication's framing, the song exemplified how Dhanji keeps 'leading the way' at every turn desi hip-hop takes, pairing lyrical density with genuine accessibility. As a non-film, self-produced release that broke through to critical year-end recognition and hundreds of thousands of YouTube views, it stands as evidence of how far India's independent, regionally-rooted rap has travelled from the margins toward mainstream cultural conversation.