Kala Chashma singer Amar Arshi: Badshah took all the credit for the song

Singer Amar Arshi, the voice behind one of India’s biggest party anthems Kaala Chashma (Baar Baar Dekho; 2018), has called out rapper Badshah for taking all credit for the track’s success, now that it has gone viral on Instagram reels.

“He never mentioned my name in any of the interviews about the song and took all the credit that was meant to be shared with me,” complains Amar about the rapper, adding, “After the song first released, I got a lot of calls from people in the industry to congratulate me on the track’s success. But the fame eventually wore off for me after a few days, while Badshah continued to enjoy it.”

A day after the Punjabi singer expressed his disappointment over “not getting any monetary benefits despite the song’s virality”, Arshi now tells us that he plans to “claim the royalties and will find a way to get all the credit that I deserve”.

The Punjabi pop song was originally released in the year 1991 by Angel Records and created a lot of buzz back then, after which Arshi was approached by a Mumbai-based music label to re-record it. At the time of agreement, he was informed that it was for an advertisement for a cement brand and only 10 seconds of the track would be used. “But that didn’t happen and it was given to a film (Baar Baar Dekho),” he shares.

The song went viral across the world after international celebrities from Demi Lovato to Jimmy Fallon began making videos on it, but Arshi recalls that he was given only an amount of 1 lakh rupees (approximately) for it. “I neither got any royalties nor publicity or, for that matter any other benefit, despite it becoming an international hit,” he says.

When asked if he ever tried to talk about the injustice or make efforts to turn things right, the singer tells us that he indeed did. “Initially, when we saw the song’s videos on TV, there was no mention of me. So we contacted Angel Records’ Kamal Boparai as he was the person who introduced us to Mumbai’s music label for our song. They pulled a couple of strings and the changes were made but after a few days, things went back to square one. They didn’t promote me at all.”

The singer says he also did a few interviews and talked about the problem, but some people advised him to stay quiet. “They asked me to be happy about the fact that my song was released on such a significant level.” But, a disheartened Arshi says that it does not matter how big the level is if he doesn’t benefit from his own work.

As he concludes, he shares that he recorded another song Aja Ni Aaja, which he was told was for Akshay Kumar’s film but “we have not heard anything about it yet. We have done our job and now let’s wait to see what happens to it or how things turn out to be,” he wraps up.