Hindustani Gangster: Bollywood meets Jay Z's American Gangster

Bollywood & hip-hop. A couple of shit hot producers (Dan The Automator) have reworked Jay Z's American Gangster album and laid his rhymes over 1970s Bollywood gangster film soundtracks. You can download Hindustani Gangster for free here. Arguably the most memorable of these films is Don (theme tune above), starring angry young man Amitabh (as were most of his most iconic roles were in this era).

However this isn't the first time Bollywood's got into bed with hip hop, there's been a blossoming love affair between the two, and that's beyond the obvious Panjabi MC Mundian Te Bach Ke (this video is hilarious) and DJ Quik/Dr Dre featuring Truth Hurts (these donuts got their asses sued for sampling India's most iconic singer Lata Mangeshkar without permission).

Producers Dan The Automator (Gorillaz, Deltron 3030) and Shadow, yes that Shadow, did Bombay The Hardway back in 1999, dicing and slicing 1970s Bollywood in a bumping hip hop style. I stumbled across this in a San Fran record shop in 2001 and it's probably my most treasured record shop 'find'

This was followed by Bombay The Hardway II: Electric Vindaloo and since then it's been ALL about Madlib, in my opinion the finest underground hip hop producer of our times, getting up to studio mischief with funky ass Bollywood through his Beat Konducta series (taster below).



Mos Def made use of one of Madlib's productions for the finest hip hop track of 2009 Auditorium (below)



Then of course there are such embarrassing delights as Snoop doing Bollywood film soundtracks - I guess this is for an Indian audience (the country was largely unaware of hip hop til this decade), whereas all of the above is for hip hop heads.