Feb 02, 2026 6:51pm IST
‘The right movie, the right actor, the right entrance, the right song, the right post from Ranveer…’ Flipperachi on Fa9la’s virality (EXCLUSIVE)
For a Khaleeji song by a Bahraini rapper to smash a Guinness record, a year after its initial release, required a special kind of magic. And for Flipperachi (real name: Hussam Aseem) that magic happened when Fa9la made its way into a box-office record-breaking Bollywood film, Dhurandhar.
Going instantly viral once Indian theatre-goers began vibing to the single by Flipp (“Call me Flipp. Everyone calls me Flipp”, he insists) and a memefest, sparked off by Akshaye Khanna’s (also viral) hookstep, the single, originally released in 2024, took on a new lease on life. It has now earned the rapper (due to perform in India this March at UN40 in Bengaluru) a Guinness World Record for ‘Most Billboard Arabia Charts Topped at No. 1 by a Single Song’, adding to the song and the Bahraini rapper’s laurels. What this essentially means, according to GWR is that ‘the song Fa9la, was at No.1 on all 4 charts from weeks starting December 18 2025 till January 1 2026’.
“It feels amazing how a song... It’s not even the same language where it’s really boomed and it just had an explosion…like a nuclear explosion, actually. Topping four charts at the same time? That is something… something that got me a Guinness World Record”, he shared on Instagram.
The Bahraini-Moroccan artist, signed to Outlaw Productions, told us that he and his team “always knew that we had the formula of making a hit and a banger.” And that he never experienced something like this in his career and the way that ‘Fa9la’ blew up the way it did, “not just in Bollywood, but around the whole globe.” He takes cognizance of the fact, still insisting, “It’s crazy, but yeah, I'm amazed and astonished.”
While Fa9la did not feature in the film’s soundtrack, it did get featured in the film after being sync licensed for the scene with Akshaye Khanna. In that measure, it comes in the wake of Animal’s ‘Jamal Kudu’, which is a classic Farsi single, which became viral on the film’s release.
When asked what worked for the track, Flipp says that he feels “it's a collective of all the moments together. It's the right movie, the right actor, the right entrance, the right song, the right post from Ranveer. So, it all made it into this nuclear bomb that exploded.” He further notes, “Because everything is already powerful by itself, when you combine everything together in one moment, that moment makes history. And word of mouth, people sharing, people reposting, dancing to it, vibing to it, that has accelerated the impact.”
And like anyone who has watched the film will tell you, it is an experience to be enjoyed in theatres. Flipperachi tells us he’s “really looking forward to coming to India and watching Dhurandhar.” He admits that “a lot of people” have invited him to come watch the film in India (the film has been banned in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman) and that he wants the “full cinema experience”. So if the makers of the film are reading this, please take note!
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Hip-hop in Bahrain is something that took off fairly recently. When asked what challenges he faced, he answers, “There were a lot. People were not aware of or understand the music (genre). It took a lot of time to seep through. When I started back in the day (his first single was out in 2008, his debut album in 2014), people were like, ‘What are you doing? This is music from the West. It will never become big here’. I proved everyone wrong.”
He attributes the genre’s success in the country to technology, saying that “the whole world is becoming a global village.” Localising it was key. He adds, “I tried to amend it to my personality. The hip-hop we were introduced to early on was kind-of vulgar and full of violence. But I took everything out of that equation and made it (an expression of) who I am. It really boggles my mind how we turned Khaleeji music into something that can be heard and is actually topping charts now. Like, topping four charts in Billboard, number one. People are like, you guys broke a record that nobody has ever done (before). I'm like, okay.”
Point out that Fa9la’s lyrics talk about several dance styles and he shares, “it’s a collective of dances that I created in the song and visualized them so that people might want to do the version themselves.” In fact, when asked to tell us how to ‘do the Marshmallow’, he laughs and says, “I talked about the marshmallow, but there's not really a dance to it,” but if he had to describe it, it would be “like jumping on tiptoes or something like that because marshmallows are always on fire. You got to jump on your tiptoes.”
Usually when an older song goes viral, the trickle-down discovery helps an artist get more streams and a bigger audience. When asked if Fa9la’s success impacted his other singles and albums, he shares, “Statistically, I found out that other than my previous posts on Instagram, my music on YouTube has been all going up. But I've heard something that is actually bigger. Spotify, because we have a good relationship with them, has told me that my song had made such an impact that the hip-hop Gulf artists' numbers on Spotify also rose up. Not only have my songs been rising up, I've also been ‘hooking up’ all the hip-hop artists in the Khaleeji scene. That makes me proud. And I love how at least I can say that my music has really done something for the hip-hop community. So that's how deep it went.”
Ask him why, despite beginning his career in 2008 and consistently putting out music, he went unnoticed, making his way to a music-consuming market as large as India as late as December 2025 and he shrugs, adding, “Algorithms work very differently and people's interests are really stuck to where they come from. And that's what interests them. If it comes from outside, it has to be a banger. It has to be something people do want to collaborate on. But the Bollywood scene is enough for itself. There's a lot of artists there. You feel like they don't need something from ‘the outside’, they have their own songs. They already have a lot of stuff going on. But, like you said, I think an artist has to have a buildup.”
He admits, “Every artist is different. I've changed my style from 2008 till now to make it more commercial, to make people love it more and to make it attractive. It's different with every artist and with every genre. I would really call for the platforms to mix different algorithms together. Bring genres together, make some innovative moves or maybe some innovative companies might introduce music to other countries, to other cultures, so that people could really enjoy it and get to know other people.
Harking back to the social media virality that helped both Animal’s Jamal Kudu and his own Fa9la, we ask him if he feels that social media virality drives discovery of tracks like his and he agrees. “It has to. Like I said, now it's a global village, you show one dance, one move to the internet and… you never know what goes viral... until you really put it out there. That's the thing. And I think I told you, it's like, it's like the whole vibe to it, that moment. That moment of the movie, that scene, that specific scene with the music. And because music is a very powerful and international language, it will take you to dimensions.”
When he arrives in India (“I’m dying to come…”, he insists), he wants to go to “all the good places…eat all the street food.” What kind, you ask? “I love food with chillies in it. I love spice. I love seasoned food. I don’t like bland food.” Noted!
Take 5 with Flipperachi
5 Songs of mine you have to check out:
First of all, you gotta go check, EE LAA (2016). Then, Hayalla Min Yana (2023); you’ll find it on my page on YouTube. The third one has to be Akuma Yaw (2023). Then, of course, listen to Fa9la (2024). The next has to be Halwa Shwaiter (2022). It's (named after) a Bahraini dessert. And what else? Nayda ft Alaa Al Hendi (2023), of course. Most definitely.
5 Khaleeji artists to check out
I have to say Daffy. He's my brother and friend. I can say Vortex. These are rappers. You have to listen to Sarah Nabil. I love every project she does. DJ Outlaw. Since he's doing beats for us, it has to be him. You have to listen to him. He's a producer, but you always have to listen to anything that he does, especially with other artists, if DJ Outlaw is the producer, it has to be him. And I would say the fifth one, might be Jabir Al Turki. He's a rising artist in Bahrain. And he deserves the shoutout, to be honest.
5 rap tracks that are top of your list
I would say anything by Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Busta Rhymes, Ludacris and Ice Cube.
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