Last year, the people of New York elected a new mayor in democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, an ex-rapper who once sent Stereogum his music. Mamdani is not the only rapper to become a governmental executive in recent months. On Sunday, the 35-year-old MC Balendra Shah won a landslide election to become the new prime minister of Nepal.
Balendra Shah studied to become a civil engineer as a young man, but he first achieved prominence by rapping under the name Balen. He has been putting out music since the early '10s, and many of his videos have millions of views. Shah was elected mayor of Kathmandu, Nepal's capital city, in 2022, and Al Jazeera describes his election as "a major upset for the political establishment at the time." The New York Times reports that Shah "has cursed India, China and the United States, along with Nepal’s political establishment."
Recently, Shah has emerged as a leader in the huge Gen Z protest movement in Nepal. Last year, security forces killed dozens of protesters, leading to the ousting of three-time prime minister Sharma Oli. The centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party, which Shah joined last year, won a huge majority of the country's parliamentary seats, and Shah drubbed Oli in a head-to-head parliamentary election.
It doesn't even really make sense to describe Shah as a former rapper, since he was still putting out music as recently as December. His song "Nepal Haseko," or "Nepal Smiling," reportedly served as an anthem during the protests. Check out some of his music below.
