Rolling Stone India's recent magazine cover received mass criticism on social media on Monday for not crediting lyricist, rapper, and singer Arivu.
For its feature article, Rolling Stone interviewed singers Dhee and Shan Vincent de Paul and spoke of their critically acclaimed songs 'Enjoy Enjaami' and 'Neeye Oli' respectively. However, the article simply had a short quote from Arivu who has penned lyrics for the songs. The cover photo does not feature him at all.
This has enraged netizens who believe that Arivu deserves as much space as the other artists. Many doubt that he is being dicriminated against for his anti-caste art.
Taking to Twitter, Pa Ranjith said, โArivu, the lyricist of Neeyaoli and Singer as well as lyricist of Enjoy Enjaami has once again been invisiblised. Rolling Stone India and Maajja, is it difficult to understand that the lyrics of both the songs challenges this erasure of public acknowledgement?โ
Director CS Amudhan tweeted, โIf the Arivu erasure wasnโt a deliberate and blatant move, singer Dhee, music composers Santhosh Narayanan and AR Rahman should speak up, otherwise it will go down as a historical injustice. These are people we believe are on the right side of the good fight, I really hope they do the right thing.โ
Here's what others are saying. Have a look.