MUMBAI: Toronto-based Jaffna-born rapper and producer to release ‘PURGATORY: The Isolation Tapes’ with 24-hour live stream on Instagram and will include special guests and interviews

April 2020 - Fresh off his four-city tour of India, Toronto-based, award-winning Tamil rapper and director Shan Vincent de Paul aka SVDP is set to release his new visual mixtape, PURGATORY: The Isolation Tapes. In response to the COVID-19 epidemic that has swept across the world, the Mrithangam Raps series co-creator presents a visual that encapsulates the range of emotions that much of the world is going through. 

Made completely in isolation on his iPhone PURGATORY acts almost as a short film that accompanies a handful of new songs.  

Set in the modern day, the visual shows a character played by SVDP navigating through the quarantine, through moments of panic and fear to beautiful moments of appreciating the world’s solidarity. 

In what is a novel but perhaps timely way to release the mixtape, the project will be screened multiple times a day on SVDP’s Instagram during a 24-hour live stream on Easter Monday. The live stream will include special guests, interviews and unreleased material live from Shan’s studio. 

“When this started happening on a global scale, I stopped all of my other projects immediately.  It was important that I create something that was responsive to what we were going through. What we’re seeing is unprecedented so the art has to reflect that,” says SVDP of the inspiration behind PURGATORY. 

“I also looked at it as an artistic challenge. What can we artists create when left to our own devices?  It was definitely a moment of artistic evolution for me. Most important it was my contribution to help people get through these times,” he adds.