This Indie-Rap Hero Inspired Zohran Mamdani to Enter Politics

Earlier this month, Zohran Mamdani went on Hot 97, New York’s preeminent hip-hop radio station, to tell the story of how he first entered politics. It’s a tale he’s told many times: In 2015, Mamdani started knocking on doors for an aspiring Queens city councilman Ali Najmi. But when he told it this time, Mamdani highlighted the real reason he wanted to get involved.

That reason was Himanshu Suri, the Queens-raised rapper and co-founder of the groups Das Racist and Swet Shop Boys. Suri, better known as Heems, grew up with Najmi and had been campaigning on his childhood friend’s behalf. “I actually got involved in local politics because I picked up a copy of the Village Voice in 2015 where I saw that Heems, who was one of my favorite rappers, was endorsing my childhood friend,” Mamdani told the radio station, before pausing: “Heems,” Mamdani repeated, raising his fingers with a smile, “shoutout to Heems.”

When Rolling Stone spoke with Heems shortly after the primary, the longtime artist and activist couldn’t believe the impact his niche hip-hop career ended up having on his hometown’s possible future mayor. “I’m extremely grateful, and I’m extremely surprised,” Suri says. “My first thought was, ‘Fuck it, I’ll make music for another couple of years.’”

Before Zohran Mamdani became the Democratic candidate in New York’s mayoral race and the new face of American left-wing politics, he was, among other things, a twentysomething Heems stan and reply guy. Throughout the mid-2010s, Mamdani, 33, regularly tweeted at Heems, to no response, suggesting Swet Shop Boys merch ideas and asking the rapper if he’d read the memoir Curfewed Night.  

“Big boss,” Mamdani, then 23, tweeted at Heems in 2015, “I ordered [Heems’ 2015 LP] ‘Eat Pray Thug’ a month ago-when should I expect it at the crib? Much love.” When Heems set up a donation page for his artist website in 2015, Mamdani chimed in: 

“Just donated,” he tweeted at the rapper, “because @Swetshopboys 1st EP was 🔥🔥🔥”

A decade later, Heems is tickled by the turn of events: “The guy everyone donated to donated to me!” 

There are number of parallels between Suri and Mamdani: Both were South Asian rappers (Mamdani famously had a brief period rapping as Mr. Cardamom), both have made debt relief for New York taxi drivers one of their foremost issues, and both have intertwined art and politics in their varied careers and roles.

It’s this last point that Heems views as instrumental to understanding Mamdani’s past, present and future as a democratic socialist: “The thing about rap music is that it’s a community art form that’s rooted in the working class,” he says. “Its two themes are aspiration and struggle, right? So to have somebody that innately understands rap music is to have somebody that innately understands community, struggle and aspiration. That means understanding people around you that are having trouble making ends meet and that wanna come up.”

To Heems, it’s no coincidence at all that Mamdani’s political origins — door-knocking for Najmi’s city council campaign — are based, like rap, in crafting narratives about a community. “He comes from that community organizing world, which is rooted in the streets the same way rap music is,” says Suri. “Rap is storytelling; it’s not necessarily story-making, it’s story-telling. It’s about having somebody that knows what the stories of everybody’s independent main character syndrome is, who can go out there and enact actual change on the ground, from those concerns, from those stories, from those character arcs.”

HEEMS HAS BEEN making music since the late ’00s, when his first rap group, Das Racist, broke out with their viral hit “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” Since then, on solo records like Eat Pray Thug and Swet Shop Boys’ 2016 LP Cashmere, Suri has used his platform as a critic’s darling to highlight local issues. In 2012, Suri released his mixtape Nehru Jackets as part of a platform to raise awareness and make a noise in Albany about redistricting and gerrymandering in Queens. In 2015, Heems, whose father drove a cab, rallied to get a taxi stand installed outside the Lower East Side institution the Punjabi Deli, which was facing eviction because its customer base — cab drivers — could no longer patronize the business without getting ticketed. “As an artist, I’m not a millionaire, man, but when I see that cab stand on Houston [Street], I feel pretty damn good about the songs I make in a garage,” Suri says. 

Meanwhile, Heems is looking ahead to a number of musical projects. He is working on an indie-rock leaning project that will feature Lee Ranaldo and Panda Bear, and says a song with Unknown Mortal Orchestra is dropping next month. He’s also been discussing another Swet Shop Boys album with Riz Ahmed. 

He’s also optimistic about New York’s future. “The words ‘hopeful’ and ‘triumphant’ come to mind,” he says of his mood after the primary. “Somebody asked me to make a playlist celebrating the moment, and the two songs that came to mind were ‘We Gonna Make It’ by Jadakiss and ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ by Sam Cooke.” 

What does Heems think of New York’s current mayor? “I have reason to believe Eric Adams doesn’t know who Mobb Deep is, but if he does, he doesn’t fuck with them like that,” says Suri. “I could go with a cop or I could go with a fan of Mobb Deep. Maybe it’s a silly way to look at the world, but I’m going to go with the fan of Mobb Deep.”

Heems looks forward to hopefully discussing his shared interest in the ongoing taxi debt relief crisis with Mamdani. “What the city gave them wasn’t enough, and it wasn’t what they said they would, and they’re still struggling,” Suri says. “That’s something I want to talk about more. The number one cause in my heart will always be taxi workers.”

But what Heems is most excited about is the values of the man he inspired to enter politics. 

“What’s crazy in this moment for me, who’s so aligned with the interests of the South Asian community, is that I’m much more happy that our potential next mayor is aligned with issues of the working class,” says Suri. “It hasn’t even struck me: ‘We may have an Indian mayor.’ What’s striking me more is, ‘Shit, we have have a socialist mayor who cares about the working class and basics of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food and shelter. That shit excites me. I can separate my personal connection and my ethnicity from just like, “Oh shit, we might have a mayor who gives a fuck.’”