Dinesh Kanagaratnam

Dinesh was born in Badulla and raised in Modara, Sri Lanka. He studied information technology (IT) in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India and started teaching IT courses in Sri Lanka. He began working with local musicians part-time to pursue his growing interest in music. In 2004, he was given a chance by Bathiya, an artist in Sri Lanka and started recording rap songs until he was discovered by Vijay Antony. He collaborated with him for the song "Aathichudi"^[2] for the soundtrack of the film TN 07 AL 4777 (2008)^[3] in 2009 which is a remake of Surangani, a song from his first independent album, Tamizha (2008).^[4] Back in Sri Lanka, he did a cross-culture album^[5] in 2005 which includes songs in Tamil, Sinhala and English.^[6]

His next throughout in cinema industry was "Magudi",^[7] which was his first collaboration with A. R. Rahman for the Mani Ratnam-directed film Kadal (2013). He was featured along with Anirudh Ravichander for the song "Mun Sellada"^[8] in the film Manithan (2016), composed by Santhosh Narayanan. Kanagaratnam and rapper Sri Rascol formed a record label called Rap Machines^[9] and have done other rap musics.

He continued to work in Tamil and Telugu cinema, writing and performing English language rap for soundtracks, including the title track "Maayon"^[10] in Mersal (2017) composed by A. R. Rahman, the song "Gala Gala" featured with Megha from Race Gurram composed by S. Thaman and also a background score (which had been deleted later) in Nerkonda Paarvai. He also worked in 2.0 (2018). Kanagaratnam has joined concert tours in Sri Lanka, the Middle East, India, Malaysia and Singapore. He is well known for his rap battles at every A. R. Rahman concert tours alongside Lady Kash and Blaaze.^[11][12] In January 2019, Kanagaratnam performed with Bathiya and Santhush at Oba Nisa in Sri Lanka.^{[citation needed]} In March 2024, Kanagaratnam organized and performed at the "Rap Indie" concert held at the Indigo at The O2 in London, a major showcase for independent Tamil hip-hop artists. Around this time, he also established his own production company, Madhouse Production, and launched a merchandise line called Madhouse Drops.^[13]