Yo Yo Honey Singh

Who is Yo Yo Honey Singh?

Yo Yo Honey Singh, born Hirdesh Singh on 15 March 1983 in Karampura, West Delhi, is an Indian rapper, singer and music producer — and one of the most commercially influential figures in modern Punjabi and Hindi pop. More than any other artist, he dragged desi hip-hop out of the underground and into the Bollywood mainstream, and his mid-2020s comeback made him a defining voice of India's rap resurgence.

Early life and underground beginnings

Singh grew up in Delhi in a Sikh family with roots in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, and studied at Guru Nanak Public School. He started out in 2003 as a hip-hop producer, working as a session and recording artist in Delhi's underground scene and assembling the early collective of rappers that became known as Mafia Mundeer. Those years behind the mixing desk shaped the producer-first instinct that still drives his records — he builds the beat before he writes the hook.

Breakthrough and peak years

His debut album International Villager (2011) turned tracks like "Brown Rang" and "Angreji Beat" into national hits, with "Brown Rang" topping year-end charts. A relentless run of singles and Bollywood numbers followed — "High Heels", "Blue Eyes", "Love Dose", "Lungi Dance" and the album Desi Kalakaar (2014) — making him one of the highest-paid and most-streamed artists in the country. He won the MTV Europe Music Award for Best India Act in both 2013 and 2014, and later took the IIFA Award for Best Music Director in 2019.

Hiatus and health

At the height of that fame, Singh disappeared from public life for several years. He later revealed he had been living with bipolar disorder and had struggled with substance dependence — a period he spoke about with unusual candour in the 2024 Netflix documentary Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous, directed by Mozez Singh and produced by Sikhya Entertainment. The film framed his return as both a personal recovery and a professional reassertion, and reopened the public conversation around his music.

Comeback and recent work

Singh's comeback gathered real momentum in 2024 with two albums, Honey 3.0 and the eighteen-track Glory, the latter spawning trending singles such as "Millionaire", "Rap God" and "Jatt Mehkma". He has carried that energy into 2026 with a string of harder, trap-driven releases, among them God Style, his collaboration with the Delhi rapper and lyricist Hommie Dilliwala. The new run leans into a sharper, more self-consciously "desi hip-hop" identity than the pop-leaning club records that first made his name.

Musical style

Singh's sound fuses hip-hop and trap with bhangra, Punjabi folk melody, EDM and pop-rap, almost always built on his own production and finished with autotuned hooks and bilingual Hindi-Punjabi verses. His records are engineered for the club and the playlist at once. Braggadocio — wealth, status, swagger — is a recurring lyrical mode, one that has fuelled both his popularity and recurring criticism; in 2025 the Punjab State Women's Commission issued a notice over lyrics on a Glory track.

Labels and legacy

Across his career he has released through labels including T-Series, Zee Music Company and Speed Records. Whatever the controversy that trails individual songs, his influence is hard to overstate: he opened the commercial door for an entire generation of Indian rappers and remains a touchstone for the desi hip-hop scene he helped build. From the underground beatmaker of the early 2000s to the chart-dominating "Yo Yo" of the 2010s and the comeback artist of the 2020s, Honey Singh's career maps the rise of Indian rap itself.