Taken from the July Issue of Dazed & Confused:
Non-stop twerkaholic Ryan Hemsworth: "Chippy embodies the current rebel in the way she's so independent. Even though she's a part of the Yung Klout Gang and all this weird internet stuff, she does her own thing and doesn't give a shit. She still shows up to the club and twerks in the corner by herself. She's fascinating."
Following a few Four Lokos one night after bumping into Diplo, Chippy Nonstop learned she could rap. That was after moving her life to LA for a job with M.I.A. that never actually happened. The 21-year-old had started an art collective called T Tauri Traphouse that caught M.I.A.'s attention.
"We were about to start work but her team imitated a lot of our graphics and didn't pay us or give us any credit" Chippy claims, "so we got upset and leaked her album (MAYA, 2010)." While she never heard from Ms Arulpragasam again, Chippy did manage a spot on Major Lazer's "Wind Up."
Born Chhavi Nanda in Dubai, she lived in Africa until she was six, then Canada until she reached 15, then San Diego, where she graduated from high school early because high school is "so unnecessary." Chippy moved out of her parents' home at 16, bound for the San Francisco Bay Area, where a series of muggings left her minus one passport but with a whole lot of street cred.
"I was in art school and usually Indian kids don't do that," the rapper-slash-twerk-queen-slash-internet-junkie recalls. She's the product of an accountant dad and a dance/yoga instructor mom. "They both grew up in India, but they're pretty open-minded for Indian people," she says of her parents. "They're still mad-confused by what the fuck I'm doing."
Chippy's third EP, tentatively titled Finally Verified, will mark her move from Santigold/Gwen Stefani territory into a Too $hort/E-40 sound. "You can create whatever you want for yourself," she says. "There's no other alternative. Taking the risk to say 'fuck it' is the hardest part."
