The western side of Canada—particularly Surrey, British Columbia—can take a decent amount of credit for raising and inspiring a veritable army of Punjabi hip-hop stars in the 21st century. This who’s-who list includes the likes of Jazzy B, Karan Aujla, AP Dhillon and producer Intense, among many other stars. Two more rising talents from Surrey who’ve earned a spot on that list are lyricist Chani Nattan and singer Inderpal Moga. The duo, first noticed with 2020 track “Rockstar”, gained plaudits with their collab “Daku” in 2021. And it’s been all up from there, with the pair working on a succession of hits together since. Nattan and Moga have honed their sound “Daku” and enjoyed the fruits of a stellar LP with Canadian rapper-songwriter AR Paisley, East to West, in 2024. However, 2025’s NICE DAY IN THE PIND is their debut album as a duo—and it’s a fitting celebration, and indeed an ode to their hometown that’s spawned so many top artists. “A lot of hits came out of this little space in the world,” Nattan tells Apple Music. Building on their years of friendship, Nattan and Moga offer a feel-good journey into Surrey life on the record, including how confident and happy they are to be making music together and living in the city. “The name [of the album] originated from us just having a good day—positive vibes only,” Nattan says. “We noticed a lot of the [Punjabi music] culture is getting into a lot of dark vibes. And we’re like, ‘Let's change it up. Let’s brighten up everybody’s day and let’s give them colour.’” Radio skits, able assists and desi diaspora veterans like British singer-composer-producer Dr Zeus (“BEST FRIEND”) and Jazzy B (“COOLIN”) abound on the LP, as Nattan and Moga craft a wholesome vibe with sweet licks and chilled beats in all the right places. There are love songs too, like “GANGSTA LUV”, “MY HEART” and “CRAZY IN LOVE”, as well as tunes for the community such as “JATT TYPE SHIT” and “BROWN BROWN RANG”. Below, the artists take us through the stories behind the album, track by track. “NICE DAY IN THE PIND (Radio Skit)” Chani Nattan: “When we were growing up, we used to get albums. Full albums used to be so fun. We used to have skits built in the album. We thought when there’s a skit in here, it’s more fun. When you listen to it in this context, it’s more fun. There’s a YouTuber named Parmvsthewrld—I called him in and said, ‘You should do the intro and take calls and stuff.’” “BEST FRIEND” CN: “Growing up, all we heard was ‘Kangna’ [sings the chorus] by Dr Zeus. We’ve all heard it. It was our dream to have a legend like him but also someone new. This was Girls Like You’s first official Punjabi song [that was] recorded. They mostly sing in English but sometimes in Hindi. This one did some great numbers and it was all organic.” “GANGSTA LUV” CN: “We changed the vibe up with this song. MRXCI is one of the most decorated producers right now. He’s [crafted] hits with Karan Aujla, Diljit Dosanjh, the legend Sidhu Moose Wala, Arjan Dhillon… Then we have Harkirat Sangha, who is a Canadian artist out here in Toronto. It’s a really fun collaboration. It’s about mixing gangster music with Punjabi culture—you can hear it on the hook line.” Inderpal Moga: “It’s an old-school style of composition—but has a fusion vibe too.” “JATT TYPE SHIT (Skit)” / “JATT TYPE SHIT” CN: “The skit for this was so much fun to do. There’s a fight in there! We took the concept of how people keep talking and talking ’til they start arguing and then fighting. We made that into a skit. “The most fun fact about the song is that every single guy on it has, at one point in their career, written a song for Dilijt Dosanjh. If you can believe it, Inderpal and I had this song made already and then we met [singer] Veet Baljit, just at a meet with friends. We called him in. Then we met [singer] Roop Bhullar and told him we have this song for an album and we called him in too. This is our first song with five artists.” “KI KARA” CN: “After a high-energy song like ‘JATT TYPE SHIT’, we thought we should cool things down. There are concepts in this song about daily life and romance. Moga is asking the girl, ‘What do you want to eat? Where do you want to go?’” IM: “This was also our first time making music over Afrobeats. Manna Music made a really great beat for this.” “BROWN BROWN RANG” CN: “If you hear the song, you’re guaranteed to have a smile on your face. It brings about a happy mood. [Singer] Karam Brar is on this and I feel a lot of female vocalists on this album got their right amount of space. For us, it’s a blessing to do this, because we finally have the platform to do it. We feel like it's important to push female artists just as much as male artists. With the next generation, of all the girls coming up, they should want to look up to these female artists and say, ‘Oh they did it and I could do it too.’” “DA BOYZ” IM: “We’d prepared this song and then met [vocal duo] Zehr Vibe and went into the studio. They really liked the song. We thought we should use this opportunity to get [producer] Star Boy X. We’d been trying to work together for a while and it finally worked out.” CN: “Star Boy X has been doing such great stuff, like ‘Kamlee’ with Sarrb. We wanted to really connect with him.” “AJA” CN: “It’s more of a love song. It’s such a sweet song. Japjeet Sandhu’s vocals on this track are different and so are Inderpal’s. It’s a romantic duet in a way. Jay Trak sent us the beat and the first thing you have to do when they send you a beat is to claim it. We have to tell them, ‘Please don’t send it to anybody else!’ After you do that, you start writing on it. That’s why there’s a space in between the bridge and the hook where there’s no music. We did video sessions with Japjeet, who was in Texas at her studio while we were in Vancouver. We went over all the vocals together to get the final recordings done.” “MY HEART” CN: “We’re showing our versatility on this.” IM: “The hook line adds a different kind of romantic approach that you might not have heard on other tracks in Punjabi music. You don’t want to overdo the style everyone has already heard, so we wanted to do things differently.” “SUSPEND” CN: “This is for pretty much the Punjabi audience. We got [singer] Gulab Sidhu on the song, with Gminxr’s production. He’s done songs like ‘Insane’, ‘Brown Munde’ and most of AP’s bangers. Imagine Gminxr as the main producer of this song and Gulab Sidhu. It’s mostly a fun song about growing up, one’s youth. The intro lines are about being mischievous in your youth.” IM: “There’s a part where we shout out [Punjabi actor] Sonam Bajwa. How cool is that?” CN: “We shouted out today’s pop culture. She shared it and said she’s flattered!” “CRAZY IN LOVE” CN: “It’s got this grand style. I remember it began sounding like a movie song. It has live violin, live guitars. Gminxr played the rough beat first and said he’s gonna add a lot of live instruments and said, ‘Hear it then!’” IM: “It’s a proper cinematic song.” CN: “It should hopefully be our next music video.” “INFLUENCER (Bonus Track)” CN: “This song was meant to be just a fun song. It’s about today's influencers and it’s got a lot of comedy in it. Moga sings about the ‘Get Ready With Me’ reels, making posts and how he’s made a channel and people should like, share and subscribe. There’s comedy ’til the end, where Moga is singing about losing promo money. It was a lighthearted track, so we thought we’d call it a bonus track.” “HUNDO” IM: “Sukha and us have been meaning to work together for a while. We finally got together when ‘HUNDO’ took shape—MRXCI sent a beat over and Sukha, working from Toronto, really liked it. He’s been performing on stages all around and killing it. He repped Brampton on this one.” CN: “It’s an aggressive but motivational banger. For the parties, for the gyms and beyond.” “COOLIN” CN: “The song’s beat was with us for at least for a year before it came out. We didn't do anything with it—it just sat there. We slowly started working on it because we knew we wanted to put something out. That’s when we met Jazzy B paaji. I told Inderpal that if we’ve got Jazzy, we should do a collaboration that harkens back to his original style because we’ve been fans since day one. We got to the studio and [producer] G-Funk added tumbi and so much more to get it to the level that you hear. This track had 72 stems in the production. That’s how many instruments are in the mix. This song got mixed 15 times!” IM: “Desi instruments are much harder to mix, I feel.” “UNTIL NEXT TIME (Outro)” CN: “Getting [singer] Joga Jeezy on this is a funny story. We met him in the UK and his most famous couplet style is ‘Aari Aari’. It’s his tagline. So we thought we’d get him to do a farewell message for the album and work in the style of his most famous expression.” IM: “We’ve asked people to spread the word about the album if they liked it.”