Indo-Canadian rapper A R Paisley takes on anti-immigrant sentiment with new hip-hop single

A searing hip-hop single released on Friday by an Indo-Canadian artist marks a trend of members of the community countering growing anti-immigration sentiment through popular media.A still from the short documentary Butter Chicken To Go, which premiered at TIFF in September (NFB)The release, Go Back To Where You Came From, is by A R Paisley, or Amarit Rehal, a rapper born in Mississauga in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Paisley, a Sikh, has gained popularity in recent years on digital streaming platforms.The single features a white person arriving at a convenience store manned by a Sikh store assistant. The lyrics encapsulate common grievances against immigrants from the community that have circulated in recent years. “Here’s a message I’ve got for all you Indians, Since you got here, you’re fxxxing up our country,” he says.The store assistant responds with the other side of the story, highlighting the hardships immigrants endure to build a future for themselves in Canada. “Ain’t saying all my people are perfect, but then again, nobody on this earth is…” is the riposte.Paisley, who has worked with the likes of Sidhu Moose Wala, introduced the track on social media with the words, “1 country, 2 perspectives.”The recent tendency to scapegoat immigrants, particularly from India, was also captured in the short documentary Butter Chicken To Go, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September. It was part of a special section, Redefined, produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in collaboration with TIFF. The documentary from Toronto-based filmmaker Prajj, the NFB noted, “exposes a deep contradiction: a country that eagerly consumes South Asian cuisine while increasingly excluding the people whose labour sustains it. What does it mean to belong when your presence is both essential and contested?”The theme will also be explored in another forthcoming documentary, I, Migrant, from Goodness Films. In a statement, the filmmakers said the “upcoming Canadian feature documentary is challenging audiences to look beyond statistics and headlines and confront the human realities behind migration.”The film is directed by Vinay Giridhar, who immigrated to Canada from Kerala as an international student, and produced by Amar Sangha.The filmmakers described the project, scheduled for release in 2027, as “particularly timely as Canadians continue to debate the future of immigration and the pressures facing newcomers, while the people most directly affected by these discussions are not always given the opportunity to tell their own stories.”As Sangha said, “As the son of Punjabi immigrants, this film is deeply personal to me. I want audiences to understand that behind every immigration statistic is someone who has left a piece of their life behind, often making tremendous sacrifices for a future they cannot predict.”