Yuvan Shankar Raja - Music Style and Impact

Music Style and Impact

Yuvan Shankar Raja's music predominantly displays the use of Western musical elements. He is creditted with having introduced Hip-hop in the Tamil film music industry and having successfully integrated the genre into the Tamil musical mainstream. He has explored various genres, and experimented with new sounds. Yuvan Shankar Raja has not learnt Indian classical music, although he has used complex swara patterns and carnatic rāgas in several films, including Nandha and Thulluvadho Ilamai. Critics have noted that Yuvan Shankar Raja's music has a "youthful character to it", with his compositions in particular appealing to the younger generation.

Yuvan Shankar Raja started the "era of remixes"; "Aasai Nooru Vagai" from Kurumbu (2004) is considered as the first remix in a Tamil film, following which several composers began remixing Tamil film songs from the 1970s and 80s. He has experimented with the fusion of old songs with his own original compositions, mixing and incorporating parts of them into his songs. In 2010, he and his friend and fellow actor Silambarasan released the song "Evan Di Unna Pethan" from the film Vaanam (2011) as a single, which generated the trend of releasing single tracks from film soundtracks in Tamil cinema several months prior to the actual release, although the first ever single in Tamil cinema had been released in 2001 already.