The loneliness hardened into her personality. Teachers found her difficult; she disliked routine and authority. “I was a bit of a troublemaker,” she says.
Science became one of the few things that could hold her attention. An engineering degree in Bengaluru followed, though she speaks of it now like a temporary detour. “I knew I won’t be able do a nine-to-five.”
That resistance eventually became the defining act of Reble itself.
The stage name, she explains, is less persona than alter ego – “a very personal rebellion”. Rap gave shape to emotions she did not know how to organise earlier. “It became the perfect medium to express this feeling of being a misfit,” she says.
That tension still runs through her music. While many Indian rappers showcase big personalities and emphatic bravado, Reble’s style feels tighter and more restrained – less explosive anger and more something quieter and personal.
Her rhymes move instinctively between languages. Years spent away at boarding schools meant English gradually became dominant, though Jaintia – the language spoken at home – remains, as she puts it, “my emotional anchor”.
“When I write in Jaintia, it’s a very personal emotion,” she says. “But I’m also not very fluent in the language unfortunately.”
The contradiction feels central to her work: local and global at once, deeply rooted yet emotionally detached.
There are other ironies too. For someone now praised for her lyrics, Reble insists she dislikes writing. “I can’t write,” she says bluntly. “I get bored and I make mistakes.” Even now, most of her lyrics exist as scattered notes and unfinished scribbles.
Her growing popularity has also brought backlash. Some listeners accused her of “selling out” after her Bollywood breakthrough, while others online claimed her music was anti-Christian or even satanic because of its references to demons – a particularly loaded criticism in Meghalaya, where church culture shapes much of public life.
Reble seems amused by the outrage. “When you get commercial success, people think you sold your soul,” she says.
For her, working on film music feels more like experimentation than compromise. “If I’m singing for a film, I enjoy that,” she says. “But I’m picky about the projects I take.”
Part of Reble’s mystique comes from Shillong itself.
In Meghalaya’s capital, music spills constantly through public life: church choirs rehearsing late into the evening, teenage metal bands in garages, blues musicians drifting through dimly-lit bars.
Reble emerged from that ecosystem, but also from a newer internet-shaped version of the city where local influences collided with global hip-hop and trap.
She says she connected with Eminem’s work early on – especially the feeling of being out of step with the world around you and turning that alienation into music. Her favourite song is Beautiful, external, and its mix of vulnerability and defiance quietly echoes through her own work.
