The new music documentary Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous attempts to show the darker side of fame. It prods and probes, but eventually, it allows the artist to be. The Netflix documentary is engaging enough, showing how an ordinary young man from Punjab rises to become the Indian music industry’s most well-known artist and goes on to open doors for others as well. The real truth of the docu-film lies when it features the man himself and those closest to him to open up about what he went through during his self-imposed break.

The standard for Indian documentaries about cultural icons is so low that Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous, out now on Netflix, comes across as a refreshing change of pace. The streamer is itself guilty of lowering the bar with glorified PR exercises like Nayanthara: Beyond the Fairytale, Modern Masters: SS Rajamouli, and the worst of them all, The Romantics. They functioned more like corporate orientation films than the genuinely engaging journalistic profiles that they’re supposed to be. Not that the Honey Singh doc provides any real insight into his artistic process, barring the hilarious scene in which he is stumped by none other than Salman Khan. It does, however, do a decent enough job of giving audiences a peek inside his troubled mind. And for his fans, that will be enough. Many of them appear on camera, either commenting on his well-publicised fall from grace, or expressing their dismay at the lacklustre music that he has been releasing recently. In one scene, a woman tails him on a bike, and weeps openly as he stops to interact with her. A highly sensitive person himself, Honey recognises the emotions that she is experiencing, and begins serenading her with his biggest hit, “Blue Eyes.” Any cynical suspicion that you might have had about the woman being a plant disappears instantly. In another scene, a couple of flower sellers attempt to sell him a garland at the traffic signal. Honey quips that he needs a woman in his life to gift it to. They recognise him, and comment about his past troubles. “You’re looking smart now,” the young flower seller says to him. Honey is ecstatic.

At best, documentaries on celebrities tend to be an ode to their stardom; at worst, these end up as an exercise in image makeover for those who have fallen from grace. Rare is a documentary, especially of a living person, that dares to look truth in the eye and provides a balanced, insightful account. Is Sikhya entertainment’s Netflix film that endeavour? Maybe yes, maybe no, but while documenting the story of Punjabi singer Yo Yo Honey Singh, who has seen both dizzying heights of fame and the lows of infamy, director Mozez Singh does address the elephant in Honey’s life from the word go.

Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous follows, fusses over and indulges Indian rapper Honey Singh on his comeback trail in 2023. He declares that he has returned from the dead for his fans. He looks rejuvenated. On cue, two young ragpickers at a traffic signal recognise and laud him for losing weight. The brief is simple: new body, new mind, new music videos after years of substance abuse, mental health issues and rehabilitation. Drugs are never mentioned, but the camera focuses on his physical tics and foot tapping enough to hint at it. This part is interspersed with his up-and-down journey up till this point: bits of his childhood, his early talent, his fame and fandom, and his widely chronicled collapse. The treatment is all too familiar. The lens becomes his mouthpiece. At some point, he stops being a person. He morphs into a neatly segregated storyline, an impenetrable idea that’s at once marketed and sold.