Mankatha is the soundtrack album, composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja, to the 2011 film of the same name, directed by Venkat Prabhu that stars Ajith Kumar in the lead role along with an ensemble cast including Arjun, Trisha, Vaibhav, Lakshmi Rai, Andrea Jeremiah, Premgi and Anjali. The album features eight tracks, with lyrics penned by Vaali, Gangai Amaran, and Niranjan Bharathi. Following a number of postponements, it was finally released on 10 August 2011 by Sony Music India. The soundtrack was described as a "mélange of techno, melody, a couple of duets and a mass song". The album features eight tracks, including one Theme music track and one club mix. The first track of the album, "Vilaiyaadu Mankatha" was launched as a single release in mid-May 2011, three months prior to the soundtrack release. Production In mid-October 2010, during Navratri, Yuvan Shankar Raja started composing the first tunes for the film. The "introduction song" of Ajith Kumar, "Vilaiyaadu Mankatha", for which he had taken "special care", and the item number song "Machi Open The Bottle...", labelled as a "mass song", were recorded first. In March 2011, sources claimed that a song titled "Vaada Bin Lada" was recorded with Krish and Suchitra, which was called a "funky techno duet" and referred to as the "present day version" of the song "Sorgame Endralum", while Yuvan Shankar Raja described it as a "futuristic duet". The song's basic tune was based on the Carnatic raaga Madhuvanti. Later that month, Venkat Prabhu made an announcement via Twitter, disclosing that the soundtrack album would consist of nine tracks, including one promotional track, one theme music track and one club mix, further adding that six songs had been composed and three out of them recorded already. The remaining songs were recorded from mid-June only, with Yuvan Shankar Raja informing the following month, that he had scrapped one of the songs, since he was not satisfied with its tune, and composed a new song, starting from scratch. Reports in July 2011 revealed that the album would feature two more duets; "Nee Naan", which was sung by S. P. B. Charan and Yuvan Shankar Raja's sister, Bhavatharini, while Madhushree and Yuvan Shankar himself had sung the other one titled "Nanbane". The song "Nee Naan" was revealed to be the replacement for the scrapped song, which Yuvan Shankar Raja had composed within ten minutes of time, with the composer going