AP Dhillon: First of a Kind

In the beginning... nobody wanted to work with me.

All the labels told me "This ain't gonna work."

AP! AP! AP!

So I had two options.

Check, check.

One is give up, and listen to their advice.

Three... two... one... Brown Munde!

The second is just do what my heart tells me to do.

AP Dhillon. Definitely first of a kind.

AP Dhillon is one of

India's biggest artists of the times.

They've already taken South Asian music by storm.

Over five billion streams.

They keep breaking records.

They're just so phenomenal,

but there is the cloak of mystery that he wears.

As a fan of AP Dhillon,

it's infuriating that he's not doing any interviews.

There is a certain mystery about him.

I wanna know you!

Brown Munde!

My name is Amrit.

I'm a singer, songwriter, and producer.

He's spawning a revolution.

AP Dhillon...

-AP Dhillon... -AP Dhillon...

I don't think any artist out there

has done what we have done as an independent.

We started in a fucking basement.

Look at where we are, look where we're going.

Let's do this.

It's only taken three years to selling out arenas.

And we didn't expect it was gonna blow up this crazy.

But if they continue as independents...

Ay, yo, what the fuck?

...it might knock them just when they're about to take over.

This is not the day to fuck shit up.

The show cost is probably 1.5 to 2 mil.

I don't wanna go in debt.

Can we punch some production guys right now?

People in the industry that will see what we're doing

and be like, "These guys have no fucking idea."

I need this ASAP!

And maybe they're right.

Your fans own you.

We bet on ourselves, so we just have to give our fans what they want.

We all are brown and if we can't bring each other up,

who else's gonna do it?

Let's fucking go!

What's left is to take over the world.

It's been four years I think.

There's a lot of emotions inside.

Just seeing the places where I used to go

and the places where I grew up.

And...

I think nothing has been changed, to be honest.

My district is Gurdaspur.

I spent my childhood in the village.

At school,

I wasn't able to concentrate.

I used to fail my classes.

But sometimes...

these types of things inspire you.

I had a motto that

I want to do something big in life.

- -

Sir, do you want to say something?

How do you feel now he's come home?

"Read the language of my tears.

Read the language of my tears.

My mouth is shut but my eyes are saying.

You have come making

the world beautiful.

Ask my heart what you mean to me.

Welcome to... Welcome to home.

AP, welcome to home.

Honestly, I just want to go

spend some time with my family.

Moving to Canada has changed me a lot.

But I am the same person inside.

Wait a second.

- Get her in. -Let's take her in.

But sometimes I feel in the struggles of life that I miss my family.

I didn't want to leave this country.

I wanted to stay in Punjab.

I used to say I don't want to go.

My dad made that decision for me,

and honestly, they sent me to a place I don't know.

And I came to this country, Canada, as an immigrant.

I remember I moved here with two suitcases.

I did not know what a credit card was.

All hotels required a credit card wherever I went.

When I first landed on Vancouver Island,

it was hard for me because there wasn't many brown people here.

Nobody knew me here.

The language barrier was also difficult.

I started school.

It was all new to me.

I called my dad and I was like, "Yo, I want to get the fuck out of here."

But I kind of forced myself to stay there.

Until I make sense of it.

You're trying to figure out a job.

You're going to work at a gas store or a convenience store.

I worked in Best Buy as a sales associate.

But that doesn't really get you any far.

I was working hard,

and putting that money and extra on a credit card, to my music.

For two-and-a-half years, pretty much that's all I did.

It's been seven years since I came.

Vancouver island's home now.

- -

Nah, it's gonna get used, bro.

-It's gonna get used so much. -Yeah, a 100 percent.

Like, fast, without...

All these guys gonna be hungry tonight.

There's nothing to eat.

Yo, I'm gonna... I'm gonna setup the speakers here.

I met Gurinder, Gminxr,

Shinda in Canada.

Not having any family here, that's the family I have.

That's how you roll. You roll with your gang.

No, I feel like you kind of want one element to keep going, no?

Yeah. And like one of these instruments at the end

-can also cut one bar ahead. - Yeah.

Right? Not here, but, like, here, here, here.

Oh, yeah.

No wait, take it. I feel like it would be more saucy

if the drop comes here actually, yeah.

Fire, fire.

Yo, breakfast, guys!

Because we are products of Punjab...

GG, there's a chair here.

...it's in our blood, right?

We cannot remove that thing.

I was always into music, to be honest.

Like, my dad, he, uh, listened to a lot of Sufi music.

And I think a lot of my taste is influenced by him.

But I did listen to, like,

a lot of, like, the music from this side of the world.

Growing up in Victoria,

you don't see a lot of Indians.

So any time I seen another Indian, I'm like, "Yo..."

I'll be the first guy to go greet the guy, you know?

I found AP in a communications class.

And we started speaking with each other.

He is from the same village as my mother.

Our first questions to each other were, "Where are you from?"

I heard his voice

and it struck a chord with me, you know.

I said to him on the spot

that I have a studio, and he should visit.

But he was stubborn. He did not come.

He did not come for a whole year.

But he's always drawing people in, you know?

He always had that energy to him.

There was a small space in the garage.

I saved money and over time, I bought the basic equipment,

built my studio.

I spent one year learning everything on YouTube.

We knew how to sing and we knew the beats were correct,

but we didn't know how to put them together and create music.

The very first time I met AP was in school,

when I recently got to Canada in 2015.

I got to know he has, like, interest in music

and I was singing, like, a little bit here and there.

And then we used to get, like, drunk,

like, do parties and get drunk and started singing and stuff.

And everybody was saying, "You guys sing actually good.

You should try to work on a track or do something."

Me and Gurinder used to work at the same place.

AP, Gurinder and a bunch of their other friends

already had a circle who loved music.

I met AP through Gurinder.

While we were sitting at and chilling at their place.

And I was... I was really impressed by how passionate

he was about music.

Building up something in the head,

how he wanted to do it.

But like, any flow...

And that's when we realized we should be making music

because I knew how to write, compose.

And these guys are working on their beats and doing everything they could.

It was all organically... we kind of just all connected.

I would play beats.

These guys would start freestyling.

Collectively, we just started making music

and it started sounding better and better and better.