ਏਪੀ ਢਿੱਲੋਂਏਪੀ ਢਿੱਲੋਂ

AP Dhillon (born Amritpal Singh Dhillon, 10 January 1993) is an Indo-Canadian singer, rapper, songwriter and record producer from Mullianwal village in Gurdaspur district, Punjab. His 2020 anthem ‘Brown Munde’, made with his Run-Up Records crew of Gurinder Gill, Shinda Kahlon and Gminxr, turned an independent Punjabi act into a global pop phenomenon.

Early life in Mullianwal

Amritpal Singh Dhillon was born on 10 January 1993 in Mullianwal, a village in Gurdaspur district, Punjab, into a Sikh family. His grandmother largely raised him and his sister, and the family struggled to make ends meet.

He studied at Little Flower Convent School and went on to earn a degree in civil engineering from Baba Kuma Singh Ji Engineering College in Amritsar. Growing up, he was steeped in the Sufi music his father played at home, alongside the Western genres he discovered on his own.

Canada years: from Best Buy to Run-Up Records

In 2015 his father sent him to Canada, where he enrolled at Camosun College in Saanich, British Columbia, for a diploma in Business Administration and Management. He landed on Vancouver Island knowing no one and barely speaking English; in his documentary he admits he wanted to leave, but forced himself to stay and ‘make sense of it’.

To fund himself he worked as a sales associate at Esso and then at Best Buy in Victoria, pouring his earnings into basic music equipment and a small recording studio in his garage, learning production from YouTube tutorials.

The crew assembled itself: Shinda Kahlon, a singer-songwriter he met through friends; Gurinder Gill, another Punjabi student in Canada, with whom he sang at parties; and producer Gminxr, Gugundeep Singh Randhawa, whom he met in a communications class and who was struck by his voice. In 2019 they started the Run-Up Records YouTube channel and published their first song, ‘Fake’, which picked up 10,000 views in two days.

Breakthrough: ‘Brown Munde’ and the 2020 run

2020 opened with a run of UK chart entries: ‘Deadly’ reached number 11 on the UK Asian chart and the top five of the UK Punjabi chart; ‘Droptop’ charted on both; ‘Majhail’, with Gurinder Gill and Manni Sandhu, topped both charts; and ‘Excuses’, released in July without major-label backing, became their first track to break into India and Pakistan.

Then came September’s ‘Brown Munde’, with Gurinder Gill, Gminxr and Shinda Kahlon. It debuted at number one on the UK Asian chart, entered Apple Music’s Top 100 in Canada, and its video, featuring cameos from Nav, Sidhu Moose Wala, Money Musik and Steel Banglez, crossed 700 million views on YouTube.

‘Brown Munde’ became a cultural phenomenon: an anthem of the South Asian diaspora’s work ethic and resilience. Lyricist Shinda Kahlon calls it ‘everybody’s story, you start from nothing and then you make something out of it’; Dhillon himself said the song was meant to represent people like him, ‘we do the taxi jobs, we’re working in 7-Elevens, McDonald’s.’

Late that year the crew released Not by Chance with Gurinder Gill and Money Musik; all seven tracks charted in New Zealand and reached the top five of the UK’s Official Punjabi chart.

How did AP Dhillon become a global star?

In 2021 the team played their first live concerts as part of the Over The Top: The Takeover Tour across six Indian cities, and Dhillon signed a brand deal with boAt. The Hidden Gems EP with Gurinder Gill and Gminxr arrived that fall.

2022 widened the stage: Amazon Prime Video used an exclusive version of his ‘Insane’ in the trailer for The Boys season three, and that October he launched the Out of This World North American tour, selling out arenas with 20,000-person capacities.

In March 2023 he became the first Punjabi-language artist to perform at the Juno Awards in Edmonton. He played Coachella in California, where ‘JUSTICE FOR SIDHU MOOSEWALA’ flashed on the screen behind him as he broke his guitar, and Lollapalooza India, and his five-part docuseries AP Dhillon: First of a Kind premiered on Amazon Prime Video.

The Brownprint era: Republic Records and ‘Old Money’

In August 2024 Dhillon signed with Republic Records in alliance with Universal Music Canada, the first India-born Punjabi singer-songwriter, rapper and producer to join the label’s roster.

His first release on the label, ‘Old Money’, arrived on 9 August 2024 with a video starring Bollywood icons Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. It crossed 20 million streams and debuted on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100.

Two weeks later came the nine-track EP The Brownprint, on which Dhillon co-produced the majority of the record with DŹŁ, Luca Mauti and AzizTheShake among the contributors. It featured Ayra Starr on ‘Bora Bora’, Jazzy B and Shinda Kahlon on ‘315’, Atlanta rapper Gunna on ‘Losing Myself’, a track written by Dhillon’s father Rashpal Singh, his songwriting debut, and introduced newcomer Syra on ‘Sweet Flower’. The EP reached number 26 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart.

That December he returned to India for the Brownprint India Tour.

The 2024 attack on his home

In September 2024, weeks after the ‘Old Money’ release, shots were fired outside Dhillon’s home in Victoria, British Columbia, around midnight. Rohit Godara, identified as a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, claimed responsibility in a social-media post that also claimed a second shooting in Woodbridge, Toronto, and threatened Dhillon over his association with Salman Khan. Canadian police had not issued an official statement on the incident at the time of reporting.

Music style and legacy

Dhillon’s sound fuses Punjabi lyrics with trap drums, R&B melodies and hip-hop cadences, a ‘desi trap’ built with Gurinder Gill and Gminxr, delivered in his low-pitched, conversational vocals. Working as an independent unit under Run-Up Records, the trio showed that Punjabi acts could reach global charts without a major label, and then signed to one of the world’s biggest.

Alongside contemporaries like Karan Aujla and Shubh, AP Dhillon belongs to the generation that carried Punjabi music from regional charts to Billboard and Spotify’s global rankings. ‘Brown Munde’ remains a slogan of pride for young Punjabis worldwide, proof that an independent artist singing in Punjabi could become a global pop act.