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.
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.
We're on an island.
There's no studios, there's no record labels.
You know, we're so isolated.
We're just trying to create our own sound.
We worked on it for over a year.
How to bring this sound.
We took music from the West
and we combined lyrics and compositions from back home…
and we kind of created a new genre.
We had no fan base, no nothing,
we just started a YouTube, we called it Run-Up Records.
The first track that we did was "Fake" and we put up the song.
Within one day, you know, it had like, 3000 plays.
By the next morning, 10,000 people had heard it.
I was… you know, I felt on top of the world,
I was like, "Ten thousand people are listening to our song
and they're loving it?"
We got a good reaction
and we're like, maybe we're doing something right.
All right, cool. All right.
Me and Herman grew up together.
We were in Toronto.
Herman heard "Fake."
And, uh, he heard it the first day AP dropped it.
So I listened to this song
and I was like, "Yo, this is so refreshing. What is this?"
That raw form of art, there's always that energy behind it.
I was super curious, 'cause it was more of the mystery,
you know what I mean,
like, I need to know everything about this guy right now.
And Herman just called them, like, right away.
Same night, right when the song came out,
I said, "Yo, bro, this is fucking amazing,
like, where are you from?"
He said, "Hey, I'm based out of Vancouver Island."
You guys are over there on the island and like,
this is the type of music you guys are making and
you don't understand, like, how powerful it is, like, for the world.
I started to show Kevin
and I think from there we just built this organic relationship.
Herman called us, he was like, "This song's amazing,
keep doing what you're doing."
Right there, that fuels the fire a little bit more.
-I'm just charging… - Ay, ay, ay, go, go, go…
2020, that's when we first met.
I was not anywhere near the music industry,
though I was always kind of interested in it.
I was working for airlines, warehouses, factories.
AP pulls me and Herman outside.
He's like, "I have $7,000 to my name,
I don't know where this is going to go,
but I want you to be my manager."
I was like, "I have $6,000 to my name…"
"…and I don't know where this is going to go,
and I don't know what being a manager means
and I never wanted to be a manager."
But I think at that point in time,
no one really believed in them like me and Herman did.
You can tell we were ready to do anything
and everything to make this work.
Now we're motivated.
Now, it's got to the point where we're in the studio every day.
In the beginning, we were just so focused on
just creating stuff, creating stuff.
We were experimenting with music and ourselves, right.
But there was like a hope, you know,
when you listen to your music,
you know, if it's good or not, you could tell.
At this point, I remember clearly,
AP had like 27,000 followers, GG had like ten,
Shinda had like a thousand or something.
So I'm coming from a mindset of like,
this is the biggest thing in the world and you guys don't even know it.
I'm like, "You're gonna win Oscars, you're gonna win Grammys,"
you're going to…" And they were like,
"Chill, like, we're just trying to make music"
and I was kind of like, I was getting ahead of myself
because I was so excited.
The second I heard "Excuses",
I believed in these guys more than anything
I've ever believed in my life.
"Excuses" track, that track is the first track
to break into India, Pakistan.
They all started playing it.
Now they know the lyrics, they know the flows,
they kinda, you know, "This is something like, you know…"
"I know this, but what is this," right?
Music doesn't really have borders.
You can create music and it can be heard by the whole world.
But major labels, like, they never took us seriously.
-
I was forced to be independent
because nobody wanted to work with me.
All the labels told me that it's not going to work.
"This music is shit."
Yeah.
I don't know why I never gave up or, like, how I never gave up,
but it was frustrating.
But I'm glad that they said it.
You're just creating what you like, you're doing what you really want to do,
just put something fresh out there
that nobody has done before.
For ten years, you go to any club in the world,
if you're an Indian person, the DJs recognizes you're Indian,
he plays Jay-Z, Panjabi MC.
I'm like, "Yeah, at the beginning, it was cool
but now it's kind of starting becoming, like, stereotypical."
It's great for our culture,
but I think people are waiting for the next song.
We were all the time working, recording in the studio,
trying to, you know, find the one song
which could change everybody's life.
Shinda called and he's like, "Yo, I have this idea."
I have this appreciation for the Brown community.
I saw how good brown people were doing,
grinding all day and making something out of it.
This needs appreciation. That was certainly in my mind.
It wasn't like being Brown Munde or nothing, but like, he has a hook.
We heard it and I was like,
"Yo, this is kind of cool."
"Brown Munde." The beat, to be honest,
I don't even remember. Like, I was in my room
and I just found this melody and I was like, "This is kind of cool."
So I made this, you know, simple beat.
We went back to the studio,
we all got together and then we like, fully, like, composed it.
Gminxr's just sitting there, he's like,"Yo, I can't do drums like this.
You know, the R&B track."
I was like, "You're not going to bed
if you don't fucking finish this beat."
And while he's working on the beat,
Shinda's over there in the corner writing.
The first verse got written.
And then like, everybody's like, "Oh, this is crazy."
Two or three hours, we just, like, made "Brown Munde."
Yeah.
We heard "Brown Munde",
I remember looking at Kevin, and just like,
"Yeah, this is a fucking game changer."
Set. Shoot one.
-There you go. -You know what time it is?
Shinda covered you in there, right?
-Shinda! -
Millions of us have gone to Canada, America, UK, Australia, everywhere.
And it's just everybody's story.
You start from nothing and then you make something out of it.
"Brown Munde" was to represent us.
That was the whole theme of the video.
To, like, put on the people
those who are doing good in our community.
We do these taxi jobs…
Look at the camera, guys!
We're working in 7-Elevens, McDonalds, you name it,
but we're also, like, we're artists,
and just owning this is who we are.
So it starts with GG saying…
That means, uh, "Bought a new Lamborghini truck.
And I'm in Hollywood enjoying the life…"
That means the songs, the lyrics is Indian, it's Desi,
it's Punjabi and the beat has an influence of hip-hop and trap.
The whole verse is about appreciation
of what we have done in a short span of time.
The day we shot "Brown Munde…" Oh, my God.
In a single day!
-No, no! - Man!
We planned for the video.
This guys-- We're trying to call everybody we know
and trying to arrange everything, right?
Yo, yo, it starts from the truck yard right?
And he's on the phone.
We're like "Yo, can we have a restaurant?"
This guy's like, "Bro, I own some restaurants. You wanna cook there?"
We're like, "Yeah, let's do that."
So we went there…
And they were like, "Yo, we want to do the construction site…"
He called one of his other buddies, he was just like,
"Yo, you building any house?"
He's like, "Yeah, I am," so we went there…
We winged it.
And it was fuckin' amazing.
-It literally was amazing. -Straight. Straight.
But when these guys work,
when these guys make music, there's nobody better at it
and that's where it all starts and that's where it all ends, you know?
I remember when we released "Brown Munde," September 2020,
for the audience that we had at that time, it did really well,
but it took a few months.
I remember, uh, January, February is when the India market picked it up
with the help of a lot of celebrity acts that were into that song.
Really gave it that little bit of push.
It kinda just fully blew up in India.
We hit, like, 100 million views
and that's when I realized, "Okay, this is big." You know?
I spent two years watching these guys
making all this music, shooting music videos,
That's good. Hold there.
Feels just like a bottleneck of like, hype,
all this music's blowing up and everyone's a fan now
and no one's seen these guys,
like, they could have been holograms for all they know.
Biggest fan base is in India.
The next step was to finally go out there and start touring.
Now, it's my first tour
and I'm like, "Yo, it's time to go."
Like, "Let's go," you know? "Let's goddam go."
The India tour… I just don't know how it's gonna go.
I just didn't know.
Walking out of Mumbai airport, all of us landed,
I see a big crowd outside, I'm like,
"Oh, my God, are you guys ready for this?"
AP's like, "They don't really know us like that. We're not that big."
When we came out, the paparazzi were standing outside.
So the first word is just like, "AP! AP! AP!"
And I was like, "Oh, my God."
When we came out, like, people jumped on us.
All the media… it was like, "Damn, like, this is big."
- Brown Munde!
Coming to this, like, massive country
and everyone kind of know you?
It's crazy, man.
It was my first tour, and I've never been to a goddam show.
It's my first show.
I'm going on my own fucking show for the first time.
But I didn't know there was gonna be paparazzi at the airport. Like…
I was just like, "Yo, fuck this is crazy!"
First time on stage for all of us.
They told me the first show was in Gurugram.
I'm like, "Okay, it's probably going to be like some small show."
And then we get to that night of the performance,
and all I hear is just this huge crowd just roaring.
Right away, you know, the energy…
That feeling was just incredible.
Make some noise! -
Can't hear you…
Come on! Everyone, you got that! At the back.
Make some fucking noise!
"Brown Munde" to me is a story of brotherhood.
A story of brotherhood that is killing
a lot of cultural stigmas as well.
It connected beyond just music.
There was a new phenomenon which was taking shape in front of our eyes.
I think that sense of feeling that it kind of generated
really allowed it to kind of transcend boundaries.
The ability to actually reach someone
who's been born in Vancouver or Toronto,
but equally in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh.
Brown people, literally, South Asians across the globe.
Everyone's screaming "Brown Munde."
Seeing that many people screaming and their energy,
it was crazy.
AP! AP! AP!
I was not prepared for that.
I was looking around… what's happening.
I wasn't going to cry on the stage, but it was tears in the eyes.
People see what we're trying to do here.
And this is the first of a kind, like, thing that we're doing.
The whole crew's vision is to take our music to the next stage.
Mainstream music.
AP! AP!
We can do it bigger and better.
AP! AP!
We are one step in, and we have a long way to go.
AP! AP!
This view's crazy.
It's a big inspiration up here. -Yeah.
Now, after we took that long a break,
we have to give something better right?
Have to. The fans deserve it.
Leaving India, the next frontier, North America.
First time in the country doing a show and it's in an arena,
like, we're barely three years into our career
and we're doing arenas.
The trajectory is kind of unheard of.
We're going on tour in six weeks.
For us to execute this with the vision that we have,
we're going to have to go back to the drawing board
and come back with guns blazing.
The whole tour's being announced on Tuesday.
Biggest risk is our first show on home soil is in an arena.
Yeah.
Who's trying to sell 15000 tickets on their first show in America?
That's a statement
and a lot of people are going to be expecting us not to do good.
With that big of a crowd size,
they got these big expectations.
That's what I mean, yeah.
I don't want us to be just walk on the stage
"Yo, yo, yo, what's going on?" Do this this and-- No.
It's a show, this time…
More theatrics. -More theatrics.
Okay. -Because that's how we step up the game.
So when we come on the stage, we just shake the stage.
There are a lot of people in the industry that will see
what we're doing and be like, "These guys have no fucking idea what they're doing."
And maybe they're right, but…
but… we pull this off,
this is the hardest thing we're ever going to do
but it'll probably be the best thing for everybody.