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It was just about two years ago, in 2023, that singer-songwriter-rapper-turned-producer AP Dhillon was pulling record-breaking crowds and had Bollywood celebs Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt cheering him at his concerts. That was only his second tour in India. Around the same time, Dhillon had rolled out a star-studded premiere for his self-produced Prime documentary, complete with a brief appearance by Salman Khan, followed by a much-talked-about performance at Coachella last year. It was the kind of success that Dhillon had never factored in when he started putting out music about six years ago in Majha Punjabi, the language of his village, Mullianwal, in Punjab’s Gurdaspur – all of it with a smattering of English phrases.
After performing at Lollapalooza India in 2023, Dhillon will return home for a third time, marking what is being touted as “his most ambitious” India tour. Titled ‘One of One’ and produced by Team Innovation and BookMyShow Live, the show will cover eight cities, including Delhi NCR, Ludhiana, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Jaipur. The exclusive pre-sale of tickets for Visa cardholders will go live on September 26, while general tickets will go on sale on September 28.
What is interesting about Dhillon’s success story is the existence of cheap internet and the digitally-native generation with access to a variety of talent on social media platforms in India, a country that can really drive numbers. Dhillon really leveraged the internet boom. What’s also remarkable is that till about six years ago, Dhillon was doing odd jobs in Canada – he worked at gas stations and convenience stores, became a sales executive at Best Buy while trying to finish a course in business administration at Camosun College in British Columbia and learning English in the evenings.
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Born as Amrit Pal Dhillon, he heard music by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan as a kid, got a civil engineering degree from a Kapurthala college, and was sent to Canada by his father to find a nine-to-five job and make a living like many others from Punjab. But Dhillon’s interest in music led him to slowly buy some equipment and set up a studio in his garage. Soon, singers Gurinder Gill and Shinda Kahlon came along and together they set up Run Up Records and released Fake (2020). They made music, some money and organised shows with the same money, pretty much cutting out the middlemen and finding much success in India and Canada.
On the tour, the singer-songwriter-rapper will be accompanied by his longtime collaborator Kahlon, while the setlist will showcase his newer songs, including Afsos, Without Me, and the older, more popular ones like Brown Munde, Excuses, Insane and Summer High, among others.
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