Singer AP Dhillon believes the brown community is finally getting the appreciation it deserves. He told News Agency in an interview, “We, as a brown community, are getting the light, the appreciation that we deserve, and that our culture is moving forward, like hip-hop music… I don’t think the world took us seriously before, and now they are.”
The singer added, “The music coming from India or the Indian people, who are in Canada or in States, is getting recognised. It is amazing to see all these artists now doing different things, trying independently… So it gave people hope that, ‘If he can do it, I can do it too.”
AP Dhillon shared while music was always his passion, he initially wanted to become a basketball player. “Before this, I just wanted to be a basketball player. When I moved to Canada, I was in survival mode. I salute all the students who go there. They work so hard, they go there from such a different culture. They try to fit in, there is pressure of working, making money, and going to school.”
The singer said, “Sometimes you forget about your dreams, you just want to survive. But we didn’t stop. Music was always my passion. I wanted to make music, I loved singing, and playing guitar here and there.”
He added, “I used to listen to artist tracks, I would listen to a lot of Punjabi artists like Jitender Sartaj, Garry Sandhu, Amar Singh Chamkila, they are legends, Gurdip Mann. I used to listen to all sorts of music… There’ve been some great artists, like so many… Arjit Singh, AR Rahman, Siddhu was amazing. There is a lot of old music. So, a lot of these artists inspire.”
For those unaware, his four-part documentary series is currently streaming on Prime Video. Watching his journey on screen made him “emotional.” He shared, “With the documentary, we just wanted to create something, which helps other artists and other people, who are starting out and are trying to do similar things, and they have this brown print to follow.”
The singer continued, “It is just like keep doing it, pushing it more and more, just experimenting with our sounds, and giving fans what they want. That’s the goal, keep doing what we are doing.”
Asked if he has received offers from Bollywood for a collaboration, he said, “Whenever we feel right, we will do it. But so many times we have been offered but we didn’t get time to do it. Whenever we feel right for a certain movie, like it goes with our image and sound… We just don’t want to force it.”