Punjabi superstar AP Dhillon has signed a label deal with Republic Records, Billboard can exclusively confirm. The singer-songwriter-producer’s first release on the label will be “Old Money,” a new single and video arriving this Friday (Aug. 9), with a new album, The Brownprint, following two weeks later, on Aug. 23.
“Republic Records always saw the vision,” Dhillon says in a statement. “They got and understood who I am from day one. We’re all in harmony when it comes to this new music, and now I just can’t wait to show everybody what we’ve been cooking up.”
Monte Lipman, founder and chairman of Republic, adds, “AP Dhillon is not only an incredible artist who continues to defy gravity in real time, but a shrewd visionary with a global reach that has already sparked a cultural revolution. We’re thrilled to join forces with Universal Music Canada under the leadership of Chairman and C.E.O. Jeffrey Remedios to further extend AP’s impact and music around the world.”
Born in India, Dhillon moved to Vancouver Island as a college student in 2015, and began independently releasing music in 2019. His 2020 single “Brown Munde” (“Brown Boys” in Punjabi) became a breakthrough, and has amassed nearly 700 million YouTube views to date.
Dhillon spent the following years touring globally while playing to arena audiences in Canada; now established as one of the more prominent Punjabi artists on the planet, his catalog has earned 94.5 million on-demand official U.S. streams, and 1.8 billion on-demand official global streams, according to Luminate.
Dhillon directed the music video for upcoming single “Old Money,” and the clip will star Bollywood icons Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt. “‘Old Money’ is the perfect way for me to start my next era, especially with going big for the music video,” he says. “I came up with a concept that was influenced by all my favorite action movies, and Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt showed up and killed it. I hope you love it as much as I do.”
Meanwhile, Dhillon co-produced the majority of The Brownprint, with DŹŁ (Future, Central Cee), Luca Mauti (J.Cole, Eminem) and AzizTheShake (BIA, Central Cee) also contributing to the upcoming album.
