AP Dhillon was an eighth grader who started playing basketball in Gurdaspur, Punjab after school. In fact, if things were different, they could have had athlete AP Dhillon instead of singer AP Dhillon. “I always wanted to play sports, especially basketball, and be an NBA or Indian athlete,” the pop star confesses. “I had a tough childhood so two hours of escape from my life every day. I didn’t think about the good or bad things about the coat. I hate losing. I did,” he smiles.
So, what detoured his path to music instead? -We’re not complaining. “My village is 25 minutes from the Pakistan border, so resources were limited. If you break something in a coat like a ring or net, repairs will take forever. You can also borrow money from your parents. You have to pay yourself,” he recalls. For infrastructure and financial reasons, the dream never passed the courthouse in his hometown.
When Dillon moved to Canada in 2015, between his studies and odd jobs at gas stations and convenience stores, he moved from daily basketball sessions to playing only on daily weekends. “When you work 12 hours a day, you don’t think about what you want to do. It was like being in survival mode and there was the cost of caring for it,” he reveals. And when his singing career began, basketball took the back seat completely.
