Badshah (rapper)

Badshah
Badshah at the shoot of a music video
Born	Aditya Prateek Singh Sisodia (1985-11-19) 19 November 1985 (age 39) Delhi, India
Other names	Badboyshah
Alma mater	Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh
Occupations	Rapper singer songwriter music producer filmmaker entrepreneur
Television	MTV Hustle India's Got Talent Indian Idol Dil Hai Hindustani
Musical career
Genres	Pop rap underground rap synthwave Hip-Hop Desi hip hop Bollywood
Labels	Sony Music Entertainment Universal Music Group
Musical artist

Aditya Prateek Singh^[a] (born 19 November 1985), known professionally as Badshah (also stylised as badboyshah), is an Indian rapper, singer, songwriter, music producer, and businessman. Badshah has his songs in Hindi, English, Punjabi and Harayanvi languages. Badshah has brought underground sounds to the mainstream with remarkable impact. Badshah has since made significant contributions to Indian hip-hop and rap music and Bollywood music. His notable works in Bollywood films include Kar Gayi Chull from Kapoor and Sons, Garmi from Street Dancer 3D, Naina from Crew, Proper Patola from Namaste England.

His debut commercial song DJ Waley Babu went on to be a massive hit gaining over 50 Million views in 24 hours of release. He has also collaborated with international artists such as Jbalvin and Tainy for the song "Voodoo^[4]" which also has a guest verse from Lil Baby.

Aditya Prateek Singh Sisodiya^[a] was born in Delhi. His father, from Delhi, was a government officer, and his mother, from Punjab, was a teacher. He has a younger sister named Aprajita Singh.^[5][6]

He completed his schooling from Bal Bharati Public School, Pitampura, Delhi where he performed with his school choir.^[6] Prior to becoming a full-time musician he enrolled as a student of civil engineering at the Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Chandigarh, where he was exposed to new Punjabi music which prompted him to take on rap writing.^{[7][8][9][10]}

He started his career in the music industry with the name "Cool Equal", but then changed his name to Badshah on his senior associate Yo Yo Honey Singh's advice.^[11] He further is known for his catchphrase "it's your boy Badshah", often stylized as "Ish yo boy Baad-uh-sh-aa-ah".

In November 2006, He produced a first song "Soda Whiskey", and this song became scary hit.

Then in January 2011, He produced a song "Paanch Begam" with Yo Yo Honey Singh, Raftaar, Alfaaz and J Star

On 7 August 2020, the rapper released a classic pop and hip-hop album namely, 'The Power of Dreams of a Kid' which had eight tracks and includes features from the artists namely Lisa Mishra, Sikander Kahlon, Fotty Seven, Bali and Music Producer Andy Grewal. The mastering and mixings of the album was done by Aditya Dev.^[12]

His 2019 song "Paagal" reached 74.8 million views on YouTube within 24 hours, setting the record for the most-viewed video in 24 hours on YouTube.,^[13] YouTube did not confirm the record. Badshah's label then Sony Music, confirmed that they had used the help of advertisements from Google ad sense to promote the song.

An explanation for YouTube not acknowledging the record was that Badshah's record label Sony Music India had purchased advertisements from Google and YouTube that embedded the video or directed fans to it in some way. However, it has emerged that this is a common practice in the global music industry, and that similar practices had previously been used by the record labels of previous record holders such as Ariana Grande and Blackpink. This has cast doubt on some of the 24-hour viewership records on YouTube.^[14]

His song "Genda Phool" was released by Sony Music India in 2020. It had mixing with a Bengali folk song "Boro Loker Biti Lo". Ratan Kahar, a Bengali artist, claimed to be the original writer and composer of the folk song.^[15] Though Badshah later released a statement saying that it was a traditional Baul folk song which was not copyrighted, since folk music does not fall under copyright protections and is thus in the public domain.^[16]

He again collaborated with Jacqueline Fernandez in the song Pani Pani, the song is sung by Aastha Gill along with him.^[17] The song has been viewed more than 1 Billion times on YouTube. He further released the Bhojpuri version of the song by collaborating with Khesari Lal Yadav. He rapped in the song in Bhojpuri language. The Bhojpuri version got more than one million views in less than an hour and became the first Bhojpuri song to do so.^[18]

He released his third studio album Ek Tha Raja on 18th March 2024. Which was a massive commercial success with over 280 Million streams on spotify as of October 2024. It included feature verses from several artists including Raftaar, Karan Aujla, Ikka, Dino James, Nora Fatehi, Raga, Seedhe Maut, Aastha Gill, Arijit Singh, MC Stan, Kr$na and many more.

Badshah married Jasmine Masih in 2012; In January 2017, they had a daughter together named Jessemy Grace Masih Singh.^{[19] [20]} They divorced in 2020.^[21]

In 2019, Badshah began his acting career through the film Khandaani Shafakhana where he plays the role of a music superstsar who helps and supports the protagonist in the movie. He also had few other cameo appearances and works in movies mentioned here

• Badshah on Instagram
• Badshah on Twitter
• Badshah at IMDb
• Badshah's channel on YouTube