(From left to proper) Shashwat Sachdev, Hanumankind, Jasmine Sandlas lead the primary music from Bollywood movie ‘Dhurandhar.’ Images: Taya Dulaeva (Sachdev), Maitreya Shah (Hanumankind), Warner Music India (Sandlas)
On July 6, 2025, the primary search for Bollywood’s bitcoin flick Dhurandhar dropped, unveiling a star forged together with Ranveer Singh, Sanjay Dutt, Akshaye Khanna, Arjun Rampal and R. Madhavan all in on the high-stakes motion directed, written and produced by Aditya Dhar.
The slickly edited two-and-a-half-minute clip garnered eyeballs and nonetheless stands trending at #11 on YouTube, accruing over 37 million views in lower than per week. It’s pushed by music from composer-producer Shashwat Sachdev, who introduced in hip-hop artist Hanumankind and Punjabi artist Jasmine Sandlas for an unnamed monitor.
Sachdev says of Hanumankind, “We confirmed him with a quick edit of the movie teaser. He got here in a single night time and did his phrases. He got here very ready, and he knew what he was doing. He went behind the mic, and he was prepared for it.”
The music for Dhurandhar—which is but to be launched—marks Hanumankind’s second Bollywood undertaking after being commissioned by Netflix for “Lola’s Chant” in 2022 for the Hindi movie Looop Lapeta. This time, nonetheless, the stakes are greater contemplating it’s a a lot greater movie manufacturing and, in fact, it’s coming after the worldwide success the rapper has loved with the songs “Big Dawgs” and “Run It Up.” In 2024, he additionally led the rap on “The Final Dance” with composer Sushin Shyam for the Malayalam movie Aavesham. Hanumankind additionally made his appearing debut in December 2024 with the Malayalam movie Rifle Membership, directed by Aashiq Abu.
“It’s all the time like a journey that you simply get began on and folks like issues, then folks wish to make it their very own and have their very own signature on it,” he says about collaborating with Hanumankind upon Dhar’s suggestion.
Dhurandhar additionally marks one more collaboration with Sachdev and filmmaker Dhar after movies like Uri: The Surgical Strike (which gained each Sachdev and Dhar Nationwide Movie Awards)and Article 370. Sachdev tells Rolling Stone India that he and Dhar have a “long-standing relationship” relating to creating music for movie.
Sachdev started writing music for Dhurandhar quickly after he learn the script a yr in the past. Then, a couple of months in the past, when he and Sandlas noticed a tough edit of the primary look video with Dhar’s assistant Ojas Gautam, it impressed them so as to add new layers. The composer says, “The model I made [of the song heard in the first look video] was me telling my story of how I see the world of this movie. He [Dhar] has created a really particular world within the movie.”
In consequence, the violent world of the interval motion movie, full of an ensemble forged raring to go at one another’s throats, will get a high-octane sonic reflection of the unforgiving vigilante-style battle scenes and provocative strikes made behind the scenes by the movie’s key characters.
For Sachdev, it was about taking place “spirals” of concepts with Sandlas to create the primary model of the music, which additionally options singer Sudhir Yaduvanshi. The purpose was to “do justice to the vintage-ness or the heritage” of Dhurandhar. Sachdev says as soon as the music was taking form, Dhar prompt to contact Hanumankind. The composer was “already a fan” and factors out that the choice to deliver aboard Hanumankind wasn’t simply on the idea of his current hits. “I actually love his work […] it was so refreshing when he came visiting, he was simply so good,” Sachdev says.
Earlier than the suggestion to herald Hanumankind got here in, Sachdev says they have been “capturing at nighttime” when it got here to discovering a voice that will match the grit and depth of Dhurandhar. “We have been looking for that one unique voice. He [Hanumankind] already had the groove and the path when he got here in.”
Experimenting with hip-hop within the soundtrack was additionally Sachdev’s means of increasing the style’s boundaries. “I really feel that hip-hop as a style is so open and so welcoming that I personally really feel that slowly, it has turn into a ‘God’ style,” he factors out. “It’s that one style that encompasses each different style inside itself. A spiritual music could possibly be a hip-hop music. You may do hip-hop with cinematic orchestrals. You may do Indian classical music and hip-hop. As a style, it’s so welcoming of a lot inventiveness and experimentation.” That is additionally exemplified by his current collaborations with different hip-hop artists on soundtracks, reminiscent of King on “Cyclone” from Kesari: Chapter 2.
Dhurandhar has set a launch date of Dec. 5, 2025. Whereas extra particulars concerning the music and the remainder of the soundtrack are nonetheless awaited, Sachdev guarantees that it is a “palette breaker” in comparison with earlier tasks with Dhar. With editor Shivkumar Panicker, Dhar and Sachdev often construct the soundtrack alongside the way in which, proper from the scriptwriting stage. “We’re within the course of, and we’ll write a whole lot of music, and we’ll prefer it for some time, after which we’ll like it and get obsessive about it. And typically, that may lose its means from the movie, and we’ll need to let it go to get one thing else. That’s the course of we’re going via proper now,” the composer says.