गॉड डैम

God Damn (गॉड डैम) is the marquee Badshah x Karan Aujla collaboration from Badshah's fourth studio album Ek Tha Raja (2024) — a high-energy Punjabi hip-hop track produced by Hiten, the producer who became Badshah's most frequent studio collaborator across the album. Released alongside the full 16-track album on 18 March 2024 via Universal Music Group/Universal Music India, the official video was directed by Agam Mann and Azeem Mann with cinematography by Shinda Singh and choreography by John, and has since crossed 60 million views on Badshah's own YouTube channel and over 160 million Spotify streams — one of the biggest individual tracks from an album that Badshah described, in a Variety interview, as the culmination of years of passion and dedication.

Producer Hiten — described by Rolling Stone India as having become Badshah's top studio collaborator — builds God Damn around a hard-hitting, synth-and-808 Punjabi hip-hop chassis: a repeated hook line, a fast, club-ready tempo, and a beat designed to carry two distinct vocal deliveries — Badshah's rhythmic rap cadence and Karan Aujla's melodic Punjabi hook-singing — without either overpowering the other. It is one of several Ek Tha Raja tracks Hiten produced (alongside Daaku and Soulmate), reflecting his growing signature as the go-to producer bridging Badshah's Hindi hip-hop base with contemporary Punjabi pop sensibility.

The lyric, co-written by Badshah and Karan Aujla, is built around the Punjabi-Hindi word 'nakhro' (airs, tantrums, coquettish attitude) as its repeated hook — a taunting, half-admiring address to someone whose attitude the singers refuse to be intimidated by. Rather than a mukhda-antara narrative structure, the song leans on short, punchy bar exchanges typical of contemporary Punjabi hip-hop, built for call-and-response energy on a dance floor rather than close lyrical reading.

Ek Tha Raja (2024) is Badshah's fourth studio album — a 16-song, star-studded project released on 18 March 2024 through Universal Music Group, featuring collaborations with Shah Rukh Khan, Arijit Singh, Divine, Raftaar, Karan Aujla, Ikka, Dino James, Nora Fatehi, Seedhe Maut, Aastha Gill, MC Stan, KR$NA and Nikhita Gandhi. In a Variety interview around the release, Badshah described himself as 'this cousin who starts the party' and spoke about pulling together major names across Bollywood and Punjabi music for the record. God Damn pairs Badshah with Punjabi hitmaker Karan Aujla — produced by Hiten, directed by Agam Mann and Azeem Mann, shot by Shinda Singh, and choreographed by John — and stands as one of the album's most-viewed individual tracks on YouTube.

God Damn has become one of the standout individual tracks from Ek Tha Raja, crossing 60 million views on Badshah's official YouTube channel and over 160 million Spotify streams. It marked one of the year's notable Hindi hip-hop/Punjabi-pop pairings, bringing together Badshah's Bollywood-facing hip-hop persona with Karan Aujla's rapidly rising Punjabi stardom — the same year Aujla would go on to make his own Bollywood playback debut with 'Tauba Tauba' from Bad Newz. For producer Hiten, the track is one of several Ek Tha Raja credits that cemented his reputation, per Rolling Stone India, as Badshah's foremost studio collaborator.