About Brooklyn Shanti

Nabin (pronounced Nuh Bean)

Brooklyn Shanti is a multi-disciplinary music and art project led by Nathan Nabin Laskar (Shanti), aka The One Shanti (the1shanti). Shanti is a Bengali-American artist/producer best known for his work in pioneering South Asian hip-hop between the late 90’s to present day as well as his contributions in the evolution of Tropical and Global Bass. He is a vocalist and DJ on stage, and a producer/director/cinematographer/songwriter and composer/visual artist off the stage. As the only consistent "member" of Brooklyn Shanti, Laskar incorporates the efforts of collaborators in order to form the "band" alongside him, which varies from release to release. Laskar is a multi-instrumentalist which often results in solo "one man band" work under the moniker as well.

Born in North Carolina, Shanti was raised outside of Washington D.C. where at the age of 12 he placed in a BET sponsored rap contest with his childhood rap group. This provided the group the opportunity to be on stage with Doug E. Fresh, Zhigge and Ultramagnetics MCs, encouraging Shanti’s dedication to the art of freestyle rapping. He would continue to make bedroom recordings with friends including Thomas Blondet and a young Ludacris.

In 1999, Shanti helped to co-found Soulspazm Records. By 2000, he would go on to release his debut, “Blaxploitation”, on the label, which peaked at #13 on GAVIN music’s industry charts. Subsequently, he released an EP, “Deadline” in 2001, which would ascend to the #1 position in HITS magazine’s Rap Attack chart.

Shanti next joined Sean “DJ Cavo” Dinsmore’s Dum Dum Project, and relocated with the group to London, as they became full time members of the SWARAJ crew and club night on the heels of the relase of the group's second album, Export Quality. It was during this time period that Cavo and Shanti traveled to Mumbai and filmed the video for the first hip-hop single to be released in India, Jaani Jaan featuring Asha Puthli.

In time, the group would expanded to include Niraj Chag and became the first act to score a hit record from Bobby & Nihal’s BBC Radio One show, with “Punjabi Five 0” followed by Supafly Bindi". Sony and Universal released the group’s album, “Spiritual Bling” in multiple territories and the group toured continuously between 2001 and 2007.

In 2006, the Universal Zulu Nation and Afrika Bambaataa dubbed Shanti the “Indian Bambaataa” for his work with the Dum Dum Project in spreading hip-hop culture throughout South Asia. That year, Shanti released his first solo album, “India Bambaataa”, on Flatbush Junction/Laskar Music.

In 2007, upon returning full time to Brooklyn, Shanti signed with legendary label, Rawkus Records, to deliver his self-titled sophomore album. Produced by J.J. Brown, Resk1 & more, the album was recorded and delivered in two weeks and would be one of the last releases on Rawkus before it folded permanently.

Shanti would continue to release hip-hop music under the moniker the1shanti until 2010, when he added the alias, Brooklyn Shanti, and transitioned to focus on Tropical Bass. As part of Cumba Mela, a crew of like-minded producers and DJs developing within the Tropical scene in New York, Shanti collaborated on a Bengali-language reggae song entitled “Rani Rani” with fellow DJ/producer, Thornato. It would go on to mark the beginning of a self-proclaimed “Bangla dancehall” phase, which would later help co-found the genre of “Bangla Bass” with Nucleya and Mou Sultana.

The success of “Rani Rani” led to a string of well-received Bengali-language releases, work on Bollywood film soundtracks, television appearances, and a renewed set of international tours as both a vocalist and a DJ. During that time, Shanti joined Dutty Artz and began helping Geko Jones and Uproot Andy with their legendary Que Bajo?! events.

2014’s “Bedstuyle”, was released as a producer album and featured appearances by Karsh Kale, Evelyn Sharma, Jahdan Blakkamoore, the Midival Punditz, Dani Mari, Vanessa Beatriz and more. A TEDx talk is also available wherein Shanti was asked to reverse engineer the making of the album.

In 2017, Shanti travelled the world, moving to a different city across the globe every four to six days. He released a new song and music video every Wednesday while being hired by labels and brands as a cinematographer, director and producer for video based work. This was alongside songwriting and music production and composition work for film, television and major label and independent artists. It was during a trip to Mumbai with Cavo, Fab 5 Freddy and friends, that Shanti would write his next studio album, for which pre-production and writing were done during a four day period while filming the process of creating his own album and albums for younger artists in and around Mumbai.

In 2018, Shanti released “Missed America”, his fourth studio album. The BBC in London quickly selected “Blade Runners” as one of its first picks of the week for 2018, and added “Bengali Inna di Dance” to regular rotation as well. In the fall, Billboard released his most recent chart topping offering, "Ai Mon Tomake Dilam", via their own platform. Between touring, providing music supervision for brands and film projects in addition to executive producing projects for Someplace Called Brooklyn.

2019 saw Shanti working in and around Southeast Asia co-founding RSM BKK, a hip hop talent incubator based in Bangkok, while consulting with Def Jam in Thailand. All the while, he kicked off production on a series of documentary shorts around the budding hip hop scenes in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Kolkata, New Delhi and Mumai - respectively.

In 2020 and 2021 Shanti released four additional studio albums: "Storm Before the Calm", "Positive Momentum", "Closure", and "Lucky Number Twenty One". During this time, Shanti has also seen success through collaborative efforts with Meddafore, Love from the Heart, Genius Mistakes, Gangstagrass, and Pad Thai Soundsystem.

In 2022 Shanti began splitting time between Brooklyn, D.C. and Long Beach and redoubled his efforts to reinvigorate Someplace Called Brooklyn. Returning to recording under the moniker of The One Shanti, he began working on his next set of studio releases, focusing deeper on the style of lyrical hip hop he began his career with while simeltaneously organizing collaborative Brooklyn Shanti releases.

In the duration of a 20+ year career, Shanti has shared the stage alongside and worked with acts as varied as Run DMC, A.R. Rahman, El Freaky Collectivo, De La Soul, the MIDIval Punditz, Gyptian, Nucleya, the Prodigy, the Roots, Camp Lo, Karsh Kale, the Foreign Beggars, Tittsworth, Dave Nada, Nickodemus, Kool Keith & KutMasta Kurt, Jurassic 5 and countless more.