In 2000, ElekTro4 had been out digging for records on the lower east side and he ran into a guy from Grooovy Sounds Unlimited. The next time we met up, he handed me the card saying, “This guy is looking for a dope Indian emcee and he’s been around the world looking for one.” As it turns out, I had been right under Sean “DJ Cavo” Dinsmore’s nose in New York the whole time.

I joined Cavo for the Dum Dum Project’s Export Quality world tour the next year. By then, I had taken much of his work, remixed it, and threw my rhymes over them calling it “Dum Dum Project vs the1shanti”. It was enough to catch Cavo’s attention and an easy way to show him what we could possibly do if we were to team up. We released one single and video from it entitled Jaani Jaan which featured Asha Puthli, the same vocalist who helped start the free jazz movement with Ornette Coleman. A second track from that project, Jai Ganesha, was included on the re-issue of Desi Vibes a couple of years later.

We moved to London in the summer of 2001 where we recruited Niraj Chag to round out the crew. I was living with the Foreign Beggar crew at the time, on their couch with a number of other musical nomads. Chori Sala and I handled the rap vocals for DDP’s Spiritual Bling while Earl J added his bashment flavor, and we achieved the feat of creating a universe unto only ourselves.

The release of our single, Punjabi Five-0, signaled the ushering in of a new era for British Asian music. Until we boys from New York showed up across the pond, the predominant idea was that of Asian drum ‘n bass. I spent much of that period of my life touring Europe and Asia with high energy dance music DJ collectives as the only emcee in the bunch. As DDP, we were residents of Swaraj and regulars at DJ Pathaan’s Stoned Asia parties. It all changed almost overnight.

Spiritual Bling took us around the world almost 10 times, and I recorded my first solo album during that time on the road as well. We released the music via Sony as well as Universal. I remained with DDP full time until late 2005, when I returned to the States to prepare myself for a solo career and start a record label. We began pre-production on our next album in early 2009.