Bio - shahin

Speed:

For a long time, becoming a professional soccer player was my main goal, but not for the reasons you might imagine.

I remember myself at the age of 7, sitting in the waiting room with my parents. I had an appointment for removing a mole on my right cheek. The mole had grown relatively large, and the doctor feared it could develop skin cancer. Whilst waiting for the doctor to call my name, I picked up and began reading a soccer magazine that caught my attention (anything soccer related caught my attention in those days).

Now, I'm not kidding you;
the next 5 minutes would lay the foundational motivation for my life's endeavours.

You see, I was brought up in a home where I was taught that “the world is but one country, and mankind its citizens” and that we are all the “fruits of one tree” and the “leaves of one branch”. Within my childhood home, racism and otherness, was thought of as “veils created by the unconscious mind” (or by the ego if you will).

“In truth”, my parents would teach me, “we are all one family”.
Back to the magazine in the waiting room.

Halfway through the magazine, I found myself reading about the featured soccer players' bios, favorite foods, favorite movies, favorite colors, favorite quotes, and so on.. you're imagining the magazine now, right?... and suddenly, I was struck by this epiphany: “If I become a famous soccer player, people will actually care about what I have to say, and maybe I too will be in these magazines, and then other children around the world will read my bio and favorite quotes, and that way I can spread what I have been taught about unity, to people all over the world.”

With that motivation in mind, I dedicated the next 14 years of my life to pursue a professional soccer career. Right after completing high school in Norway, I moved to the United States, to combine the pursuit of a professional soccer career with a university degree.

I had received a full scholarship from Francis Marion University, and after two years in South Carolina, I transferred to California State University Los Angeles, with the aim of landing a professional soccer contract within my last 2 years at college.

I wasn't offered a contract.

After my senior soccer season at college, I called my dad to tell him I've decided to “hang up my boots”. It broke his heart. Till this day, when we watch soccer on the TV, he will say “that should've been you, Shahin”.

It was his biggest dream to see me playing soccer professionally; to see his son on television.

I, on the other hand, was content with my decision. My time in the United States had opened up my eyes for all the different ways in which one can “become someone whos voice is heard by many”. Ahead of me, was one more, and for the first time, "soccerless", semester left before graduating.

That final semester in LA, “I died, and I was reborn in the present”.

As my time in the US was coming to and end, I started deeply reflecting on questions like:
- Do I believe because my parents believe?
- What do I believe?
- What/who is the I who believes? - What is my Ikigai?
- If there is a 'best version of me', how does he think, feel and act?
- What are his habits?
- How can I best serve humanity?

As I asked those questions, the responses; the guidance came through teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi and Abraham Hicks (to mention a few), and for the first time in my life, I began my true independent investigation of truth.

After graduating from college, I moved back to Norway and right away began working on my ideas for how I could “serve the world, whilst developing further on the path towards my highest potential” (and in the process, become someone whos voice is heard by many). None of those ideas included music.

Just a quick stop by my past, if you will: As a young kid, I loved to dance and sing. At family gatherings, I would sing all the beautiful arabic and persian prayers my mom had taught me. When I turned 10, mother sent me to piano lessons that I would quit 2 years later. I wanted to play soccer instead.

Somehow though, that interest, the interest in the music, the interest that Socrates would advise me to listen to, that interest looped its way back into my life at university. "Looped its way back"... Interesting way of describing an event. It assumes that time is what we hypothesize time to be, as if all time we know of has ever been anything else than now. And now. And now.

Anyway, fast forward to my first year at university. I would spend almost all my time between classes, in the Art building's band room, playing the piano that stood there. Nothing fancy, but the keys made the sounds you'd expect the keys to produce. Finally, the staff realized that I wasn't a music student, and I wasn't allowed in the band room anymore, so my room mate lended me a keyboard he hadn't used for a while, and I continued practicing in my college dorm in the afternoon before soccer practice.

In the summer between my first and second year at university, I lived in Connecticut where I played soccer in the Professional Development League. Having no classes to attend, I had a lot of free time, so there, I purchased my first guitar.

Many years later, I still have that same guitar and you can actually hear it being played in this song:

So why am I telling you all this? Well, even though music was a part of my life in some way for a long while, whether it was through singing and chanting prayers, or practicing and learning to play instruments, I had never imagined myself writing and producing a song from scratch. That thought had never revealed itself to me.

That was until that day: I was in the car with 3 friends and my girlfriend at the time, 9 months after my return from the US. We had a 40 minute drive ahead of us, and one of my friends put on a rap-type beat with no lyrics, and challenged me, just for fun, to write some lyrics to the beat he had put on, and perform my self-written song once we arrive to our destination. That day, in that car, I was introduced to the path towards my ikigai.

Today, I see no other path more closely aligned with what I have discovered to be my existence's purpose.

- So, 2 years after that day, in 2020, I released my first single on Spotify.
- Another year later, in 2021, I performed live for the first time, in Oslo, Norway.
- Another 2 years later, in 2023, I sold tickets for the first time, to my first ever international concert, in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
- Another year later, I played my first paid gig at the Miss Norway 2024 Finale, in Oslo, Norway.

And now, after 2 years of being locked in, the time has finally come to introduce my
alternative rock with hip-hop and rap, debut album:
“Antidote to Apathy”

Beginning with the release of "LA" on the 31st of January 2025,
I'll be dropping one song every other week from my new album.

I hope it touches your soul,
shahin