We were lucky to catch up with SHAB N/A recently and have shared our conversation below.

SHAB, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Perhaps the biggest risk that I have taken was making the decision to pursue music as a full-time career. Unlike a lot of artists, i was not in a position where I was going to wonder as to where I was going to be getting my next meal if I pursued music as a career.

But I knew that making a full-blown effort to succeed in this business was going to take a huge amount of time and persistence on my part, which would take me away from family and home far more than I would like. Moreover, when I made the decision to pursue music, so many people were doubtful that I could make a dent in this arena that made me wonder at times as to whether I could really produce some quality work that people would care about.

Interestingly and when you think about it, the fear of failure that we all experience seems to be more than anything grounded in our elevated individual sense of our own talents, drive and ability to succeed. So many times in life, our biggest regrets are the things that we did not dare.

Once I realized that all that I had to lose by taking a chance at music was to be proven wrong about my self-beliefs as to who I was as a person and what I was capable of achieving. And since I could never relieve validate those beliefs without actually making the leap, it seemed quite obvious that the potential reward of a successful career in a field that I greatly enjoyed was inarguably — and almost-obviously — more impactful than the risk of knowing that I had failed.

SHAB, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was born in Tehran during the first years of the Fundamentalist Revolution as the youngest of 13 children in my family. Those earliest years in Iran were the worst of my life, as I realized even in my pre-teens that I was growing up in a place where women were denied certain basic freedoms. My family managed to escape Iran when I was eight — and I eventually ended up in a German boarding school for almost six years before coming to America.

At the age of 14, I arrived in America at JFK Airport in New York, carrying a small umbrella as well as all of my possessions in a single hand-carried suitcase. My family settled in the greater Baltimore/D.C. metropolitan area and I myself grew up in my latter teenage years in Towson, just north of Baltimore. I would attend school during the day and then most nights head off to a job at one of my family’s various businesses — mainly restaurants.

I graduated from both high school and Towson State University before heading off to law school in Florida. While I soon decided that I did not want to be a lawyer, it was the first time that I dabbled in the creation of electronic music.

It was shortly after I moved to Dallas — where I live with my husband and kids — that I made the decision to pursue music on a dedicated basis. I was terribly fortunate to have found a top list producer who was willing to take a chance on me: and that producer was Damon Sharpe, who has made a tremendous commitment to my career and success.

I released my first album, INFINITE LOVE, at the start of COVID – what great timing! — and mainly with songs that I had co-written with Damon & and his frequent compositional partner, Eric Sanicola. With COVID, I did not perform publicly for the first time until late 2022, when I did a tour of Central Europe and Britain over 14 weeks. I have since done three more tours of Britain during 2023 – and ticked a career item off my Bucket List by playing to a sold-out crowd at The O2 in London as I opened for the British mega boy-band, JLS.

My most prominent release to date occurred during October of last year, which was a collaboration with the legendary hip hop artist, Fat Joe, called VOODOO. The song is an amalgalm of the epic beats of his club anthem LEAN BACK, with an overlay of my lyrics from my own first release, SPELL ON ME, as well as some new raps by Fat Joe. It’s epic!

And during 2024, I will have a ton of new releases as, working with my team, we have now almost 20 winning songs in the library. The first of these releases will be called WOMAN, which is something of an anthem to women in their empowerment – and it’s a banger! These upcoming single releases will also be accompanied by my second album – called ONE SUITCASE, which title is a nod to my arrival in America. And finally I am hoping for my first coordinated round of North American live performances.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As I had eluded earlier, often one of the biggest risks that you have to take in order to succeed in life is to chance the potential for disappointing yourself. When you think about it, I guess that we all have fears of proving correct the Haters out there who want to see you fail.

But when you ponder that reality in-depth, you understand that your fears are really not rooted in anxiety that The Haters Were Right but rather in your potential for disappointment for believing that you could succeed in the first place. It’s all false pride: as the voices of The Haters will have no impact on my future life, but I have to live with myself each and every moment of each and every day.

So once you have got everything in place towards achieving those dreams – a great team, the necessary resources and a supportive home life – the main person whose view of yourself will have the most effect on your life is you.

Get over yourself! Go for it! The last thing you want in your life is to be is sitting in the porch chair with grey hair and wishing that earlier in your life that you had taken a chance much on something that you wish had actually happened.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Coming to America as a young girl, speaking no English and with what everyone thought was a funny name — and at a time when there was strong anti-Iranian sentiment prevailing throughout the United States – was pretty tough. I was teased mercilessly on a variety of levels by my peers during my first years in the United States: and I fortunately didn’t understand many of the things that were said to me, as my English was then so poor.

But I worked really hard to learn completely proper English, for which result I am still extremely happy. But I learned proper English so well that the exercise which has caused me problems today. I have considerable difficulty when singing words that are clipped or lyrics that incorporate a Street Sensibility: as my immigrant brain tells me to not swerve from non-standard pronunciations!

Contact Info:

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