ZMZaakirah MuhammadAfrica travel and remote-work trips, rooted in local connection

Living Legacy: Shanti Das

5 Oct 2016 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:50

In this promotional monologue, Shanti Das—known as the Hip Hop Professional— outlines her 24‑year career in R&B and hip‑hop, detailing past roles at major record labels (Place, Arista, Columbia, Universal Motown) and her current ventures. She promotes her college speaking tour, The College Chat Room, which supports her book The Hip Hop Professional 2.0. Das describes ongoing projects: the ATL Live in the Park supper‑club‑style music series (now in its sixth year), a similar R&B Live event in New York, and plans for a Hip Hop Professional Foundation that will fund scholarships for youth nationwide. She defines the “Hip Hop Professional” as someone who performs at the highest level, upholds standards of excellence, serves their community, and loves hip‑hop culture. Das urges emerging professionals to attend industry conferences such as SXSW, A3C, and Revolt Music Conference for networking and immersion, emphasizing that real‑world experience complements formal education. She shares her social media handles, hints at upcoming TV projects, and encourages the audience to support her book via HipHopProfessional.com.

Chapters

What's up? My name is Shanti Das and I am the Hip Hop Professional. So I am a 24-year music industry veteran. I've worked in R&B and hip hop for a long time, worked at a bunch of different record companies from the Place Records to the Arista Records, gosh, Columbia Records, Universal Motown. Now I have my own company, I'm an author, I'm a philanthropist. So, so I'm on a college speaking tour right now. called The College Chat Room, and it's supporting my book, which is The Hip Hop Professional 2.0. And I'm really just trying to inspire the young generation. I still have my ATL Live in the Park music showcase. It's going really well in Atlanta. I'm about to form my own foundation, which is the Hip Hop Professional Foundation, and, uh, we're going to be raising scholarship funds to support local as well as, you know, youth throughout the United States. So a lot going on. And I'm still doing some music projects, so. So, anybody can be a hip-hop professional, right? It's something I came up with, but I feel like it's someone that performs at the highest level in their career, lives and works by a certain standard of excellence, recognizes the importance of service in their community, and just happens to have love for the hip-hop culture. ATL Live in the Park is a live music series. It's supper club style, and we have established and emerging artists performing there. It's once a month. We're in our 6th year in Atlanta. I did a similar event in New York City called R&B Live, and it's great. You might see Miguel there, you might see R. Kelly. You know, we do a hip-hop show once a year, so you might run into T.I. or Luda or some other up-and-coming artists. But it's exciting. It's a great live music event. Come enjoy the show, have dinner, network, mingle. So I would like my legacy to be knowing that I helped to change lives, you know, and I gave back to my community. That's really what's most important to me right now in trying to inspire and empower the new generation. I support the South by Southwest and the A3Cs and the Revolt Music Conferences because I felt like it was kind of an interesting time when I was coming up in the music industry because there were so many different events like this that provided just a wealth of information and a great networking platform. And so you gotta come if you want to be in the industry. You gotta be here and be in the mix. You know, it's one thing to learn and study in school, but you kind of got to immerse yourself into the culture and what's going on. So support these conferences. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @ShantiDoss404. Look out for a lot of different things I'm doing in the community. Hopefully getting ready to do some projects on the TV side as well. So look out for me and support my book. And you can get my book on the HipHopProfessional.com website.