Bohemia performing live at Canada's Wonderland in 2014

Contents

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• 1Early life
• 2Career
• 3Awards and nominations
• 4Discography
  • 4.1Albums
  • 4.2Mixtapes
  • 4.3Film Soundtracks
  • 4.4Singles and collaborations
  • 4.5Coke Studio
  • 4.6MTV Spoken Word
• 5References
• 6External links

Early life

Bohemia was born on October 15, 1979 ^[3] in Karachi, Sindh into an ethnic Punjabi-Christian family. He has a Bible and Guru Granth Sahib at his home, as one of his forefathers was Sikh at one point. His father was an employee at Pakistan International Airline. The family travelled to Lahore, where he spent his childhood, followed by seven years in Peshawar. While he was in his early teens his family moved to the United States, settling in San Francisco's Mission District. He started learning music from his father, and writing Punjabi poetry around that time. He occasionally played keywords at local desi events. He wrote songs and poetry, mostly in Urdu and Punjabi. His mother died of cancer when he was 16 years. At the same time he was offered a lucrative job at a Sacramento based recording studio and he decided to follow his passion. He packed his bags and left his family behind to become a full-time musician. Along with a crew of other musicians, he was now spending his days on the road, playing gigs throughout the US and Canada, sleeping in cars and on recording studio floors. It would be through this experience that he would learn about stage presence. As the youngest member of the musical family, he came to consider them his older brothers, but as certain members became entangled in hard drugs, the crew fell apart. It was at this point that he, still a teenager, decided to go his separate way. Again, he packed his bags, this time to join his cousin in Oakland, CA. A city known for both its abundance of independent rap labels and it’s uncontrollable murder rate. Devastated by the loss of his friend and heavily influenced by his friends in Oakland, he began to lose focus on his music and indulge in heavy drugs, crime and women. He spent his days hanging in the streets and moving drugs across the 680 and 880 interstate. Now he released a new song in 2017.

Career

In early 2000 he moved to join his cousin in Oakland,who was working at a West Oakland recording studio,and introduced him to a young hip hop producer called Sha One.Sha heard Bohemia reciting something he had written in Punjabi and asked him to rap it over one of his beats.Over the next few months, he wrote a library of lyrics. This would become arsenal for his debut album Vich Pardesan De (In The Foreign Land) – an autobiographical story of his life as a Desi youngster adopting to the streets of America..The following album, Pesa Nasha Pyar [Money, Intoxication, Love] ^[4] became the first full-length Punjabi rap album released by a major label. He subsequently signed a multi-record deal with music label Universal Music Group [2006 – 2009]. In 2006, Pesa Nasha Pyar was on the Top 10 downloads of Maxim, and No. 3 on Planet M chart India.^[5].His first album Vich Pardesan De get nominated in BBC UK top ten albums

Da Rap Star, his third album, received four nominations at the UK Asian Music Awards and PTC Punjabi music awards. It also remained at No. 1 on Planet M chart several weeks.^[6] Bohemia toured in 2009. performing in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia.

He performed the title track for Warner Bros film Chandni Chowk to China, appearing in the film with Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone.^[7] A few months later he did the title track for another Akshay Kumar film, 8 x 10 Tasveer.^[8] In 2011, he gave a song as a present to Akshay Kumar for his first Hollywood production Breakaway.^[9] Bohemia also featured in the track with Mika Singh on the film, Desi Boyz's track "Subha Hone Na De".

In May 2012, Sony Music India signed Bohemia. As part of the association, Sony Music managed his music albums, launches and shows under its artist management program.^[10][11]

In September 2012 he released his fourth album Thousand Thoughts.^[12] In 2013, it won Best Non-Resident Punjabi Album award at PTC Punjabi Music Awards.^[13] At the Coke Studio Sessions he was the first rap artist, appearing in their fifth season where he performed three songs. Bohemia has also recorded a collaboration with Sonu Kakkar and Jamaican American artist Sean Kingston.^[14]

In 2015, Bohemia decided to launch his own music label Kali Denali Music.^[15] Bohemia appeared in XXL magazine in New York.^[6] In 2016, He was signed To T-Series.In February 2017, he released his fifth album Skull & Bones: The Final Chapter under T-Series.The album topped iTunes.

Awards and nominations