Ekali

Ekali’s road to bass music started with a violin bow, not a laptop. Real name Nathan Shaw, the Vancouver-born producer trained classically before spending years as the bassist for indie rock band Said the Whale from 2011 to 2016. Somewhere in there, he started producing electronic music on the side — and it eventually took over completely.

Ekali’s real breakthrough moment came courtesy of Drake. His track “Unfaith” got sampled on Drake’s 2015 mixtape If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, showing up across “Preach” and “Wednesday Night Interlude.” For an independent producer, that kind of placement is a career-changer, and it put Ekali’s name in front of a massive new audience almost overnight.

From there, Ekali built a catalog that moves fluidly across trap, future bass, and hip-hop-inflected electronic music, releasing through OWSLA in 2017 as well as Big Beat Records and Atlantic Records. His Crystal Eyes EP dropped in 2018, followed by his debut studio album A World Away in 2020 — a project that pulled together his genre-blending instincts into a full statement. He’s collaborated with a genuinely wide range of artists along the way, including ZHU, Denzel Curry, KRANE, ILLENIUM, Yuna, Au/Ra, Wafia, Reo Cragun, and Kiiara, reflecting a sound that never stayed locked into one lane.

In 2019, Ekali launched his own independent label, Awakening Records, giving him a home for his own music outside major-label structures, along with a mix series that ran to a dozen installments between 2017 and 2023. His Alinea EP arrived on Awakening in June 2023, continuing that independent streak.

From backing an indie rock band to landing on a Drake tape to running his own label, Ekali’s career has never followed a predictable script — and that’s exactly what’s kept him interesting. He’s one of the rare artists in the bass music space with a genuine musician’s foundation underneath the production, and it shows in a catalog built on texture and songwriting as much as low end.