His first high profile work was with one of India's leading orchestras, Melody Makers, which performed mainly in Pune and Mumbai.
Music director Anu Malik got him to sing for Rajiv Kapoor in his debut film Ek Jaan Hain Hum (1983).
In the 1980s, Shabbir Kumar sang for all the leading music directors including Laxmikant–Pyarelal, Rahul Dev Burman, Chitragupt, Kalyanji-Anandji, Rajesh Roshan, Usha Khanna, Bappi Lahiri, Anu Malik, Ravindra Jain, Raamlaxman, Nadeem Shravan, Anand Milind, Jatin–Lalit, Uttam Singh.
His last Hit songs were Gori Hai Kalaiyan from Aaj Ka Arjun (1990) and Sochna Kya from Ghayal (1990).
He sang for many films and private albums in the year 2000, few hits were Ghaath (2000), Awara Paagal Deewana (2002), and Aan: Men at Work (2004).
He has sung in different languages like Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Oriya, Malayalam and English.