[1][2] Since then he has released seven independent studio albums, Hope (2017), Revelations (2017), Resolution (2018), Be the Yee, Here Comes the Haw (2019), Cataclysm (2019), Shamir (2020), and Heterosexuality (2022).
[9] His parents and aunt introduced him to a wide range of music, including hip-hop, R&B, Outkast, Groove Theory, and singers like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Janis Joplin.
[11] Jules Muir, writing for the music blog Pigeons & Planes noted that Shamir "continues to make a bigger name for himself with every new release and a unique new sound on each.
"[12] Jamieson Cox of Pitchfork called the EP's opening track, "If It Wasn't True" "a stunning opening salvo, one that plays on the tension between Shamir's slender vocal and lyrical naiveté and grimy, threatening instrumental tones before devolving into a chaotic mess, swallowed by a haphazardly firing synth corroding in real-time.
[citation needed] After Hope was released, Shamir broke with his management team and again considered quitting his music career.
Noting that the style of the album differed significantly from his previous work, he told a journalist: "A lot of people think I'm crazy.
The album was met with critical acclaim and made year end lists for Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and NPR Music.
[24][25][26] Shamir published his first book, But I'm a Painter, with Bottlecap Press in 2021, a collection of essays about paintings he created over the previous six years.
Critic Jamieson Cox, writing for Pitchfork Media, wrote: With a piercing countertenor somewhere between Prince masquerading as Camille and the cracking adolescent soul of the teenage Michael Jackson, the 19-year-old North Las Vegas native dismantles the expectations maintained for vocalists based on their gender, demanding instead that the focus be placed on their agile, fluttering performance.
[11]Lizzie Plaugic of CMJ called Shamir's music "amazingly unclassifiable," like a "souped-up Vegas Strip disco with a self-conscious pop bent," and wrote that his voice "limbers and stretches like a wad of pink Silly Putty dipped in glitter.