Dax – Queen City Sounds and Art

Dax Bares the Destructive Consequences of Emotional Abuse on “Narcissist”

The video for Dax’s new single “Narcissist” is like a surreal horror movie short but one with a much more personal touch. It shows Dax being controlled in a web of strings that pull on various parts of himself, trapping him within a tapestry of interconnected points of influence. When he trades vocal centerstage with Phix we see a situation more like the Bluebeard myth but with the same effect. In each case the vocalist recounts the experience of trying to relate to a narcissist and the destructive outcome. How the narcissist will come in attractive and charming and once you’re invited into their world it’s little or not so little emotional snares reinforced by a shifting mosaic of lies and gaslighting couched in terms of a special connection but all along it’s abuse. When Dax sings “The key to your heart/Opens up a place I’m not safe in…Waking up to all your faces/Trapped inside this cage” he captures the dynamic well and his tone and that of Phix is one of vulnerability and hurt and though each sings about those feelings it never waxes aggressive the way it might if the song was about some misguided spirit of revenge. Once again Dax in his songs that mix hip-hop and other musical styles (in this case, indie pop) offers a parallel perspective than the usual pop music tropes. Watch the video for “Narcissist” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

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Dax’s Vulnerable and Reflective “Life” is an Embrace of Living in the Moment and Savoring the Limited Time We All Have on Earth

For his single “Life” Dax brings together a simple guitar melody played over a spare beat and lets his typically fluid and commanding vocal cadence carry the momentum of the song. For this song there’s an accompanying video, Dax’s signature and consistently creative and compelling presentation of his songs, that shows ups, downs and everyday struggles of life. We see Dax serving as a janitor in a music venue symbolizing paying his dues and how it must have felt after he’d established himself somewhat as an artist. We see Dax sitting in a classroom being open to learning and setting aside ego to learn from sources beyond his immediate faculties. In the song he refers to his faith and his battles with that and keeping it even though he finds solace and a source of strength and perseverance in it. But even if you don’t share his particular belief system the song has plenty to say about the impermanence of life and how it’s best to make the most of the time we have in this life because it’s all we know. Even if you believe in an afterlife the only life you know is this one and it’s too easy to waste that time and not make the best of our lives even with the challenges that may be in front of us. It’s a compassionate song about living life and the spirit of vulnerability that Dax expresses throughout is a welcome change from the hollow bravado positivity and toughness of entirely too much popular music in all styles. Watch the video for “Life” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

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Dax Collaborates With Ten Artists to Deliver a Powerful Message of Human Solidarity Through Embracing Our Mutual Frailty and Sensitivity on “To Be a Man”

Dax and his collaborators, image courtesy the artists

Dax tapped ten artists from his TikTok open verse challenge for the Mega Remix of “To Be A Man.” For the ten plus minutes of the song the various artists take a verse and give a multiplicity of voices and thus a different emotional and musical take on the subject of what it means to be a man struggling with the pressures and expectations of the modern world and the ways one copes that leads to self-neglect and often enough self-abuse. For Dax his source of strength in his lowest moments has been his faith but also his belief that there has to be something better than the tools he’s been given by culture and society and in evolving flashes of personal insight throughout his career as a songwriter thus far it is feeling the hurt, sadness and disappointment rather than burying it, to be vulnerable and share those moments of perceived weakness because running from them is the path to actual weakness, undermining you from inside. By the end of this treatment of the song Dax and his collaborators have taken us through a song that is essentially an epic R&B confessional and given it moments of vibrant hip-hop, pop and even country because the core of the song with a much wider resonance even beyond the struggles of being a man because in this world living as a human with our limitations in a civilization that seems bent on mutual destruction can wear you own. Dax sees solidarity in that truth that we all feel and we can all benefit from some sensitivity and the strength of being able to be so honest. Watch the video for “To Be A Man (Mega Remix)” on YouTube (for a full list of contributing artists, see the video notes) and follow Dax at the links provided.

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Dax Prophesies his Coming Transformation in the Science Fiction-Themed Music Video for “Quiet Storm”

The video for Dax’s remix of “Quiet Storm” begins with a simple question: “Do you believe aliens exist?” Then Dax as an alien not unlike Louis Gossett Jr. in Enemy Mine invades the bridge of a starship and the crew subdues him temporarily and throw him into the brig and analyze him and what makes him work and try to dissect his capabilities. But this all reflects his rapid fire stream of consciousness lyrics that catalog a litany of issues and complaints commenting on the state of the world, some of which sounds like a fantastical conspiracy theory fantasy mixed in with some time traveling cultural references so that it all fits in with the forceful rhyme scheme. It’s the sound of someone on the verge of something with a brain boiling over with anxiety and desperation to direct that energy into something authentic and impactful and in that state sometimes the ideas come to you dense and in rapid succession. Dax captures that moment in the song and pairs it with a melancholic beat and the contrast as usual, with the always creative imagery, is what gives the song its emotional resonance. Watch the video for “Quiet Storm” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links provided.

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The Power of Dax Compels You to Follow Your Better Instincts on “The Devil’s Calling”

Dax is always reliable for a visually fascinating music video and that for “The Devil’s Calling” is like a short existential horror film. In the song Dax outlines how he’s struggled with the forces of evil in his life and sees them threatening the people in his life as embodied by the figure of The Devil. Whether or not you’re a Christian, Dax’s embrace of his better instincts and habits as being with God as a source of strength against the influence of our weaker inclinations. He invokes, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks as people who leaned on their faith as reinforcing a will to personal liberation and the song with its haunted yet urgent beat and Dax’s forceful verbal flow makes choosing the better path seem more desirable than the opposite even if you stumble along the way through life. Watch the video for “The Devil’s Calling” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

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Dax Delivers a Harrowing and Devastating Treatment of the Subject of Sexual Abuse on “PTSD”

Whenever hip-hop artist Dax releases a song and video you know you’re probably in for something remarkable both musically and visually. His single “PTSD” begins with credits like a short film and the production on the song is like a street rap piece with trap style beat but of course Dax injects it with elements that elevates it beyond musical tropes and even the touch of auto tune elevates the sense of despair and desolation appropriate to what’s being presented. In the video we see Dax looking like his mind has been shattered by a shocking experience and then we a privy to the story of a young man being sexually assaulted by his priest. Before that narrative begins image of Dax stumbling forth in the present tense as the beat pulses seemingly causing the visual frame to pulse along in its low end wake as he repeats the refrain of “I was walking home on a Sunday,” which we later learn is an emotionally anchoring mantra of sorts to attempt to hold himself together. As the song progresses we hear a wave of emotion that captures the mixed and intense feelings of violation, rage, confusion, sadness, sorrow coupled with conflicted thinking that happens with victims of sexual abuse. That and the way memories of a traumatic experience can come crashing into your mind with an unexpected suddenness and painful clarity. And later in the video we witness a twist in the expected plot as Dax is in church when the victim of the priest comes in with a rifle to inflict retribution,on the priest. Dax makes eye contact with the killer when he kills himself after the vengeful rampage and in that moment it seems obvious Dax finds himself identifying with the victim while knowing the act of violence can never truly bring justice and in turn traumatizes others. The song outros with wind and Dax walking with the sunset at his back as he falls to the ground with the weight of what he has just seen, the sheer and inexplicable heaviness that leaves you changed forever. In the end there is a message about where victims of sexual abuse and/or those that care about them can get help. A devastating and beautifully executed treatment of an all too common experience that seems to touch the lives of us all. Watch the video for “PTSD” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

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Dax’s Video For “Dear Alcohol” is a Vulnerable and Affecting Portrait of Struggling With Addiction

You can always depend on rapper/producer Dax for a compelling video for his songs and an interesting take on the subject even when the main character is his version of the Grinch. But “Dear Alcohol” tackles a subject much more serious in a direct way. The video embodies how addiction can keep you trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of ritualistic behavior that at one time seemed like something fun or at least which put a salve on other psychological issues borne out of challenging times in life that too often last longer than we want to admit or which aren’t going away any time soon even if our coping mechanism of choice is self-destructive habits. But Dax’s approach to the issue is one of compassion and empathy from the perspective of someone who has been there. The chorus of “I got wasted because I didn’t want to deal with myself tonight, my thoughts get drowned until I feel alright, I keep drinking until I’m someone I don’t recognize, I got wasted.” The video shows what it’s like to be trapped there in vivid detail and what it must be like for the people who love us to be looking in and not always able to help us when we’re not able or willing to help ourselves and the frustration and seeming impossibility of exiting that cycle until something breaks through that bubble from within or without that makes moving beyond that cycle possible. The strings and introspective tones give the song the level of vulnerability and openness that are probably required to be able to overcome addiction to something like alcohol so ingrained in our culture and socialized in so many social situations that in some measure can be essentially harmless. But when you live in a society that encourages and celebrates overindulging while putting a lot of pressure on everyone to work hard all the time while grinding you down if you’re not always “winning” it can be one of the one of the toughest things to give up using to excess because it can impose oblivion on you with little effort. Watch the video for “Dear Alcohol” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

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The Grinch Dreams of Future Social Domination on Dax’s “GRINCH GOES VIRAL”

For his latest Grinch-themed video, “GRINCH GOES VIRAL,” Dax brings us a Grinch who wants nothing more but to go viral to attain his dubious ends. The green one ponders his plans and grievances to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” In years past Dax’s Grinch videos have been wonderfully surreal and absurd and with this one the rapper has really outdone himself. This Grinch checks his Tik Tok feed for inspiration, hate consults with Instagram and gets into a conflict with his girlfriend and her father landing him in jail but pleads that “green lives matter.” Subsequent to release our protagonist considers that he’s toxic and suffers from ADHD and PTSD but also bitterness over how his own victimhood complex and how Christmas ruined him and that Hollywood chose Jim Carey to play the Grinch instead of the Grinch himself. This pushes the Grinch to concoct a new movie where he gets to play himself and indulge in all the questionable language and themes of racial slurs, sexual ambiguity, skewed political commentary and of course nudity. Then when the Grinch has duped Hollywood producers to set this film in motion and the inevitable fame comes with the success of that cinematic misadventure the Grinch will hang with Biden, Harris and Zuckerberg and recognized by everyone with the viral explosion of popularity. The Grinch lets us in on a secret of his fantasy, though, about how he would become an idol worshipped by the public but hating himself provately, about to afford to go anywhere but unable to do so because of his anxiety but he justifies this fate because everyone hurts him first so he doesn’t care who he hurts on his vision of upward social trajectory. What happens with the Grinch’s plan? Watch to the end. The production on these videos from Dax has always been well executed and too real even when over the top and his vocal delivery is so fluid and energetic it sustains the narrative through some major verbal gyrations in the story. There’s nothing much like it. Watch the video on YouTube and connect with Dax at the links below.

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Dax Dives Into the Psychological Anguish of Prolonged Self-Neglect on “I Can’t Breathe”

Dax roams about his living space prowling with a tortured conscience in the video for “I Can’t Breathe.” A lightly flangered guitar figure, like a sample out of a song by The Cure, runs in the background giving the song a dreamlike quality but Dax’s commanding vocals keeps you centered on the psychological agony at the heart of the song. He articulates with emotionally gritty poetry the struggle of someone who had to grind hard to get to where he thought he wanted to be in a place he thought he wanted to be, in this case Los Angeles, only to have achieved so much but at the cost of things you had before any level of professional success that you took for granted and the self-neglect and the lack of self-maintenance it took to climb to what it was you assumed embodied your deepest aspirations. The image in the video of Dax writing in a notebook in blood, soaking the pages is the perfect symbol for that process. As a creative person or any kind of professional you accept sacrifices and lay so much of yourself out there and often at the end of the day you have nothing left for yourself and long term it leaves you feeling empty and desperate even if you are to the outside world a success. That hollowing out to the very strands of your psyche is how we lose a lot of people in the world even when we think they should probably be happy or satisfied with their lives. But it is that inner life that you dip into reaching for ambitious goals thinking its an endless well when it simply isn’t. Dax beautifully and evocatively expresses that terrible headspace throughout the song. And in doing so casts it into a shape with which one might actually get a handle and find a way out of it. Watch the video for “I Can’t Breathe” on YouTube and connect with Dax at the links below.

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Dax Takes On The Triple Role of Self, Santa and The Grinch in the Absurdly Humorous Video For “Dear Santa”

Dax_DearSanta1_lg — Dax, still from “Dear Santa” video

Dax takes the premise of writing a Santa letter on “Dear Santa” as a launching point to both asses his life up to now, put forth aspirational bravado and a comically disappointed diss. The video tells this story with Dax playing himself and Santa at once. Both writing the letter and responding. And bringing the Grinch into the mix from the beginning, and as a rapper later, Dax ups the ante on the absurd with the demands reaching cartoonish proportions including a death threat to Santa once he says he might not be able to come through on some of those items on the wish list but he knows someone who can “help out,” that being the Grinch, who in this scenario is a big of a gangster. Apparently in the world of this song, Santa and The Grinch are in the same universe and have each other’s numbers. Although we’re finally getting around to writing up the single well after Christmas, it’s the kind of video and song that works regardless of season because a good, weird premise transcends such considerations. Watch the video for “Dear Santa” on YouTube and follow Dax at the links below.

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