A brisk wind comes pummelling down onto the balcony Toronto artist Daxz and I stand on, which cautiously overlooks a highway and plays into the eery feeling of serenity that has un-fittingly been cast upon the city. However, every few minutes, a burst of cars will interrupt the solitude, speeding down the road before they disappear into a dizzying labyrinth of high rise office buildings and condos. "The name 'Daxz' comes from me being a calm, relaxed, wavy person. Dax is a product you use for your hair when you want to brush it and get waves," he says softly, before pausing to inhale his cigarette. Exhaling, his eyes gaze upward and naturally, mine follow. There isn't a single star in the sky, except for the small, half moon tattooed on the middle of his forehead.
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"It's the same crescent moon Sesshomaru has in InuYasha," He says shyly. I probe further to ask what the others–a 'keyblade' and a heart–mean. "In Kingdom Hearts they save worlds from darkness using the keyblade. That's the thing about video games, they teach you a lot about life, like learning to complete things. When you get past all the levels and there's nothing left to do, you have to go onto the next game." Not unlike production.You may not have heard of Daxz, but you have definitely heard his music. The 22-year-old singer whose real name is Jahmar Carter, originally burst onto the music scene in 2015 as a producer. "As a kid I always wanted to make music and make songs. And I didn't really know much about producing," He explains. "I thought instrumental music was always just people playing instruments and everybody had their specific job. But, then when I found out there was hip-hop producers and EDM producers that actually made their own beats just all of it from scratch by themselves on the computer… that really blew my mind."Trying his hands at making beats as a teenager he'd start posting them online. Drake's producer Noah "40" Shebib eventually took notice and began following him on instagram. When twitter erupted after accusatory tweets from Meek Mill claiming that the rapper used ghostwriters had surfaced, Daxz was called into the studio to help curate a track for Drake. At only 20-years-old, he became credited as the mastermind behind the rapper's noisy, grammy-nominated, Meek Mill diss track, "Back to Back." The song eventually took on a life of its own—spreading like wildfire on the internet and garnering a seemingly unanimous opinion—Drake successfully came out of this fight on top.
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Zhamak Fullad
In many ways this was a win for Daxz too as a brief perusal of his Genius profile reveals he has quite an extraordinary resume for only being 22-years-old. However, the young Toronto native maintains he has always set his sights on becoming a solo artist. "I couldn't record my own songs, because I didn't have money for studio time and [at the time] I just didn't know people that made music," He says. "So that's why I started making beats. Just to you know fill the time that I was just like looking for somebody to record me. I had to do something." As he explains, he hands over his laptop–allowing me to sift through his garage band and his iTunes, interrupting only to gingerly adjust the volume when unmastered tracks that haven't been perfected quite enough to be released blare boisterously through the computer's speakers. "People that make music these days just want to hear like hard, trap beats all the time," He explains. "And that's fine with me, I like that stuff too, but it just got to a point where I just got annoyed with giving people the same stuff and just making the same stuff. I had to come up with something different."The singer's "something different" eventually became his own first project, Being Alone Isn't Bad (B.A.I.B), which quietly seeped onto his Soundcloud in early April after recording most of it while living in Tokyo. "I went to Japan for two to three months and there I was just able to focus, on like how I wanted to craft the beats and what type of vibe I wanted the songs to have overall. Being over there just helped me to curate the whole sound and vibe." On this tape, Daxz revisits 80s ambience but also looks to the future–seamlessly blurring lines between genres through an EP characterized by strong electric guitar chords that come crashing in like lightening and eclectic samples from Yu Yu Hakusho that vehemently forge his idiosyncratic sound throughout. "Being a producer has helped me in a way that I can see the process from the ground up. I know what I want to do with the songs before we even do them."
In his new video for album loosie, "Chrome Hearts", Daxz visually re-creates the colourful world he sings about through bright layered visuals, neon hues and flashing superimposed animations. A slight pivot from his earlier works, the track allows his vocals to sit more prominently above the synth productions. That's not to say, however, the beat is any less than what you'd expect from the artist as the instrumentals carry viewers through what feels like a trippy, physical manifestation of what life would be like if we all saw things from the lens of a kaleidoscope.The transition from a promising producing career to forging another path, namely, one of uncertainty as a solo artist may be peculiar to some. However, this in itself is an ode to his personal ethos of not wanting to restrict himself, or anything for that matter, by placing things "in a box." This is precisely what makes Daxz, Daxz. "You have to keep your head down, believe in yourself and believe in your thoughts," He recites. "Putting stuff in a box is weird. I don't feel like anything [i've made] is perfect, but like, two years ago if somebody played these songs for me and said I made it I probably wouldn't believe them."Andrea Gambardella regrets not asking Daxz what his favourite 'Drive Form' is. Follow her on Twitter.