Wax - Next Great White Rapper

He’s cultivating legions of fans through word of mouth and a reservoir of replay-worthy YouTube clips.  Glide goes overtime with unsigned phenomenon Wax, whose third album dropped in May.

In Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, Jim Collins discusses what he terms the Flywheel Effect to explain traits of successful businesses.  In essence, it’s a blend of common sense and karma where equity from solid decisions accumulates over time - a classic case of the whole exceeding the sum of its parts.  At a certain point the momentum becomes a self-sustaining cycle and success is cemented. 

It seems like Wax is nearing that sweet spot where escalating word of mouth yields enough traction to get a foothold in the music industry.  After his six-piece band dissolved a few years back, the Dunkirk, Maryland, native sat in his Nissan Sentra, flipped on a video camera and jumpstarted his solo career.

He relocated to California and had 30,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel earlier this year. His subscription base has since tripled and he has cracked YouTube’s Top 100 Musicians list, and has nearly 1,000 new subscribers each day -- yet remains unsigned.

This exponential growth in the face of industry indifference is best explained by another idea from Jim Collins - the chicken and egg concept. He describes an egg “Just sitting there, totally uninteresting to the outside world, yet inside there’s plenty going on.  One day the egg hatches and out pops a chicken. Suddenly everyone is amazed and shocked at the new discovery.  Although the egg has sat there for a very long time incubating, until the day it hatches, no real interest is shown in it.” 

In an era where big labels launch insta-careers for artists who swap substance for image, it will be interesting to see if Wax’s groundswell of popular support online eventually translates to leverage at the bargaining table. 

Until then, he keeps uploading YouTube clips and playing gigs around L.A. while watching his third album gain steam..

Glide caught up with Wax for a bit and covered everything from his musings on bird droppings to his upcoming collaboration with Soulive.

Growing up did you have any one single moment where you felt connected to music in some way and thought – That’s It – This is what I want to do?  Was there a moment like that, or was it more of a gradual thing?

I wouldn’t say there was a defining moment like that, but growing up I remember seeing videos of Guns N' Roses on TV, and just watching them perform on stage, and thought that’s what I want to be.  I was really influenced by that.  Same thing with DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - I thought they were the hottest shit ever.  But as far as me actually playing, I started on guitar in sixth grade, and then started rapping and singing right after that, so I’ve really always been into it.

And I may have my timeline a bit messed up, but it was right around elementary and middle school, and Fresh Prince was more of an influence because he made it seem cool.  And as a kid, you just want everything to be cool, you know what I mean? 

And then later in middle school I got into Eazy-E,  all the N.W.A. stuff, Too $hort– anything with cussing in it.  Heavily influenced by them, and then later on when I got more into the technical aspects of it I came across Hieroglyphics and eventually got into artists like Rakim.

You have a twin brother Herbal T you collaborate with semi-frequently.  I thought I saw he was in Brazil now – is that right?

He used to live in Brazil and he’s moved to San Diego.

Gotcha.  Do you guys get to meet up that often or not?

Not as often as we should.  We live about four hours away from each other, and there’s always traffic.  He’s got a 9-5 job and a wife, and I’ve got a fucked up car, so we probably only see each other once a month.

In one freestyle you mentioned something about your mom being an English teacher - is that right?

Yeah, my mom was an English teacher.  She taught high school and middle school but in a different county than where I went to school.  Most of my family is in the field of education.  My mom being an English teacher probably helped me in some way, even though I usually don't speak in a gramatically correct manner.  She used to correct us all the time and she still does actually.  She had a tough job: She always says she wouldn't recommend anybody become a teacher.  They are overworked and underpaid.

What kind of a student were you growing up?

I was a good student even though I was pretty much always high.  I had the intelligence to be a really good student.  I still made it to college and graduated with a good GPA and all that.  I was good at school. 

So how did you get started?  Did you just start filming one day and did that coincide with the rise of YouTube as an available format?

The first thing I did was a contest for Vibe Magazine.  They had a contest online and I posted the video, and it wound up getting a lot of hits.    So then we thought, “Why don’t we start doing this ourselves and getting our own channel,” because that was right around when YouTube was just starting to become more widespread.

So that’s a bit of a non-traditional approach compared to making a Top-40 hit or whatever – is that kind of your preferred medium, or are you still making the effort to go the traditional route, or do you just go for both? 

I think it definitely provides more freedom because you can do whatever the hell you want. Things can happen organically that way if you allow them to.  Instead of telling your friends to go to a show, you send them a link to the video and they find out about it that way, which is a lot more immediate. 

But again, it goes back to having the creative freedom to do really anything, and it allows from some outside-the-box thinking.

There’s still the issue of monetizing YouTube, and today it’s really easy for people to download music for free as well.  It seems like the Internet has taken a lot away from artists while at the same time maybe giving them attention they otherwise wouldn’t have received.  What’s your take on the state of things online?

I think you just have to take the good with the bad.  Certainly there’s a lot of people out there who will just download your album for free. But I think if you offer up a bunch of things for free, and then you finally have a project you’ve put a lot of work into, that people will choose to support it.  You’d be surprised because people make it seem like buying a CD is an act of charity.  Like, “Oh, I really enjoy this artist so I’m going to pay for the album.”

But there’s other ways around it too.  Granted, I don’t make hardly anything off YouTube, but when you get to a certain level, you become a partner on there and you get a banner – you’ve probably seen ‘em before.  Anyway, I know the top guys there make like 20 grand a month.

Jesus.

Yeah, we’re only pulling in around $100 or so a month, but the checks keep getting bigger.

So the music industry itself is just notorious.  What has your experience been like?

Well, I’ve just recently gotten into the business side of things, but I do finally have a manager now who works at a major label (Interscope). 

There are definitely a lot of classic snake-type characters, but there are also a lot of really great people.  In general my experience has been that a lot of times the people making the decisions about aren’t musicians.  They work in the industry, but that doesn’t mean they know what the fuck they’re talking about.

So is music your full-time gig now, or do you have another job to make it by?

It’s right at the point where it’s almost enough to make it.  The small checks keep adding up and keep getting bigger and bigger, and right now the music.  So I don’t have a job, but I’m hoping I don’t have to get one.  I should probably have a part-time job though, waiting tables or some shit…

So to move on a bit and get into the content of your rhymes – you don’t talk about toting guns, but rhyme about getting mugged, and other times invoke Rodney King to advocate nonviolence.  Other songs are almost confessionals about personal excesses, so it’s some pretty heavy stuff that’s balanced with some jokes as well.  What spurs your songwriting?

When you mentioned that about getting mugged, that’s just a word-for-word description of what actually happened to me.  And then for some of the deeper songs – I have problems with drinking and shit like that, so I really just write about life as its happening, and that encompasses a lot of things.  But I don’t take myself too seriously, I mean, I don’t mind writing rhymes that are filled with non-stop sexual jokes. Everybody likes to laugh.

Your sense of humor comes out in a lot of your stuff, whether it's a quick line or a full song like "Bird Shittin' is a Habit." What are some of your favorite comedies or comedians?

I love stand up comedy.  I would actually like to get into doing it myself it's just a matter of not having enough time.   I've done a few comedy sets where I play funny songs and do material in between songs.  I did a short set at the Improv in Hollywood and murdered that shit, son!  

I actually have more friends here in LA who are comics than are musicians.  Some of my favorites off the top of my head: Chapelle's Show and his stand up, Spaceballs, Louis CK, Eddie Murphy Raw  and Delirious, The Office, Chris Farley on SNL…Shit man, there's too much shit out there I'm not gonna go into it.  Everybody loves comedy.  

What are you listening to these days?

I hardly get a chance to listen to music other than stuff I'm working on myself.  I usually would only listen to music in my car but my car is in bad shape and I barely drive it right now.  Plus the CD player in it doesn't work.  I have been listening to a good amount of Devin the Dude though recently via YouTube. Also I just got put on to Nigel Hall who is dope as hell.

We’ve mostly focused on your raps, but you have several other tunes like "No More Love Songs,""Jukebox," and "My Future is a Big Wide Open Space" where it's just you with a six-string.  Are there any acoustic artists that really resonate with you? Also, do you get much of a chance to practice guitar and explore that side of songwriting?

I wish I had more time to focus on writing acoustic stuff.  Recently I've been writing songs on beats made by other people for the most part.  I love writing guitar based songs.  I used to be in a six-piece hip-hop/funk band and I wrote most of the material.  The only reason I got into the acoustic shit is because you only have to rely on yourself, it's hard to organize a bunch of other people in a band scenario. 

I can't think of any acoustic artists right now that influenced me a lot.  I do remember liking all the MTV Unplugged shit, from the Yo MTV Raps version with LL to Nirvana to Eric Clapton when he did “Tears in Heaven.”  I mostly just do acoustic shit because it's something you can do solo and guitar is my primary instrument.  I like old blues and old country a lot, and draw a lot of influence from those genres for my acoustic music. 

So what are you up to now?  You have an album dropping pretty soon and maybe a tour after that?

Yeah, I’m actually doing a  collaboration on the album with a rapper named Dumbfoundead.  He’s an L.A. rapper as well, has a pretty large following on YouTube as well. He’s a cool dude, a talented dude, so we’re trying to combine forces and hopefully take over YouTube.

And then we’ve been working together and have an album coming out May 31 called Clockwise.  I’m playing a couple shows out East in mid-May, and we’ll have a release party in L.A. and maybe another in San Diego, but beyond that we don’t have any shows scheduled.  We hoped to release the album earlier so we could tour college towns, but the timing didn’t line up.

The other project you’d mentioned is with Eric Krasno of Soulive.  How did that come about and what do you have planned there?
Yeah, Eric and the other members of Soulive were big fans of my videos and so I’ll be going out there for a couple days and working with Krasno.  We’ve already gone back and forth a little bit as far as preparation for that.

It’s so crazy to have this opportunity because growing up I was into Soulive. I went to a bunch of their shows, and just listened to them constantly.  Seriously – I mean Krasno is one of my favorite guitarists, and now to have the chance to do something with them…it’s great.  It’s crazy.