A New Beginning: Vax Is More Confident Than Ever on “VAXINATION”

This past February, I had the chance to interview Vax, a kid from West Palm Beach, Florida, who was barely getting started. He had just turned 17 with 170 songs to his name. One of them, “Bobby Shmurda,” had taken him from about 2,000 monthly listeners on Spotify to 100,000 in just three months. He told me he had one more single coming and after that, it was album mode. 

Nine months later, he’s dropped two.

Vax’s debut album, “Blue Dawn,” came out April 24. That same day, he started the next one “literally right out the gate.” Between our two conversations, Vax has released two albums, two EPs and four singles. As of right now, he has 45,100 Instagram followers (up from around 16,000 when we first spoke) and 131,100 monthly listeners on Spotify. “In this music shit, I’m greedy,” Vax says. “I’m trying to take up all the space.” In fact, he’s getting to work on his next moves in 2027. “I like to have shit mapped the fuck out.”

Yet sometimes, the journey of where you were always meant to be begins somewhere you least expect. For Vax, the start of “VAXINATION” wasn’t truly after he dropped his debut album – it was when he was 12 years old on May 7, 2021 in the garage of his childhood home or as he calls it, “my dad’s man cave.” The room was wired with the speakers his dad used to practice guitar and jazz, far enough from the bedrooms that no one could hear him blast music late at night. Queued first that night was Cochise’s debut studio album, “Benbow Crescent.” Soon after, he and his friend sevenk were rapping over Cochise type beats on BandLab.

So when Vax decided he wanted Cochise on the album, Lamaar Jaswal, founder of Raging Bull Records and Lamaar Management, brought the two together. It only took a few days for Cochise to send in his verse. You’d expect someone who learned on Cochise type beats to lose it when the feature arrived. Vax didn’t. “I already knew he was finna slide,” Vax says. “I’m meant for this shit. This was gonna happen regardless.” The kid in the garage would have reacted differently. “It would blow his freaking mind.”

The two other features on “VAXINATION” come from onyx77 and hostile of the Zodiac Killas, the collective Vax met through Fortnite. 

Vax lives in Florida and onyx77 lives in New York, so they don’t see each other often. When Vax flew in for his headline show in New York, he didn’t waste the visit. “As soon as I walk through the doors, he grabs me,” onyx77 says. “He was like, ‘Listen, I got an open for you. I need you to hop on it right now.’” Vax knew onyx77 could finish a song in about 10 minutes, so he set a timer. The verse got written, they played it back, and the room went crazy. That song, “Tearin Up,” would become the fourth track on the album.

hostile’s song, “Mob,” started the way the Zodiac Killas did – friends in a Discord call, playing video games. A beat came through from producer lucid, and “as soon as we heard that first 808 we knew we had to make something crazy,” hostile says. Vax recorded the chorus and sent it over. “The rest was history.”

Vax says he waited until he’d established himself, so he could put them “in front of a bigger audience that I know that they deserve.” “Even if they didn’t need it, I’m still here. They’re still my brothers.”

They notice. Vax was the first in the group to really blow up, onyx77 says, and he keeps pulling the rest along: onto bigger producers’ beats, onto his shows and now onto his album. “I never take that for granted,” onyx77 says. “It’s such a big deal for me.” hostile sees the same thing. “Vax is one of the most dedicated and driven people I’ve ever met,” hostile says. “He gives 1000% of his energy towards any and everything he does. I strive to be as determined as him.”

That drive includes being hard on his own music, a byproduct of his ambition to be one of the best in this new era of rap. When Vax listens back to the 10 tracks on “Blue Dawn,” he can hear where he was still searching for his identity even though he still loves what the project became. “On ‘Blue Dawn,’ I feel like you can tell I’m kind of trying to find my sound to the point where it becomes repetitive,” he says.

“VAXINATION” is 17 tracks long, running between fully aggressive songs, fully melodic ones where he’s singing and everything else in between. “Nation” and “Angel” show off the heavier side of the production, while “Correct” goes further, into modern rage, which Vax calls “completely out of left field” for him. “Luck” leans into melodic rap but “Turn Off the World” dives headfirst into the EDM and hyperpop sound. “Take My Number” piles on vocal inflections until it’s, in his words, “lowkey very overstimulating.” Instead of treating each song as separate lanes, his delivery is ultimately the connective tissue between the variation of sounds. He’s not trying to perfect one style as much as he’s trying to find how many different directions he can take his voice. By the end, you’re left with an album that never lets you settle or guess its next move. “On ‘Vaxination,’ I’m just here doing my shit. Like, you can’t tell me nothing,” he says.

He used to call his sound “pink noise,” more euphoric and vibrant. This time around, the darker edges of his 808s hit harder. The visual language has shifted along with the sound, from the blue and pink of “Bobby Shmurda” to the minimalistic, monochrome aspects of  videos like the one for, “Iconic.” That part, Vax didn’t plan. “Whenever my life changes or I change as a person, my music is going to change.” The biggest change? “My mental age. I’m still happy, but I feel way more sure of myself. And that shit definitely shows in the music.”

That confidence came from the biggest lesson he took away from “Blue Dawn.” “I let the internet change my own opinion about my own album too much,” he says. “VAXINATION” went through three versions before he got the one he wanted. “I think this shit is truly perfect.” In February, he told me he didn’t need any number or opinion to tell him he was talented. He’s putting that belief into practice, making this record strictly for himself and the people who already like his sound.

On release night, Vax ran a Discord listening party from a New York studio with his friends in the room with over 200 people on the call. Meanwhile on Spotify for Artists, he watched about 1,200 people listening at the same time. “When I see everybody in the listening party and everybody is getting lit, it’s just very heartwarming. It’s a really good experience.” 

It’s also the type of moment he plans on taking outside the internet, the place he grew up. During our first conversation, he told me making the music was only half of it – he lived to perform it. He’s still writing with the crowd in mind. “Can someone sing this word for word while jumping at the same time and trying to do backflips in the middle of the mosh pit?” he asks himself.

In July, I witnessed firsthand what he’d been describing when I caught his set in San Francisco. Before he went on, he sat in the dark at the back of the venue, waiting for his cue. From behind his black sunglasses, he listened to his fans chant his name. There wasn’t a trace of nerves on his face. Vax was perfectly calm, as if this moment had already played out in his mind long ago. Seconds later, he was running onstage and the room lost it, screaming every lyric back at him. He’s already performed in Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Toronto this year, with a tour in the works.

While his fans are weighing in on tour cities through a Google Form he posted for album feedback, Vax has been scrolling social media to see which tracks people like most. The song he thinks isn’t being talked about enough is the outro of the album, “End of the Day.”

“I don’t think there’s a more perfect song that I could have made or put there for, like, an outro, because first of all, the name is perfect. It just feels like something’s complete,” Vax says. “Don’t be sad because it’s over, but be happy because there’s a new beginning coming."