Pink Noise: Vax’s Blueprint

Vax, raised in West Palm Beach, Florida, just turned 17 this week. Beginning his music journey in 2021, Vax grew what started in his bedroom into a catalog of 170 songs released under this stage name – which is 10 times his own age.

Through independent releases and self-directed marketing, he steadily amassed a fanbase made up of roughly 2,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Things shifted this past November when he shared the snippet for what would become his biggest track to date, “Bobby Shmurda.” After its official release on November 21, the song gained instant traction, collecting over 400,000 streams. 

This newfound engagement was the big push that Vax knew he couldn’t afford to waste. Two weeks later, he followed with his second-biggest song, “buddy buddy.” Three weeks after that, he released another single, “Glimpse.” In about three months, Vax’s growth as an artist hasn’t felt incremental anymore. As he puts it, his career is now “in a skyrocket.” His monthly listeners have surged from 2,000 to over 100,000. Over the past 30 days alone, he’s gained around 7,000 followers on Instagram.

This is how artists come up now. Since COVID, we’ve seen hip-hop as a whole fracture into niche subgenres. A new generation of artists have now learned how to launch careers without waiting for industry co-signs, cultivating fanbases that exist entirely outside traditional gatekeepers. More access has created more crowded lanes though, and breaking through requires more than just making good music – it requires obsessive focus and perfect timing. Looking at the numbers, Vax has both.

If you think Vax’s rise was fast, his music moves even faster. In the first 30 seconds of each of these recent releases from him, the purpose is immediate.

“Pink noise. Something euphoric, just super vibrant and turnt vibes,” Vax says. “I want people to feel happy when they press play on the music, especially since I think the underground is in a dark, edgy kind of state right now.”

In a scene where the focus has leaned towards the darker nuances of distorted rage beats and nihilistic imagery, Vax is more committed to defying these standards, bringing a brighter energy to a space that rarely lets light in.

As a listener, you’re immediately hit with the loud 808s, the bass heavy enough to rattle your car doors or make your iPhone send you volume warnings. Rapid hi-hats and scattered snares create this rhythmic urgency that never settles, paired with synths that sound like they were pulled straight from an arcade game. They sparkle and glitch at the same time, drawing from the hyperpop sound that has become popular in the underground space recently. 

At the center of it all is Vax’s vocal delivery. From the infectious hooks to the melodic runs to even the moments he snaps into a pure rap cadence, Vax never loses his voice behind the production, moving effortlessly through the noise like he was made for this.

Every single element arrives at once, clashing against each other yet somehow coexisting. The effects of the melodic distortion feel synesthetic, as if the music is arriving in color before sound. In these recent releases, it settles into blue and pink.

“It was always right there within the music,” Vax says. “Especially with ‘Bobby Shmurda,’ I could picture the entire aesthetic of the song when I was recording it.”

Vax’s imagination carried into the making of the music video for “Bobby Shmurda.” He remembers working with the creative collective Hyveout to bring the track to life down to its smallest details. 

“We had a Pinterest board of different things I felt like fit the whole vibe. It was a lot of blue and pink of course, then it was mostly street graffiti and a lot of art from the artist Banksy.”

The final video reflects that process. Sound and frame operate on the same wavelength, and while music videos often function as promotional tools today, this one establishes a broader identity. It isn’t just an extension of the song – it’s a visualizer of everything Vax is, a design language that’s been deliberately built from the start.

And that design started forming long before the spotlight hit. Vax’s older brother, who makes music under the stage name Lil Luci, became his earliest and most direct influence.

“Growing up, my brother and his friends had this group called Free World and they would throw shows all the time,” Vax says. “I would always show up like an annoying little brother.”

“He’s been one of my guides my entire life. I still tell him everything to this day.”

That same sense of guidance extends beyond his brother into the collective Vax is part of: the Zodiac Killas. It’s a group of artists that all met while playing Fortnite and eventually, it became something closer to a second family. 

“I’m always sending my music to them,” he says. “Those guys are my day ones, without them my whole sound isn’t what it is today. They helped me evolve a lot.”

One of these people in the group who has helped curate these latest tracks for Vax is up-and-coming producer Waera. Their relationship started off transactional, with Vax sending Waera some placements while Waera sent Vax some beats. Over time, it grew into a creative partnership, and last year it culminated in one of their first official collaborations: a song called “lapis.” The cover for the song was a blue butterfly against a pink background which, for Vax, was an early foreshadowing of what was to come. 

And a lot has come since: an accelerating release schedule, mounting recognition, and a life that’s begun to move at the same pace as his music. For Vax, making the music is only half of it. He lives to perform it – the system he engineered in his bedroom is scaling to stages in Miami, New York, and LA. 

But he also knows how the underground works – momentum can disappear as fast as it arrives. A song catches on, clips circulate, then all of a sudden the attention shifts towards something else. 

Vax didn’t spend those nights creating 170 songs just to let it fall apart now. He’s seen it happen to other artists and has no intention of becoming that story. The only option is to keep building.

“I know my talent. I don’t need any number or any opinion to tell me whether or not I’m talented,” Vax says. “So it’s more of just a matter of fact of what am I doing right now?”

Right now, Vax doesn’t plan on stopping this run any time soon. He has a new song, “new money,” that just released yesterday. After that, he says there’s “one more single on the way – then it’s album mode.”

Everything leading up to this point has been intentional – the image, the timing, the pink noise – because the blueprint was always meant to leave his bedroom. Blue and pink wasn’t just an aesthetic, it was the visual system built to travel beyond West Palm Beach. 

The foundation was laid over five years. These past three months proved it works. Now, Vax knows the challenge is proving it’s built to last.

“There’s no way I’m ever gonna stop anytime soon. Maybe when I get older, but nowhere near right now. This shit is barely getting started man. And I can promise you people are not going to be ready.”