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Rapper Wax wishes his name looked like an email password
“You gotta be search-engine optimized these days”
Wax wants you to put the needle on the record and just listen for while.
Wax, whose “government name” is Michael Jones, knows his way around the local music scene. “I have played empty open mic nights in San Diego, and I have performed in front of a sold out crowd of 10K at Rady Shell. My go-to venue as a headlining act for a while was the Soda Bar. I lived a block away from there in Normal Heights. The Soda Bar has no green room, so I would just use my living room instead.”
On the road, though, things sometimes get weird. “I think my favorite gig I ever did was on the campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, about 2009,” recalls Jones, who boldly went vinyl-only for his new album Lifetime Achievement Award.
“The student organization that booked the musical events was run by a student who was a huge fan of me. I had started gaining notoriety online at that time, but still, even to this day, the average college student has no clue who I am. They set me up at lunch time in the middle of a dining hall. I was playing instrumentals from my iPod and just rapping in the middle of the cafeteria. All the students were walking by, looking at me like I was insane. Wait, we have a random rapper happening today? One guy came up about two feet away from me and just laughed in my face for a minute. I remember just staring at the clock as the contractually-obligated hour went by ever so slowly. The dude that booked me sat there watching me, smiling the whole time, absolutely loving it. He was the only person who gave a shit out of the hundreds of people who were there to eat. I think now I am experienced enough that I wouldn’t be that embarrassed. At the time, it was quite rough.”
Wax started out in Maryland, but hit Southern California in 2006. “I have lived in Ocean Beach, Normal Heights, and now Santee. I enjoyed living in Ocean Beach during the pandemic, it was even more lawless than usual. People were selling large bags of psilocybin mushrooms openly at the farmer’s market. Maybe that is legal now, I don’t know. They wouldn’t do that here in Santee...unless the mushrooms were somehow Trump-endorsed. He sells vodka, so I wouldn’t put it past him.”
As for that three-letter moniker, “My name has zero relation to the LA band Wax, but I did meet their singer Joe Sib, who is now a comedian. He is a good dude. Unfortunately, there are, like, 100 musical artists — from metal bands to K-Pop singers to folk singers to other rappers — named Wax. If I were to name myself today, I would be WaXXX$$67 or something like that. You gotta be search-engine optimized these days, that is why young rappers often have names that look like email passwords.”
He grew up on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pharcyde, NWA, and the Wu-Tang Clan, but now loses himself in Steely Dan, Earth Wind & Fire, the Bee Gees, and Stevie Wonder. “I still mostly write simple stuff, but I take it up a notch here and there thanks to the brilliance of these folks that came before me.”
So why a vinyl-only release? “Nowadays, when an album comes out on Friday, you see it posted on Instagram, listen to ten seconds of a song through a short-form content video, then maybe head over to your Spotify app and listen to the first fifteen seconds of each song while getting interrupted by text notifications and whatever other noise you have your phone programmed to bombard you with. On top of that, you’re thinking about what to do that weekend and scrolling TikTok or YouTube shorts, or whatever other nonsense you are addicted to.”
However, he says, “When you listen to a vinyl record, you listen mindfully. You drop the needle, then sit down with some wine, weed, cheese, popcorn, and/or a cigar, and consume the whole album the way you would watch a movie. You don’t skip. You listen to the songs you don’t like. You experience the record with respect for the record. Don’t get me wrong, I love the convenience of streaming, and one day this album will be on there too. But for now, the intention behind this project was for it to be experienced as a vinyl record. And yes, the people who have tried to talk me out of it are mostly people who don’t own record players.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Rapper Wax wishes his name looked like an email password
“You gotta be search-engine optimized these days”
Rapper Wax wishes his name looked like an email password
“You gotta be search-engine optimized these days”
Wax wants you to put the needle on the record and just listen for while.
Wax, whose “government name” is Michael Jones, knows his way around the local music scene. “I have played empty open mic nights in San Diego, and I have performed in front of a sold out crowd of 10K at Rady Shell. My go-to venue as a headlining act for a while was the Soda Bar. I lived a block away from there in Normal Heights. The Soda Bar has no green room, so I would just use my living room instead.”
On the road, though, things sometimes get weird. “I think my favorite gig I ever did was on the campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, about 2009,” recalls Jones, who boldly went vinyl-only for his new album Lifetime Achievement Award.
“The student organization that booked the musical events was run by a student who was a huge fan of me. I had started gaining notoriety online at that time, but still, even to this day, the average college student has no clue who I am. They set me up at lunch time in the middle of a dining hall. I was playing instrumentals from my iPod and just rapping in the middle of the cafeteria. All the students were walking by, looking at me like I was insane. Wait, we have a random rapper happening today? One guy came up about two feet away from me and just laughed in my face for a minute. I remember just staring at the clock as the contractually-obligated hour went by ever so slowly. The dude that booked me sat there watching me, smiling the whole time, absolutely loving it. He was the only person who gave a shit out of the hundreds of people who were there to eat. I think now I am experienced enough that I wouldn’t be that embarrassed. At the time, it was quite rough.”
Wax started out in Maryland, but hit Southern California in 2006. “I have lived in Ocean Beach, Normal Heights, and now Santee. I enjoyed living in Ocean Beach during the pandemic, it was even more lawless than usual. People were selling large bags of psilocybin mushrooms openly at the farmer’s market. Maybe that is legal now, I don’t know. They wouldn’t do that here in Santee...unless the mushrooms were somehow Trump-endorsed. He sells vodka, so I wouldn’t put it past him.”
As for that three-letter moniker, “My name has zero relation to the LA band Wax, but I did meet their singer Joe Sib, who is now a comedian. He is a good dude. Unfortunately, there are, like, 100 musical artists — from metal bands to K-Pop singers to folk singers to other rappers — named Wax. If I were to name myself today, I would be WaXXX$$67 or something like that. You gotta be search-engine optimized these days, that is why young rappers often have names that look like email passwords.”
He grew up on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pharcyde, NWA, and the Wu-Tang Clan, but now loses himself in Steely Dan, Earth Wind & Fire, the Bee Gees, and Stevie Wonder. “I still mostly write simple stuff, but I take it up a notch here and there thanks to the brilliance of these folks that came before me.”
So why a vinyl-only release? “Nowadays, when an album comes out on Friday, you see it posted on Instagram, listen to ten seconds of a song through a short-form content video, then maybe head over to your Spotify app and listen to the first fifteen seconds of each song while getting interrupted by text notifications and whatever other noise you have your phone programmed to bombard you with. On top of that, you’re thinking about what to do that weekend and scrolling TikTok or YouTube shorts, or whatever other nonsense you are addicted to.”
However, he says, “When you listen to a vinyl record, you listen mindfully. You drop the needle, then sit down with some wine, weed, cheese, popcorn, and/or a cigar, and consume the whole album the way you would watch a movie. You don’t skip. You listen to the songs you don’t like. You experience the record with respect for the record. Don’t get me wrong, I love the convenience of streaming, and one day this album will be on there too. But for now, the intention behind this project was for it to be experienced as a vinyl record. And yes, the people who have tried to talk me out of it are mostly people who don’t own record players.”
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