Tag: Dax

Dax – “From a Man’s Perspective” review

This is sophomore full-length studio LP from St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada rapper Dax. Working as a janitor before blowing up after dropping the single “YourWorthIt.org” with Hopsin in the summer of 2018, this was followed up with his debut EP It’s Different Now shortly after & the I’ll Say It For You EP under the Strange Music subsidiary It Goes Up Entertainment. Pain Paints Pictures was one of the worst debuts of this decade & 3 years later, he’s returning From a Man’s Perspective.

The title track starts with a melodramatically cloudy opener talking about wanting to be with this individual for the night whereas the acoustic “Took My Heart Out” whines about not wanting to use his heart anymore & comes off as sappy than genuine. “Place of Peace” works in a guitar & some fingersnaps telling his significant other than he wants to go to her for peace while “A Real Man” talks about what this woman wants not being legitimate.

“Soldier” featuring Tom MacDonald ends the first leg with a tedious far-right propaganda joint which is odd because neither of them are from the United States just before “To Be a Man” takes a laughable shot a county rap & it’s not Darius Rucker’s fault. “Lonely Dirt Road” mixes cloud rap & pop rap escaping to a place where no one knows, but then “You’re the Problem” tries to gaslight his critics saying their dislike for his music comes from a reflection of theirselves.

The penultimate song “Diary of a Man Trying” nears the conclusion of From a Man’s Perspective talking about trying to move on GPSing all his thoughts even if they wind up leading him to places that’ll hurt him & finally, “I Hate That I Love You” ends the album by dissing the mother of his child as if he’s Eminem in the late 90s/early 2000s, who has always been an influence to Dax except that he exemplifies Em’s worst traits to a new level.

From the moment that Falling in Reverse put out Popular Monster this summer up until now, I wasn’t sure if there could be a hip hop album that could match the metalcore offering in terms of being unlistenable & Dax sure enough manages to do it with a month left in the year. The production is mediocre & his subject matter delivered From a Man’s Perspective feels trite than sincere. Tyler, The Creator’s 7th album Chromakopia does a significantly better job of providing introspection than this.

Score: 0/5

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Dax – “Pain Paints Paintings” review

Dax is a 27 year old rapper, singer/songwriter & janitor from St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada who originally worked as a janitor before blowing up after dropping the single “YourWorthIt.org” with Hopsin in the summer of 2018. This was followed up with his debut EP It’s Different Now shortly after & now after dropping his 2nd EP I’ll Say It For You under the Strange Music subsidiary It Goes Up Entertainment a year & a half ago, all of that has been leading up to the man’s very first full-length album.

“Suffocating” begins things by melodramatically whining about the pressure of fame on top of some pianos whereas “The Devil’s Calling” gets on the Detroit trap sound saying his music gives off Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, MLK, Harriet Tubman & Emmett Till energy in such a delusional fashion. Like why listen to this when you have “Pig Feet” or even “The Bigger Picture” for God’s sake? Then there’s “40 Days 40 Nights”, which has a bland instrumental & a wack Nasty C feature talking about “getting right”.

Meanwhile on “Searching for a Reason”, we get a hideously sung diatribe about how “people hate me because I’m real” when in reality: he takes a very surface level approach to conscious hip hop with his music. “Battles with Faith” is a lot like the opener in terms of the sound except he’s telling his critics “Hey I’m not perfect, man” & his flow on here is just so hilariously bad every time I hear it.

“Eternity” tries to pull at the heart-strings by reminding us that “eternity has no end” even though it’s common fucking knowledge, but then “Does God Cry?” tries to say that “rain is actually God’s tears” & it makes ME wanna cry myself because of how corny it sounds. If you thought that wasn’t enough, Tom MacDonald tags along for the hypocritical “Propaganda” trying to edgily “call out” the bullshit in “Nightmerica” & not really exposing anything.

The title track tries to blandly take the atmospheric route saying he has no regrets while “Stadiums” serves as an air-headed temper tantrum to his haters by telling them “I hit like hail, man”. Snow tha Product has one of the better features on the album with “A Lot at Stake” addressing the theme of betrayal as does Lecrae with “Bad Things Happen to Good People”, except on here Dax is just saying “Hey we’re all equal guys”.

“PTSD” has little to nothing to do with the actual disorder itself, but rather him talking about how “I’m not looking forward to anything in my life because it never liked me” with a cavernous beat. Yelawolf’s verse on the guitar-driven “Fame” is cool, but Dax’s just seems flat to me in comparison. The penultimate track “Wounded” with Clever instrumentally is similar to “Fame” except it’s about “the pin deep inside”, but “My Eyes Bleed” ends the album with poorly sung ballad praying that “the pain will stay inside these songs”.

Now that we’re at the concluding paragraph of this review, let me start off by saying I have absolutely nothing against Dax as a person whatsoever & I’m happy for the success he’s seen in recent years. However, I had a really hard time sitting through this album & didn’t enjoy it at all. A few features are decent, but it’s not enough to make me wanna go back to hear the melodramatic tone in a majority of Dax’s verses or the cut-rate production.

Score: 0.5/5