This week on Video Spotlight we are featuring upcoming artist Maxo and his video ‘Nickel to a Dime’ as he drives through the city of Los Angeles dropping bars of the trials of getting the bag to the trance/lo-fi hip hop track. Shout out to our team member Love Turl aka Ta’Raach putting us up on his new project..
Maxo Bio : “I hear a lot of people say my music is relatable, I always found that funny because I just speak on what I’m going through. Crazy how we all be going through the same things but be too caught up in our own lives to realize it. A big part of my life has always been about perspective, being observant and learning rather than saying too much.
”Maxo has a golden perspective. Innovative, authentic, and familiar simultaneously. He is the very definition of what is real. Born Max Allen, he spent his early years in Ladera Heights with his parents and an older and younger brother. Focused on basketball, music was a passion that came looking for him. After the family migrated east to Claremont, Maxo’s older brother started pursuing a music career. Watching from the sidelines, Maxo began wondering what his own music might be like. He knew he had a gift for seeing both sides of things and a distinct ear for new sound.
In 2013, Maxo enrolled at Chaffey College. He shared an African-American studies class with Vik, a producer and friend of his brother. At the time, Maxo’s brother was falling out of love with music. It seemed natural for Maxo to pick it up. Vik suggested Maxo come through to record everyday after a full day of classes. The first six songs they worked on became Maxo’s first EP, After Hours.
Driven to share his new passion with a larger audience, Maxo approached the Alaska-based cassette label Burnt Tapes, securing distribution for his first project. A modest buzz started building for him on the music sharing platform Soundcloud. Motivated by his newly discovered voice but without a producer, Maxo stole a beat from East Coast producer Foisey to record the notable and poignant Free Nino. The EP Gold in the Mud followed, along with the start of a creative kinship with the visual artist Steven Traylor.
The follow up project ‘Smile’, a soulful lo-fidelity collaboration with LastNameDavid, started to grow wings of its own. A snapshot of coming of age in Southern California, Smile is an honest, youthful, troubled and hopeful record. Sobering and anti-romantic Maxo recorded Smile as a reminder to himself and his generation to appreciate every situation, regardless of the circumstances.
