How Dax combined faith, honesty and poetry into a 'recipe for healing'

Dax never thought he'd be a rapper. As a young man chasing the NBA dream, his eyes were firmly set on a basketball future. But while on a bus to a game, he took a crack at his first poem, and his path immediately changed. 

"[It] was the first time in my life where I was like, 'I think this is what I'm meant to do,'" he says, remembering showing the poem to a friend, who was impressed by his first attempt.

Dax, a.k.a. Daniel Nwosu Jr., was born in St. John's, but before he was a year old his parents, who are originally from Nigeria, moved the family to Ottawa, where he grew up. He has since also called a few states home, and currently divides his time between his hometown and L.A., spending more and more time in Ottawa due to family.

Dax's intense work ethic can explain some of those moves. When he was 11, Dax came across the video game cover of NBA Live 2005 with Carmelo Anthony. "I wanted to get the game after church for the first time," he says. "My mom bought it for me and I committed to basketball that day. It was done." For the next 10 years, he focused on basketball, moving to the States for prep school, then junior college, which funneled him and his talents to Division 1 basketball at the University of Montana. 

I've done very few things in my life, but whatever I do, I put my whole body, mind, soul in it.- Dax

He picked up a job as an overnight janitor at the university and spent a lot of time in the library's poetry section during his shifts. "I gained an affinity for that stuff because I was around it a lot," he says. Then he wrote that first poem, and things changed almost immediately. 

"That crossover was easy, because [poetry] was the first time I felt like it was a gift of mine rather than basketball, [which] I had to work so ridiculously hard to get everything," says Dax. "Whereas this poetry and the music stuff just sort of came to me, and it had a positive message."

The second poem he ever wrote turned into his now hit song "Dear Alcohol," which percolated for a few years before he released it in 2022 — and which currently has more than 50 million streams on Spotify alone. 

Putting in the work to go viral

Dax's first viral hit, though, was a reimagining of Desiigner's track "Tiimmy Turner," which he titled "Hilly Hilly Clinton." Written after Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump, the song bounced around Dax's head on one of his "mental health walks" ("Where I would essentially walk to the liquor store [laughs] or walk to the mall," he jokes). 

Hilly hilly hilly Clinton
Lost to Trump and now we trippin'
Thank God I got a passport
Couple months I'm going missin'
Right back to Canada 

He recorded a short performance video, posted it to Instagram, and spent three days sending it to all the outlets and people he could think of — "thousands of people," he says — before the song went viral. Dax's near-obsessive work ethic paired with his politically charged lyrics and rapid-fire delivery combined for a perfect storm of success.

"I've done very few things in my life, but whatever I do, I put my whole body, mind, soul in it," he says.

Dax grew up with basketball, not really music, so his hip-hop influences came later in life. He names Tupac and Eminem as formative people for him, "Anyone who was great at their craft," he explains. But he's not one to seek input: "I have so many different-sounding songs that I try not to say I have influences and stuff like that because really it's just whatever comes to my head first. But I try not to really even listen to other people's songs. I don't like anyone in the studio with me. I don't want anyone's influence [of] ideas."

Dax adds that recently people have been bringing up Busta Rhymes as a possible influence on him, and while he sometimes leans into the New York rapper's chopper style, much of his catalogue is melodic and more in Drake's lane than anything. And on some of his more recent singles, Dax is singing more or even solely singing — proving that genre or style is no constraint for him.

The power of TikTok

After "Hilly Hilly Clinton," Dax kept putting in the work. His original platform of choice was YouTube where, as an independent artist, he amassed more than a million followers (and now has more than five million). In 2019 he went on tour with American rapper Tech N9ne, followed by his own North American tour, resulting in more than 100 shows. Just before the pandemic, he had millions of streams on his work, and was ready to sign to a label: "I want to be signed. I want to be a major label artist. I want to be at the Met gala and f--king Grammys," he told Hip Hop DX in 2019, though today he says winning awards isn't a line item on his list of goals anymore. 

In August 2022, Dax signed to Columbia Records, which is owned by Sony. Five months later, he nabbed his first Juno nomination, for breakthrough artist of the year. 

While Dax credits his early persistence on YouTube with a lot of the attention his music has gotten, he also heavily credits TikTok, where he now has 7.1 million followers — the largest of his platform followings. Under his @thatsdax handle, the rapper says he's found the perfect place to connect with fans, posting behind-the-scenes footage of his elaborate videos and skits about a rapper learning to play an instrument or a label executive interrupting a studio session. Some of his most popular posts, though, are when he asks, "Can anyone relate?" and posts a clip of one of his heavier songs, whether it's about his relationship with God ("Dear God"), sexual abuse in the church ("PTSD"), mental health ("Depression") or addiction ("Dear Alcohol"). The response from fans is immediate and sometimes visceral.

"I don't know if it's so much being vulnerable," says Dax, thinking about why people connect with his work so much. "I wouldn't consider myself necessarily a vulnerable, emotional person. But whatever these thoughts are that I have, I think I do a great job of explaining them in musical form that's still listenable."Some of the lyrics are autobiographical, but Dax amalgamates experiences to serve the song. In "Depression," he raps about taking medication for the diagnosis, though he says he's never personally used medication in this way. The song is an outlet for personalizing many thoughts, not just his. 

He started sayin' that the chemical imbalance is the reason that my brain
Ain't connectin' to accomplishments associated with movin' on
All in life and passive things in life, my heart cannot contain
So that happiness won't sustain
And he read me my options
He said, "Here goes a pill, only take two, eat a meal"
And they don't know how I feel.

Dax mentions that he saw a therapist for a semester in Montana, but that route wasn't for him. 

"He talked to me about different things I could do. But I'm also African, so a lot of these things are shunned in my culture," he explains. "And there's just other ways I've felt I could deal with my thoughts. Like I'm very like a routine guy. [There are] a couple of things I obsess about that help me deal with my thoughts, like I need to work out every single day. My happiness is in my work; when I'm not working, I feel weird. Chronically there's a bunch of crazy things I do that allow me to deal with the way my mind works."

You add in music that's talking about real things, that's explaining how people feel — I think it's a recipe for healing.- Dax

His most recent single, "To Be a Man," is also resonating with audiences. The country-adjacent song, in which Dax sings and doesn't rap, is an outlet for him to work through his feelings about stereotypes of masculinity and the toxic effects they've had on him. The song doesn't go so far as dismantling what upholds those stereotypes, but that's Dax's sweet spot: writing a song on the pulse of a feeling, and pushing harder on that pain point.

"You add in music that's talking about real things, that's explaining how people feel — I think it's a recipe for healing," he says.

Dax's faith in his work is unshakeable, which has evidently served him well. More milestones include a re-release of his hit "Dear Alcohol" last summer with a crossover feature from Grammy-nominated country singer Elle King, and in April 2023 he hit more than one billion views on his YouTube channel.

"My goal is, every single day, I'm trying to get my impactful songs to more people because I think what you consume determines your life," says Dax. "I think the world would be a different place if my music was more popular."