Maidstone rap artist Dux continues to bring his chameleon-style production and studied lyrics to a track near you, writes Joe Bill

Back in spring 2017, at the very first event that ‘cene Magazine ever concocted, we came across a hip hop/rap group performing under the name Coalescent. The ‘cene Beats Battle was a live music competition to win a place opening the SouthBeats Festival that year.

And while they didn’t win (we’re still not sure how), they stayed fixed in the consciousness as ‘one to watch’. Now, four years on, Dux (Niall Sheerin) and Aftermind (Drew Dutoit) have each gone on to solo projects, though they remain friends and collaborators – they did after all go to the same Maidstone school and university to study music.

“We just progressed and developed the genres we were interested in and branched off into our own individual lanes,” says Dux. But anyone who has listened to a Dux solo release in the past couple of years will know that exactly what his own “individual lane” is, is hard to define.

“I don’t even know what my style is still,” says Dux. “I’m a fan of all kinds of music, so I enjoy making all kinds of music, within rap anyway. I’d hate to be boxed in, like to one genre. And I know they say that’s better for branding, but I’m not about doing the same thing all the time.”

““… there’s no money in UK hip hop…as soon as I heard ‘money’ my ears just switched off… ain’t about having a diamond ring or wristwatch, don’t need ice dripping to know that my sh*t’s hot.””

— Dux - Respect Freestyle

There is pretty stark proof of this from 2021 alone, firstly with the April release of drill-based track Again & Again alongside Charlie Dax – in which the pair actually offer back-to-back lyrics about staying true to themselves and not being pigeonholed into a specific style.

That was followed by the more classic hip hop number Levels (now one of his most popular on Spotify) and there’s even a rocky, guitar-based rap track (That’s Me) coming out late summer.

Sitting on Zoom in our respective dressing gowns, we discussed the ideas of being a sponge for all music and becoming a chameleon-type performer like David Bowie and even the inspiration of seeing Dr Dre sitting round his pool bobbing his head to Nirvana in Netflix’s rise of rap documentary The Defiant Ones.

“You never really know what the actual artists themselves are listening to,” says Dux. “They have management and are signed to labels, they will be told which direction they need to go in, to make the most money or generate the most fans or what-not, so you never know what they are properly into.”

Dux hails Eminem as both his favourite artist and the one he has studied the most.

“Eminem is a fan of rock and roll and he’s got the old-school hip hop and boom bap, and more recently that new-school production – he does all of it, really,” he explains.

“When I first got into rap music, I was like 13 and I listened to N-Dubz. It was raw UK stuff, but when I heard Eminem for the first time properly I was like ‘Oh, OK, this is how far you can take lyric writing’.

“He takes it to a whole other level of intricacy. You can tell he spends a lot of time getting the right cadence and rhymes and that’s when I realised it was a proper art form in terms of spending time on it. I thought it was just lyrics coming to you and you write them down. But you can be amazing at it if you take time to learn it and study it, basically. That’s when I started to see how I could make something rhyme better or roll off the tongue better.”

DUX IN A ROW

Give Me Strength, a track that Dux describes as “like an emotional, well, I guess it’s a ballad”, bagged a spot on BBC Radio 1Xtra’s weekly playlist, while regular spins on BBC Introducing in Kent and Flex FM have seen him emerge as a solo artist, but it is the diversity of his music, which is sometimes at “two ends of the spectrum”, that makes Dux fascinating.

“It’s usually completely unplanned,” he says. “For example, the other day I was making one beat and flicking through some samples and chops and stuff and found something that was totally different to the beat I was working on. So I started working on another beat for that instead. It’s wherever inspiration hits, really.”

With Coalescent, Dux gigged as support for the likes of garage legends Artful Dodger and has often performed alongside London-based MC and friend Hughdem. But with Covid forcing everyone off the live stage, money has had to be found somewhere else.

“I went into production because I thought it would be more likely to make me some money, but I’ve found that it’s also a really good creative outlet. Making beats is so much fun and I don’t have to have anything attached to it, like no marketing scheme. It’s just pure creativity that I can export at the end of the day. I can look back at the day as a creative one, rather than the long process of making a song and then releasing it.”

But becoming a full-time producer is not the goal, either.

“I like being behind the computer and making stuff, but there really is nothing like gigging and live performing. The energy is unreal.”

Other than the 2019 release of his We Made It EP, Dux has subscribed to the new music industry model of releasing singles periodically, rather than the more old-school way of dropping albums and promoting the leading tracks from them. He’s also well aware of the pitfalls of modern music. In fact, on his track Respect, in collaboration with producer OhNo Da French, he raps: “… there’s no money in UK hip hop… as soon as I heard ‘money’ my ears just switched off… ain’t about having a diamond ring or wristwatch, don’t need ice dripping to know that my sh*t’s hot.”

His 2020/21 focus has been on writing and creating his own brand.

“I’m not sure what the long term is,” says Dux. “But over the past year I’ve just been working on stuff on my own and looking into and learning about the marketing side of things. I’m just using my own resources to try to build a fanbase and see where that takes me.”

Before the end of the Zoom call, we discussed the current campaign that is pushing for streaming sites such as Spotify to start sharing more of the pot with its featured musicians.

“Just in terms of what a Spotify Premium account costs is probably what people would be spending on music or on iTunes a month. And it does beg the question as to why there is such a huge difference in the amounts of what artists get paid from these streaming platforms,” says Dux. After all the discussions ‘cene Magazine has had with up-and-coming artists, it does start to make us wonder what is the best course of action for those wanting to pursue a career in music. Being signed to a record label doesn’t seem to hold much sway, either, anymore.

“For me, it would really depend on the deal,” says Dux. “I don’t want to definitively say I don’t want to be signed, I just don’t want to be signed to a bad deal. Until then, I’m going to try to slowly and consistently build a fan base.”

He’s off to a good start.

INSTA: @duxmusic.uk