Steve 'Flash' JuonI’m going to give the devil his due. in 2020 I flat out told Matt OX “your future isn’t rapping” after listening to “OX.” Four years later that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s creeping into adulthood now so we can’t say he’s being exploited by the music industry at this point unless it’s by his choice. I struggled with being so hard on a teenager the first time around so if I’m being honest I’m relieved he took whatever arrows were aimed his way and deftly deflected them. Congratulations Matt. You’ve earned a second chance through your sheer persistence.
“OXygen” isn’t an especially long album at 16 minutes but that’s par for the course in the modern rap landscape. Billing the artist as “Matt OX & Surf Gang” is a bit of subterfuge though. This is really a Matt OX album, and the “Surf Gang” are just artists on Surf Gang Records who make cameos on his tracks. I’m trying not to get Lil Mabu “he can’t say the word I’ma say it for him” vibes from OX singing lyrics with Pasto Flacco on “WTW,” but at least the track bumps; or at least it does until OX destroys my ears with his vocals. AutoTune or pitch correcting can add a colorful flair to a lower register, but if you sound like you huff helium to begin with it can wind up being painful.
This seems to be the exception rather than the rule though. Other tracks like the Goner produced “428” show that OX hit puberty a long time ago. It may not be as deep as his voice gets in his lifetime but it’s certainly more tolerable than he was at 15, and if I may say so he sounds so much better as an emcee without the modulation. The lyrics are still in emo rap territory with lines like “I don’t got no one to talk to/it ain’t no one who can stop through” but for an audience near his age range that’s fine.
“If you ain’t talking money I ain’t talking.” The biggest drawback of “OXygen” is that OX is forced to mimic industry tropes on tracks like “Still Up.” As impressed as I am by his resilience in the music industry, his lyrics have only developed with age from “sub-par” to “typical.” I don’t want the young man to simply emulate the idols he listened to growing up, nor for those who follow him to do the exact same thing. At that point we might as well embrace the AI-generated future and let machines make rap music for us. I want Matt OX to find his own voice and speak with it. Whether he’s telling wild exaggerated fantasies or pulling us down deep dark emotional holes, either one would be better than bragging about money, sex and drugs for the millionth time. This time I’m not going to tell Matt that his future isn’t rapping — I’m just going to tell him he needs to keep improving at it.