WHAT IS TRAX NEWS — ‘FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE’ ALL ABOUT?

Whilst research­ing The Five Per­cent Nation, I came across an edu­ca­tion­al video on You­Tube I nev­er expec­ted to find. Jew­el­er Trax­NYC was show­cas­ing a Five-Per­cent Nation pendant he had pro­duced on request of one of its mem­bers. As he described its glisten­ing dia­mond set­tings, he also described the his­tory and beliefs of the move­ment enrich­ing his video. The video ended with him urging us to respect all faiths equally and share know­ledge. It made me nos­tal­gic over 90’s Hip Hop cul­ture and instantly sparked my fas­cin­a­tion. I delved deep­er into his video cata­logue to find oth­er such inform­at­ive videos which even­tu­ally led me to find the devel­op­ment of his emer­ging news chan­nel – Trax News.

The story of Mak­sud ‘Trax’ Agad­jani, founder of Trax­NYC is an inspir­ing one. Mak­sud or Maks as his friends call him was born in Azerbaijan. Fol­low­ing the col­lapse of the Soviet Uni­on, his par­ents moved to the USA in 1993 where he then grew up in Queens, New York. Nat­ur­ally grav­it­at­ing towards Hip Hop cul­ture, his favor­ite rap­per was Big­gie Smalls. Dur­ing this peri­od he iden­ti­fied a niche for men’s Hip Hop jew­elry to be sold on a glob­al scale which was not avail­able at the time. At the young age of 18, he took the wise decision to invest his birth­day money into pur­chas­ing a cam­era. He then used this cam­era to take pho­tos of jew­elry in the Dia­mond Dis­trict to sell on eBay – yes eBay. Even­tu­ally he gained enough know­ledge of the industry and saved enough money to open his own busi­ness in the Dia­mond Dis­trict of New York City, found­ing — Trax NYC.

Maks gen­er­ously shares his accu­mu­lated know­ledge about the jew­elry busi­ness across online dif­fer­ent media plat­forms. He encour­ages his buy­ers to make informed decisions on their jew­elry pur­chases and to not only see them as fash­ion accessor­ies but more import­antly as fin­an­cial invest­ments. “I want my con­sumers to be edu­cated and suc­cess­ful,” says Maks. His pas­sion for com­mu­nic­a­tion and teach­ing makes him dif­fer­ent from oth­er jew­el­ers, as he entwines his love for his­tory and cul­ture into many of his videos. Rising to become a reput­able Jew­el­er, Maks now cre­ates cus­tom jew­elry for high pro­file cli­ents such as Cardi B, Young M.A & Joyn­er Lucas. His expert­ise has led him to appear in GQ magazine to cri­tique rap­pers’ jew­elry and he was even fea­tured in Uncut Gems an Amer­ic­an crime thrill­er about the Dia­mond Dis­trict which you can watch on Net­flix. Most recently, his pub­lic con­front­a­tion with Tekashi69 over a piece of jew­elry for which he was nev­er paid gained him much atten­tion; it even attrac­ted 50 Cent to troll him online. Although Maks was accused of try­ing to use clout to gain atten­tion over this situ­ation, it con­tra­dicts his repu­ta­tion for his integ­rity and work eth­ic; those who know him well will testi­fy that he was simply try­ing to get his money.

Soon after the COV­ID-19 pan­dem­ic struck which shut down busi­nesses and kept us all isol­ated, Maks began to expand his You­Tube con­tent to dis­cuss socio-eco­nom­ic issues, and how to stay safe in quar­ant­ine. As a res­ult, his chan­nel widely res­on­ated with view­ers gain­ing much sup­port, so to turn some­thing neg­at­ive into a pos­it­ive, he evolved his video concept into the cre­ation that became — Trax News.  It’s a newly formed news organ­iz­a­tion set up, ‘For the People by the People’, his intent was made clear,  “When I saw how things were mov­ing and nobody gave out the prop­er inform­a­tion here in the United States, I said I got to start mak­ing news. People need to know what’s actu­ally hap­pen­ing around them, not a fairy tale.”

Unin­hib­ited by any neg­at­iv­ity his new ven­ture may have on his cur­rent jew­elry busi­ness Maks is on a quest to unveil the truth by empower­ing us as mem­bers of the pub­lic to join his plat­form to voice our opin­ions. Fus­ing his nat­ur­al cha­risma and address­ing issues no one else will dare to, he has gained a lot of sup­port. “People were inter­ested before I star­ted it. Every­body wants to be a part of some­thing and do some­thing, but there aren’t a lot of people who are as inclus­ive and as fair as I am.” In return, he is offer­ing shares in his com­pany, which are pub­licly recor­ded on a ledger. The idea is, if the com­pany becomes prof­it­able, all those who have con­trib­uted to the organ­iz­a­tion will own a piece of it, unlike most mass media out­lets which are owned by cor­por­a­tions. It is an innov­at­ive and risky busi­ness mod­el, but as a self-made busi­ness­man, Maks is no stranger to hard work or lead­er­ship as his story of humble begin­nings proves. Still in its early days, Maks has assembled a group of equally ded­ic­ated indi­vidu­als to form a core man­age­ment team to over­see the daily activ­it­ies of Trax News and real­ize his vis­ion. The organ­iz­a­tion is open for any­one to join with a vari­ety of roles from con­tent writers, graph­ic design­ers, research­ers and social media strategists. With its media fol­low­ing and con­trib­ut­ing mem­bers stead­ily grow­ing, it lit­er­ally is ‘For the People by the People’.

If you would like to check it out or get involved, then head to:

Web­site: www.traxnews.org

You­Tube: Trax­NYC Dia­mond Jew­elry

Ins­tagram: trax_news & trax­nyc

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Faizah Cyanide

Faizah works in clin­ic­al research by pro­fes­sion and has been an avid Hip Hop lov­er since the early 90’s, hav­ing cre­ated her own Hip Hop event, ‘Breakin’ Bound­ar­ies’ in the early 2000’s which was pre­dom­in­antly based around the concept of bboy battles, she has worked with sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al events pro­moters and dan­cers to inspire oth­ers through this art­form.

Latest posts by Faizah Cyanide (see all)

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