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

By Faizah Cyanide • On What is New

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.

About 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.