Xavier Hernandez, a senior at Bronx River High School, is bringing his music outside of the Bronx and into Brooklyn with his very own collective. He owns the X9 music collective, consisting of performers such as himself (Xay9ine), Fridaythe13th, Ooze, Khaash, 100dmg, Qaedea, and Shiftea. A few others are in the collective, but only a select amount of the crew will be on stage. Anyone 16 and up can attend the show, which will be in The Sultan Room at 234 Starr Street in Brooklyn. General admission fees are currently going for about $20 per person. The show starts at 5 p.m. on Feb. 15, making it an after-Valentine’s day performance..
Despite Xavier only having a handful of songs, there are some big headliners joining him and his collective, which include Xtsy*, 2facedlon, RainingLol, Zemult, Kastlepact, Laylo!! and Giela. The collective has run song wars in their community on Discord, an app and website, where members would create their own songs and compete for a spot in the performance. The winners were 100dmg and Qaedea. Although not being in X9 or a headliner, surprise guest Punk Racks will be making an appearance for a first time performance.
Below, Xavier Hernandez talks about his music and the upcoming show.
Q. How did you get the amount of headliners that you did?
A. Just networking. Closed mouths don’t get fed. Tell people what you need and they will get you right.
Q. How did the collective come to be?
A. I got the idea to make my own collective out of the blue. I made a Tiktok group chat one day looking for people to join but it got banned. I ended up making a Discord server and it was mostly some of the first people to join that got into X9. I was like, we all got similar sounds, similar ideas, we’re all from New York, let’s work together.
Q. Who are some of the artists you wanted to be there to perform or were cut out? What happened?
A. 2slimey was a headliner. He told me he was good with a few hundred, we locked it in, then prices changed. We reached out to Bleood. It’s possible he comes but he never responded so we don’t know. Slayr might be there but he won’t have a whole set, probably like two songs. There was another in our collective we had to kick out. He was trying to use us to push himself out there and tried to blame us for his song getting delayed. He felt like he was in control so he had to go.
Q. How nervous are you knowing you have no experience with performing?
A. I was nervous at first, but I feel like I had enough time to mentally prepare myself. I know I got a lot of people coming to see me, specifically people that want to see me do my thing and do good. Even if there’s people that don’t know me, there’s at least 20 people who are gonna love the performance. Some people think 2slimey makes bad music but at the end of the day, he still has a crowd jumping for him so I know I could do it too. Having some people that don’t like your music doesn’t mean there won’t be an audience supporting you.
Q. Who are you most excited to be performing with?
A. Punk Racks. His new EP is crazy. I know every song off of it. Laylo too, I got a song with him on his setlist. Out of everybody, I feel like I’m the closest to him. I feel like he’s one of my school friends, like I could have full on conversations with him for hours and I won’t get bored.
