RED MUSIC/Sony Music EntertainmentMAX is on a roll. Not only did he perform from the stage of the Dolby Theater in Hollywood Monday during Live with Kelly & Ryan’s “After Oscar Show,” but his most recent album has finally entered the Billboard chart…nearly two years after its release.
As Billboard reports, MAX’s album Hell’s Kitchen Angel came out in April 2016, but failed to chart on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. But now that his single “Lights Down Low” is a top 20 hit, the album’s gained new momentum: It’s finally entered the chart at #154.
Hell’s Kitchen Angel is very personal to MAX, because New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood is his home. He says he owes everything he is as a musician to his experiences there.
“New York in general, there’s so much music around you…you’re on the subway and there’s people busking, or there are the dudes that get on each car, and are singing whatever blues thing,” he tells ABC Radio. “You’re surrounded by so much culture, so many diverse styles of music. And that was so influential to me.”
“I went to school in my neighborhood, and…it made me who I am,” he adds. “I didn’t get my driver’s license till I was 22, because I grew up taking the subway…walking around and feeling that energy from a first person standpoint.”
Of course, if all you’ve seen of Hell’s Kitchen is in the Netflix series Daredevil, you might think it’s full of crime and corruption. But MAX says that while that was true years ago, things have changed.
“When I was a little kid, there was still prostitution on 11th Avenue,” he notes. “But [now] there’s definitely a lot of really wonderful gay guys who have moved into these buildings, and it’s, like, super-gentrified.”
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