Joey A.X doesn’t just enter a space—he disrupts its frequency. Equal parts cinematic savant and streetwise visionary, he blends the surreal with the street, the poetic with the profane. One moment he’s quoting Virginia Woolf in a pitch deck, the next he’s in a Naples alley chasing “visual grit” for a campaign no one asked for yet. If art had a glitch in its system, it’d look a lot like him.
More myth than man, A.X has quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) shaped the undercurrents of pop culture since at least 2019. His ideas have appeared—uncredited—in campaigns for global brands. He’s exposed billion-dollar companies for concept theft, complete with email receipts and campaign comps. It’s why accounts like Diet Prada keep him in rotation, and why even major players like Clarks and Brooklyn FC have ended up on the other end of his proverbial slingshot.
Still, reducing him to a provocateur misses the point. Joey A.X isn’t chasing clout—he’s chasing clarity. And sometimes, that means burning bridges to light his way.
Despite his aversion to influencer culture, A.X co-founded F*VE, a media platform that would eventually sell for millions to Hoo.be, one of the largest influencer-driven IPs around. Ironically, he’s never once leaned on the influencer machinery he helped build. “Influencer is a dead term,” he quips between drags of a Parliament. “If the world’s on fire and you’re posting bikini pics with a social justice caption, you’re not influencing—you’re broadcasting delusion.”
The résumé runs deep: from helping launch Greg Selkoe’s Wanderset (which helped birth the esports giant FaZe Clan), to designing sneakers for Puma, to hitting the road with the likes of Mac Miller and MGK. But the title he wears best is “cultural architect.”
And yet, despite the accolades, A.X’s journey has been anything but linear. He’s faced collapse more than once—financially, mentally, spiritually. After returning to the Tri-State in 2019 disillusioned by Hollywood’s performative egomania, he spiraled into what would be the first of several undiagnosed mental health breakdowns. Addiction, manic episodes, and spiritual exhaustion followed.
Still, he kept creating—because it’s the only thing that’s ever saved him.
“I thought my brain was out to destroy me,” he says. “Turns out it was trying to save me—by forcing me to pay attention.”
These days, A.X is operating with a different kind of fire: sober, focused, and more dangerous than ever. His latest act? Leading the creative resurrection of one of music’s most legendary figures: Bootsy Collins.
Yes, that Bootsy.
The P-Funk maestro. The funkadelic time traveler. The man who made glitter into gospel.
And now, A.X—self-described “bipolar futurist with a beat machine”—has been entrusted with reintroducing Bootsy to a generation obsessed with nostalgia, but starving for substance.
“This isn’t a rebrand,” A.X says from his Hell’s Kitchen studio, a chaotic masterpiece of leather jackets, synths, and scribbled whiteboard equations. “It’s a cosmic rebirth.”
He hints at immersive capsule drops, a short film scored by cult DJs, and fashion lines inspired by vintage Parliament tour kits—all executed with a blend of 80s hair metal attitude, cyberpunk aesthetics, and Afrofuturist undertones. Models will be dancers. The merch? More Blade Runner than bottle service. Nothing here is accidental.
Even Roc Nation took notice.
But what makes this comeback different—what makes it more than a project—is the clarity behind it. The discipline. The refusal to be defined by his own collapse. “I’m not building a brand,” A.X says. “I’m building a cathedral. For the weird kids. For the ones who never fit the mold but never stopped creating.”
Through the wreckage of industry exploitation, mental illness, addiction, and near-death moments, Joey A.X has emerged not as a cautionary tale—but as a blueprint for creative resurrection.
The system may have misdiagnosed him. Corporate culture may have discarded him. But the art—the art never left.
Now, with Bootsy in tow, he’s not staging a comeback.
He’s staging a cosmic funk revival.
And this time, he’s the one holding the controls.
Follow Joey A.X:
https://www.instagram.com/joeyax/