Alright, I believe I figured out the exact issue but can not figure out how to fix it.
First of all, I did realize that I made the most newbish mistake xD by using the root user to connect.
So I got a new error message of "PHP Warning: mysqli_connect(): (HY000/2002): Connection timed out"
Which made me realize, that I was using the wrong user and didn't have remote connections open.
I have create a new mysql user with all privileges to 'localhost' and '%'
As well as changed the 'bind-address' to '0.0.0.0'
but I am still receiving the time out error.