Legendary rapper (and actor) Earl Simmons, better known as DMX, passed away Friday April 9th, 2021. He was a legend of his craft and at one point my favorite rapper, so I felt compeled to write a few words about him.
Thanks to two older brothers, I listened to hip-hop music at a very young age. While I listened to a lot of my brothers’ music, it was DMX who felt like MY first real hip-hop superstar. His debut album, It’s Dark and Hell is Hot came out right before the summer of 1998 and it quickly became 12-year-old Justin’s album of the summer. I played that album on my Discman almost my entire trip to Cape May that summer, so of course when I was on the Wildwood boardwalk and saw a shirt that simply read “DMX – It’s Dark & Hell is Hot” I just had to buy it. Little did I know that a few months later this shirt would have me sent home from school because of its explicit lyrics. I went to a very diverse public school in Allentown, PA and I found it absurd then and even more so now as an adult.
In March of 2000, DMX and his Ruff Ryders Entertainment labelmates’ tour with Cash Money Records (Juvenile, Lil Wayne, BG, Big Tymers) came to Philadelphia and I begged my mom to take me. None of my friends’ parents would let them go to such a “dangerous” concert, so as a 14-year old I went to this show alone while my mom and her boyfriend hung out in the city. It was an incredible experience, and 21 years later I still have the Ruff Ryders beanie that I bought at the show. I was so into DMX during this time that I bought his first 6 albums on the day that they came out and would wind up buying other artists like DJ Clue and Dragon’s albums just becuase DMX was on a song or two.
However, as I got older, I started to enjoy other hip-hop acts much more than DMX. I think that part of my maturity process meant that songs with super violent, aggressive, and even homophobic lyrics honestly just didn’t interest me as much anymore. DMX was an imperfect human and it really showed on his albums. You could have a song like “Where the hood at?” which features extremely homophobic lyrics like “How you gonna explain f*cking a man? Even if we squashed the beef I ain’t touching your hand.” followed by a heartfelt prayer to god a few songs later. Also, while DMX has taken a lot of heat in the past for his homophobic lyrics, he also has tons of lyrics that could be considered very homoerotic including a line a few verses later in “Where the hood at?” where he talks about one man holding his private parts while another man performs oral sex. DMX was a talented yet extremely complicated artist.
DMX’s lyrics across his career are full of contractions and imperfections. He was a self-proclaimed religious child of god who committed a bible’s worth of sins. He was a loving, fun human being filled with incredible anger stemming from terrible childhood trauma. He knew that addiction was a terrible thing but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t escape those demons which ultimately cost him his life. When it comes to celebrities, DMX was truly as “real” as they come and that’s what made him so popular. He was an honest man with just as many faults as you and I, and he wore his emotions on his sleeve. For a period of time, he was the top dog in hip-hop and he brought a level of intensity to the genre not seen before. Even though I still don’t listen to his music as much as I used to, when a song of his pops up on a playlist or in my car, I’m still taken back to a very specific period of time and filled with nostalgia. Rest in peace DMX
