Lholding a DMX song from the late 1990s is like driving a wreck ball through a gated community. The music video for Stop Being Greedy – one of the many confrontational highlights from the rapper’s Def Jam debut in 1998, It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot – shows DMX chasing a wealthy white man across a mansion, before beating the poor soul finally feeds like a T-bone. steak at his pet pit bull; the rapper’s exciting, half-barking song gave the feeling that he wanted to eat the rich.
This is a song about the bad feeling that is so ignored that they have no choice but to confront the ruling classes (“Ribs are gripping, do not make me wait / fuck and I will bite you and rip the plate” ) and violently evade their rules, and its message reflects an urge from DMX – who passed away on Friday at the age of 50 – to liberate a hip-hop culture that by 1998 had become too busy with shiny packs in sticky music videos put in a blingy Rubik’s Cube.
Stop being greedy, was raw like the attitude of Bad Brains or God Save The Queen of Sex Pistols. It was a moment of pure punk defiance that CPR inflicted on hardcore rap, which was in silence after the deaths of gangster rap kingpins 2Pac and Notorious BIG. By including at least four other songs (Get At Me Dog, Ruff Ryders Anthem, Fuckin With D, ATF) that could all qualify as rap Smells Like Teen Spirit moments on the first studio album, X, he got the MTV album era capitalism worked through with the precision of Candyman’s rusty hook (blood and horror were all part of his work).
It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot and his sadistic yet brilliant sequel, Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, both won the American no. 1 range. With these powerful releases, DMX has turned the spotlight back on those who had nothing in their pocket. He appealed to the underdogs and those who missed out on the frantic, unapologetic energy of 2Pac, but also to white kids from the suburbs who need a soundtrack for their Mountain Dew-induced mood storms. His conversational habits, often stubborn, shrewd flow, shift from the life coach’s pep talk to serious threats to enemies (‘pick you like a chicken with your head cut off’). The music became bigger and more stadium-friendly as DMX’s career progressed in the 2000s, with urgent hits such as Party Up, X Gon ‘Give It To Ya and Where the Hood At anyone who could start a riot at a house party.
He also translates his magnetic alpha male energy into an underrated career for film and TV. Whether he boasts of being ‘untouchable’ in the cult gangster classic Belly, or dropping speeches about the beauty of growing orchids in the sitcom Fresh Off the Boat, he has always lit the screen.
The reason he barked like a dog in his verses was because angry stray dogs had hardly become friends during different times of homelessness against teenagers; they also became targets for his frustration, with DMX convicted of animal cruelty. During his childhood, he told GQ he was violently abused by his mother (‘she knocked out two of my teeth with a broom’), and he never really knew his father. In a podcast interview in 2020 with rapper Talib Kweli, DMX cried when he recalled that a male mentor had tricked him into smoking a joint that was at only 13 with crack cocaine. It was a life-defining moment.
In Damien’s career-best gothic trap, DMX – who has struggled with mental health and addiction issues – shuddered between his own voice and a demonic monologue. His twisted alter ego represented the pain he had from this childhood experience and a constant conflict between embracing the darkness of suicide and the light of life. His thunderous expression on the microphone sounded like a man daring and pure, and these cruelly honest sermons gave his fans the power to move through their own personal traumas (today this soul-cleansing energy in the US is continued by rappers like Denzel Curry, Rico Nasty and Jpegmafia).
DMX trained his pit bull to bark ad-libs at terrified rivals during freestyle fights, conceived 15 children, sold 23 million records, became a sports car after sports car, became a sex symbol in muddy Timberland boots, and Jay-Z for him on tour, created a moshpit that looked bigger than a small country at Woodstock ’99, and with each of his first five albums topped the charts. He was a force of nature, a character of all or nothing that could be deep, but also self-destructive, in jail in and out for petty crimes. Recent studio videos have suggested that a man was more comfortable with himself, relaxed and danced on Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, amid finishing songs for a long-awaited new album. His verse about the Lox’s single Bout Shit in 2020 was also an unmistakable return to form; that growl still blew you off your feet.
Before his tragic early death, DMX endured so many obstacles that America threw at him, as set forth in his lyrics: “You wanna be me? This is what you do / grow up neglected by both parents and still move out ”. Regarding Slippin, a warm, bluesy self-motivation, DMX said: ‘To live is to suffer. But to survive, well, that is to find meaning in suffering. It’s a lyric that tells you everything you need to know about the discography of pain and strength that Earl Simmons left behind.