On Friday afternoon, the news we all feared was finally confirmed. DMX passed away after spending days battling for his life at White Plains Hospital.
Earl Simmons was the boy born into pain and suffering. DMX was the man that emerged out of his turbulent childhood. Yet in his life, one could not have lived, thrived, despaired, overcome, and passed without the other.
His life has been well documented. As a child, he subjected to vicious abuse that, unfortunately, way too many children experience. Physically and verbally abused at the hands of his mother. Abandoned by his father. Drug abuse introduced by someone he looked up to. Violence learned in a group home and in the streets. This is a nightmare in which many don’t survive.
But Simmons did.
He housed that anger, betrayal, pain, hurt, addiction, embarrassment, and other emotional scars and unleashed it through hip-hop. The language and sound of the streets became his form of a sermon. His sound was so different that he commandeered the attention and respect of an industry that originally shunned his style and his life. It was a style that didn’t require him to change as it was his inner turmoil that fueled his music, turmoil which captured the hearts of his fans. A suffering that had people around the globe adoring and sympathizing with the troubled rapper.
But since the streets hold no sympathy, Simmons couldn’t hold any for himself. So he channeled that pain into his music, thus giving birth to the man we lost Friday at the age of 50.
DMX.
DMX battled demons that haunted him his entire life. They were nightmares he could never fully conquer as they were deep-rooted in hatred, resentment, and anger caused by others. They were emotions that manifested themselves through drugs and affairs. Yet his life ran against the norm as fans never held his mistakes against him.
Instead, it drew them closer to him.
With DMX’s inability to avoid the troubles which consistently plagued him, you would think that fans would grow tired of his antics and extinguish their fandom for the growling rapper. But for some reason, fans never abandoned him. We couldn’t. We felt for him. We saw the inner demons which tortured him and wished for him to heal. Part of it was because he openly shared his pain with us, making him vulnerable and more tangible to everyday people.
“The reason I think my fans love me is because I let them know so much about me,” said X. “I bare my soul. I’m not ashamed to cry. I’m not ashamed to hurt. I’m not ashamed to fall. ‘Cause I pick myself up.”
He never hid from his pain, his faults or his emotions, instead sharing them in one place that acted as his therapeutic couch.
The stage.
The Stage as a Pulpit
On stages across the country and the world, he held nothing back. It was here where he released and, to some extent, healed.
His sweat, his energy, his tears, his passion, his emotions. When you went to a DMX show, you know you were getting his everything. There was no partiality with DMX; he was all in on all that he did. He would rally the crowd with a bark and then later break down in tears as the scars of the past overwhelmed him. But that was where he was at his best and where he felt the safest.
“His music was what kept him alive,” said then Def Jam President Lyor Cohen in VH1’s Behind the Music- DMX doc. “and the therapy that gave purpose to his life.”
Music was a big part of his life, but protection and trust were just as significant. His childhood taught him how not to trust. The mistreatment and violence taught him how to protect himself. Protection meant proving himself on the streets as Earl Simmons. But as DMX, protection came through his music, performances, and his family.
What his blood failed to give him, Swizz Beatz, the Double R family, and his girlfriend, wife and ride or die, Tashera, provided. Even when he told her that he smoked crack and assumed she would leave, she didn’t. She was the rock in his life that provided stability and protection for as long as she could.
Unfortunately, the internal torture was too great for even the love of Tashera and Swizz. It broke through the fortress of safety they surrounded him with and enveloped him, taking him back down the path we all hoped he had finally veered off of when we saw him on Verzuz alongside Snoop.
DMX was a study in the cycle of recidivism. Yet his is a lesson that endeared him to fans from all walks of life. White, Black, rich and poor. They all flocked to the man who gave us “Get at me Dog” in 1998.
At that time, record labels weren’t looking for a DMX. Foolish beef killed Biggie and Tupac and pitted East Coast against West Coast. Raw, gritty, and running in the streets was not the style they wanted. The culture was in an aspirational phase, where G4’s, Cristal, and shinny suits dominated music videos and the clubs. The frustration of not being accepted and acknowledged for his talents mounted and despite re-committing himself to the church, the streets, drugs, and alcohol kept calling. And DMX answered.
Then his grandmother got involved and he changed.
“I had stopped smoking weed, stopped getting high, stopped drinking, stopped everything,” said DMX.
But life continued its cruelty and took his grandmother away three months later after a battle with cancer. It was another crushing blow for the inner child who continued to be plagued by loss.
“I felt like I lost my life, like I lost everything that was special to me,” said a still emotional DMX in the VH1 doc. “The only person that…I was special to, you know. Because no matter how hard we are, how tough we are, we need to be someone’s baby. And I was her baby. I was her baby.
“Three days later, I started getting high again.”
Eventually, he turned back to music. That’s when Irv Gotti convinced Lyor Cohen to make the trip to Yonkers to hear the sound that was tearing up the streets. Into the studio walked DMX, jaw wired shut from a vicious, life-threatening beatdown in a case of mistaken identity. But true to his nature, X held nothing back and “went beast”. Despite the wires holding his jaw shut breaking with every verse, DMX unleashed the energy that forced Lyor Cohen to sign him that very night.
Thus began the career of DMX.
Just Be DMX
The mission and vision for his career were simple as they didn’t ask anything of him that he could not deliver.
“Yo, you going to speak for the people who ain’t got s**t,” said Gotti. “You gonna talk for the have nots.”
That was all DMX needed to hear. A year later, in 1998, he did the unthinkable for a child who should have died multiple times.
He had two number one albums in the same calendar year: “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot” and “Flesh of my Flesh, Blood of my Blood”.
DMX had an energy that appeared boundless, a gift bestowed to him that he, in turn, imparted on his fans. No matter what he did in the studio, at a club, or in the streets, fan interaction motivated and carried him. His ability to camouflage his pain by painting it over with powerful lyrics was his true talent. It was almost like his inner Earl Simmons re-emerged while he was on stage, giving his all lest he disappoints those who looked to him for his signature energy, rawness, and intensity.
DMX was at the front of a movement to take the culture back to the streets and to have the streets take over the industry. He was the leading face in music and for the Ruff Ryders. He had everyone thirsting for a RR vest, hat, and shirt. The double-R logo became the street’s Nike symbol. Without X, there would be no Eve, Drag-On or Wink 1100. The Ruff Ryder label and street bike culture would not have exploded the way they did.
He was their catalyst. He did for his extended family what his childhood family did not.
He provided and opened doors.
But for all he did, X belonged on the stage. He commanded it. That was his therapy and his true home.
He was a real-life Bishop from the X-Men. He would absorb an audience’s anticipation and energy and blast it back to everyone in the arena through vicious, addictive lyrics and mosh pit-inspiring beats. He wasn’t just a hip-hop artist. No, he was a true force of unfiltered, raw, intense, combustible energy. One that gave everything it had on the stage. Who else could rile up the streets with the haunting first note in “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” and then incite the crowd into a frenzy at Woodstock? I witnessed Wu-Tang do something similar, but even they didn’t have the raw emotion that DMX possessed.
And he was much more to many.
During their tribute to DMX on Sirius XM’s Rock the Bells Radio on Friday afternoon, a caller said that DMX was like her religion. When she had disagreements with what the church was preaching, she turned to the verses from “The Gospel According to X” (as he would put it). To her, and fans like her, DMX was a preacher and the mic was his pulpit. His sermons originated not simply from the Bible but from his experiences on the streets and in jail. The horrors of abuse, drugs, backstabbing, and violence that ripped into his soul gave him the verses that he shared with his congregation from the stage, on vinyl, CDs, and radio. He had an intelligence that books could never teach and an education that was certified through hardship.
“God gave me a lot worse to deal with than this at a younger age. So you know what? Deal with it. So that’s what I did,” said X.
In The End
It sounds poetic, but it always felt like DMX was ready to pass. He alludes to it in songs like “Slippin'” and demonstrated it through his painful emotions on stage. It wasn’t just talk. When the words came from him, you know they held truth. It felt like deep down, he believed he should have died so many times that he was prepared for the moment. With DMX, it felt like a somber reality, especially for children subjected to the life of suffering he experienced. They hold nothing back because they were held back for so long. They feel that they’re not supposed to be there, so they’re going to do everything they can before they’re gone.
That someone could give their absolute all, even to the point of dying, is seldom seen. But that’s what he did. At one performance, he suffered an asthma attack that almost killed him. Yet he refused to end the show, so he went back on stage and expended the rest of his energy on those who came to see him. For someone who suffers from such physical and emotional pain, and who was wrapped in addiction, it’s remarkable to see how he transformed the minute he hit the stage.
His emotions were for all to see. The pain, the hurt and the addiction. The love of music, the joy, the smile. His life. They’re there for all to see.
DMX was a complex mixture of sadness and joy. One minute he’s being hauled off to jail, breaking down on stage or getting high. The next he’s poetically breaking down the music industry, rapping about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and rocking to Lisa Lisa. That’s why people love him and why they’re so devastated over his passing.
He was a little of every person. He was a rapper and actor. He was a husband and father. He was rich and poor. He was an addict and he was clean. He was a preacher and a poet.
DMX wasn’t a separate persona. DMX was Earl Simmons and Earl Simmons was DMX. That was a bond forged through pain and suffering. One which ultimately rested Friday afternoon but one that we will continue to celebrate.
Rest well X. You’re in pain no more.
