DMX, top-selling rapper, used struggle to inform lyrics
Earl Simmons, the snarling yet soulful rapper known as DMX, who had a string of No. 1 albums in the late 1990s and early 2000s but whose personal struggles eventually rivaled his lyrical prowess, died Friday in White Plains, N.Y. He was 50.
His family announced the death in a statement. He had been on life-support at White Plains Hospital after suffering what his family called “a catastrophic cardiac arrest” a week earlier.
“Earl was a warrior who fought till the very end,” the Simmons family said. “He loved his family with all of his heart, and we cherish the times we spent with him.”
On April 2, Simmons had a heart attack at his home in White Plains. In the days that followed, representatives said he was on life support “in a vegetative state.” Outside the hospital, family and friends gathered with hundreds of fans, playing DMX’s music and praying, holding up their arms in the shape of an X.
Simmons’ music was often menacing and dark, with the occasional nod to Christian spirituality. He committed crimes, served time in correctional institutions and battled addiction long before he released an album, and his troubled past informed the gritty content and inimitable delivery of his rhymes.
He barked over the chorus of “Get at Me Dog,” the breakout single from his 1998 debut album, It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot.
“His throat seems to hold a fuzzbox and a foghorn, and between songs he growled and barked,” New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote of a DMX performance in 2000. “In his raps, the gangsta life is a living hell, a constant test of loyalty and resolve.”
He rapped with an explosive cadence on “Party Up (Up in Here),” the big hit from his 1999 album … And Then There Was X; raw braggadocio on “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” a tribute to his record label on his 1998 debut album, It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot; and a more introspective, brooding delivery on “Damien,” a story about making a murderous bargain with a demonic benefactor.
“Why is it every move I make turns out to be a bad one?” Simmons asks in “Damien.” “Where’s my guardian angel? Need one, wish I had one.”
Simmons, who sold millions of records and was nominated for three Grammy Awards, was the first musician whose first five albums reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. He was the standout artist on the Ruff Ryders label, often rapping over tracks by star DJ and producer Swizz Beatz. Rappers like Eve, Drag-On and the Lox, a group made up of Jadakiss, Styles P and Sheek Louch, also recorded on the label.
The macho, streetwise persona Simmons projected in his music was reinforced by repeated arrests on charges including fraud, assault, weapons possession, narcotics possession and driving under the influence.
He served jail time after pleading guilty in 2008 to animal cruelty, drug possession and theft; in 2018 he was sentenced to a year in prison for tax evasion.
He released several more albums over the years, including Grand Champ (2003) and Undisputed (2012). But with his frequent run-ins with the law, he never regained the success of his earlier days.
Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on Dec. 18, 1970, Earl Simmons was the only child of Arnett Simmons and Joe Barker. He grew up in Yonkers, a city just north of the Bronx that became a hotbed of racial tension in the 1980s.
His father was an itinerant artist whom he rarely saw, and his mother struggled to raise him and his half-sister Bonita in a violent neighborhood. In his memoir, E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX (2002, with Smokey D. Fontaine), he wrote that there was often little food at home while he was growing up and that as a precocious, hot-tempered and disobedient child, he was often beaten by his mother and her lovers. Information on his survivors was not immediately available.
Simmons turned to street crime as he grew older, spending much of his childhood and teenage years in group homes or juvenile detention facilities, where, he wrote, he sometimes faced solitary confinement.
“I was straight stickup,” Simmons wrote. “I’d rob three times a day: before school, after school and on the late night.”