Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are,
oh, we're stripping away all the polish. We're
stepping away from that curated, filtered, brand
safe world we often live in. And we are looking
at something and someone completely and totally
raw. Yeah, we're really looking at a collision.
A collision is the perfect word. It is a study
in friction. Today we're unpacking the life of
a figure who embodied, I mean, arguably the greatest,
most violent contradictions in the history of
hip hop. It's true. A man who could absolutely
terrify you in one verse and then in the very
next track bring you to peers with the most sincere
prayer you've ever heard. We are talking, of
course, about Earl Simmons, but the world knows
him, hears him, and frankly feels him as DMX.
Darkman X. And, you know, to really understand
DMX, you have to understand the moment he arrived.
You can't just look at his life in a vacuum.
Oh no, context is absolutely everything here.
Everything. So let's set that scene. It's, say,
1997. If you were listening to radio, if you
were watching MTV, the vibe was very, very specific.
The notorious B .I .G. has just passed away.
Tupac is gone. Tupac is gone. The two absolute
pillars of the genre are dead. And the rap game
is in this, well, this very specific place. It's
the shiny suit era. The shiny suit era. Exactly.
Right. This is the total dominance of bad boy
records. Puff Daddy. It was a time of, you know,
celebration rap. The music videos were all shot
with those fisheye lenses. Everyone's wearing
these bright yellow or like metallic silver suits.
Drinking champagne on yachts. Drinking champagne
on yachts and sampling these huge, glorious 80s.
pop hits like you know david bowie or the police
it was glossy it was aspirational wealth it was
all about we made it totally we made it and then
seemingly out of nowhere or you know more accurately
out of yonkers new york comes this sound and
it wasn't a melody No. It was a bark. It was
growling. It was a guy in Timberlands in a bandana,
sweating, shirtless, running with pitbulls. I
mean, for a lot of people, it felt like a genuine
shock to the system. It wasn't just a new artist
dropping a single. It felt like a market correction.
That is the perfect term for it. I was going
to say the same thing. It was a disruption of
the market in the truest sense. DMX didn't just
join the industry. He corrected it. He brought
what some people call horrorcore. which was usually
this like underground niche style. Right. And
he dragged a gritty street level perspective
right back to the top of the charts. But, you
know, unlike Tupac, who is often very political
or poetic, DMX was visceral. Yeah. He was purely
instinctual. So our mission today is to look
behind that bark. We really want to understand
the dichotomy. I mean, how does a man write these
horror core anthems about... But then also includes
sincere, you know, tear jerking prayers on every
single one of his albums. And how does a man
who claims to love dogs more than humans, I mean,
who essentially identifies as a dog, how does
he end up convicted of animal cruelty? And maybe
the biggest question of all, how does a man sell
75 million records becoming this global superstar
while fighting a lifelong crippling addiction
that started with a terrible betrayal in his
childhood before he was even old enough to drive
a car? It's a huge story. And we've got a massive
stack of sources today. Biographical records,
legal dockets, discography data, and a ton of
legacy tributes. We are going to unpack the life
of Earl Simmons. Let's start at the very beginning,
because with DMX, the origin story isn't just,
you know, background info. No, it's the key.
It is the blueprint for everything that came
later. I mean, if you don't understand the years
1970 to 1985, you just cannot understand the
music. So we're going back to Mount Vernon, New
York, 1970. So Earl Simmons was born to teen
parents. His mother was 19, his father was 18.
And right from the jump, the stability that every
child needs was just. It was absent. His father
was an artist. He actually painted watercolors
and he moved to Philadelphia, essentially leaving
the family behind. Zorl was raised mostly in
Yonkers in the school street housing apartments.
And the sources we have, they paint a really,
really harrowing picture of his childhood. I
mean, this wasn't just tough love or some strict
household. This was severe documented abuse.
It was. It really was. He suffered incredible
physical violence at the hands of his mother
and her various boyfriends. We're talking about
being beaten with broomsticks, with electrical
cords. He actually lost teeth during these beatings.
It was so traumatic that he was expelled from
school by the time he was 10 and sent to group
homes like the Children's Village. But before
that, there's this really crucial detail about
how he coped with that environment at home. The
dogs? The dogs. He started befriending stray
dogs. And this is like the psychological bedrock
for him. When the humans in his life, specifically
his mother, the one person who was biologically
wired to protect him, were the source of all
his pain. Right. The stray dogs offered him unconditional
love. That makes the whole dog persona make so
much more sense. It wasn't just some gimmick
he came up with in a marketing meeting. No way.
It was his tribe. It was his family. He looked
at these animals, and often they were pit bulls,
which were also feared and misunderstood by society,
and he saw himself in them. There's this one
detail in the biography that is just, it's heartbreaking.
It mentions that... As a kid, he was living on
the streets. He was starving. He was robbing
people just to survive. He was. By the time he
was 15, he was sleeping in clothing donation
bins and on rooftops. But the note says he robbed
someone not to buy food for himself, but to buy
a leather collar and a harness for his dog. And
that one story just encapsulates Earl Simmons
perfectly. He would starve himself to feed his
dog. Because the dog didn't judge him. The dog
didn't beat him. So when he later adopts the
barking, the growling in his music, he's basically
signaling to the world, I am part of this tribe,
not yours. But to survive, he had to become a
predator in the streets. He turned to carjacking
and robbery as well as a means of survival. It
was grim. It was purely survival. I mean, he
was stealing clothes to wear. He was stealing
food to eat. But amidst all that chaos, there
was the music. It started with beatboxing, right?
Correct. Around 1985, he started beatboxing for
a local rapper named Reddy Ron. Now, we need
to put a big pin in that name, Ready Ron. He
was the mentor figure. Earl was the percussion.
Ron was the rapper. This relationship is, well,
we'll get to it later, but it is the pivotal
tragedy of his entire life. But musically, this
is where it all starts. And the name DMX, I always
just assumed it stood for Darkman X right from
the beginning. You know, most people do, but
actually, no. It originally came from the Oberheim
DMX drum machine. Oh, wow. Yeah. He was a classic
piece of equipment in early hip hop. Yeah. He
used it. He liked the letters. And so he just
took the name. It fits, though. He named himself
after a machine. Cold, hard, rhythmic. Exactly.
It wasn't until later, as he developed his persona
and got into the 5 % Nation ideology, that he
reinterpreted it. First as Divine Master of the
Unknown, and then eventually... Darkman X. Divine
Master of the Unknown. That is a very heavy,
almost mystical title for a kid from the streets
of Yonkers. Well, it speaks to that spiritual
side he always had, even back then. He was an
old soul, but his university wasn't some music
conservatory. It was the penal system. He served
time for carjacking, and that's where he really,
really honed his writing skills. He developed
this style called spellbound. Oh, I've heard
of this. This is where he would literally spell
out words in the rhymes, right? Exactly. And
it requires immense breath control and like incredible
rhythmic precision. He would weave the spelling
of words right into the flow. I -M -A -N -R -A
-P -P -E -R. I mean, if you miss a single beat,
the whole structure just collapses. And he was
doing this in the prison yard. In the prison
yard, battling other inmates. He even battled
K -Solo, who was another big name at the time.
He was building his reputation as a gladiator.
So he wasn't writing songs for the radio. He
was writing rhymes to destroy the person standing
right in front of him. Precisely. It was combat,
pure verbal combat. But here's the thing that
surprised me in the research. We all think of
DMX as just exploding onto the scene in 98. He
actually had a record deal way before that. He
did. This is kind of the lost era of DMX. He
was signed to Columbia Roughhouse in the early
90s. And this is a legit label. They had the
Fugees. They had Cypress Hill. He released a
single called Born Loser. And it flopped. Total
silence. The label, you know, they didn't know
what to do with him. They tried to make him sound
a little more like the current trends. It wasn't
authentic. So the label dropped him. Imagine
that. DMX, the guy who would go on to sell tens
of millions of records, was technically a failed
artist by the mid -90s. And that failure is so
important to his story. It hardened him. It meant
that when he finally got his second shot, he
wasn't just happy to be there. He was angry.
He had something to prove. He had seen the industry
chew him up and spit him out. So he decided,
OK, this time I'm just going to kick the whole
door down. Which brings us to the turning point.
The Rough Riders. The Dean brothers, Wah and
Dee Dean. Yeah. And their sister, Siobhan. They
were the management. And of course, the key connector,
Irv Gotti. Irv Gotti seems to be in the middle
of every major hip hop story from this era. He
really, really was. Irv Gotti was an A &R at
Def Jam, and he believed in X when literally
nobody else did. He famously dragged Lyra Cohen,
who was the head of Def Jam, to go see DMX at
his studio in Yonkers. And the story of that
meeting is legendary. It is. The story goes that
DMX performed for him with his jaw wired shut.
Wait, what? His jaw was wired shut? Yeah, from
a street fight he'd been in, he had wires in
his mouth. But he didn't let that stop him. He
rapped with such intensity, like spitting and
sweating right in Lyre Cohen's face, that Lyre
essentially had no choice but to sign him. He
was apparently terrified and mesmerized at the
same time. I believe it. So he signs to Def Jam.
It's 1998. And this year... I don't think we
can overstate what 1998 was for DMX and for hip
-hop. It is statistically one of the greatest
years any artist has ever had in the history
of recorded music. Period. In May 1998, he releases
his debut album, It's Dark and Hell is Hot. Which,
of course, includes Rough Rider's anthem. That
song is still an absolute banger. It is. Produced
by Young Swizz Beatz. And what's interesting
is that DMX hated that beat at first. Right.
Yeah. He thought it was too simple. He said it
sounded like a nursery rhyme. But that simplicity
was exactly why it worked. It was an earworm.
The album debuts at number one. It goes on to
sell over four million copies. And that alone
is a career -defining moment for anyone. But
he didn't stop there. Not even close. No. Def
Jam wanted more. DMX went right back into the
studio. And in December of that same year. The
same year. He releases his second album, Flesh
of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. Two albums. One
year. And both went to number one. Both debuted
at number one on the Billboard 200. He became
the first living artist to achieve that. Tupac
had done it, but only posthumously. For a living
artist to generate that much high -quality material
and just dominate the charts twice in a single
calendar year, it's absurd. And the cover of
Flesh of My Flesh is so intense, he's just covered
in blood. It was provocative. It was disturbing.
And you know what? It was exactly what the kids
in the suburbs wanted. They wanted that danger.
He hadn't compromised his sound one bit to get
to the top. He forced the mainstream to come
to him. And that just kicked off this historic
run. The winning streak, absolutely. His next
album, and then there was X in 1999, was his
bestseller. That was the one with Party up in
here. I can hear the whistle in my head right
now. Of course. Then came the Great Depression,
then Grand Champ. And with those, DMX became
the only rapper in history to have his first
five studio albums debut consecutively at number
one on the Billboard 200. Five in a row, straight
out of the gate. That's insane. It's a record
that speaks to a fanatic fan base. I mean, you
don't get five number one debuts by accident.
You get that because people are buying the album
the day it drops without even hearing the singles
yet. They just trusted the brand. They trusted
the brand. They knew DMX wasn't going to sell
them some fake, polished version of himself.
And while he's crushing the music charts, he's
also becoming a movie star, which, looking back
on it, is kind of wild. It makes sense, though,
doesn't it? He just had this intense magnetic
charisma. He starred in Belly with Nas in 1998.
That movie is a cult classic. I mean, visually,
it's absolutely stunning. Hype Williams directed
it. And DMX plays Bunz, this ruthless, unforgettable
character. And a lot of critics at the time said
he wasn't really acting. He was just channeling
a version of himself. But then he transitioned
into mainstream action. He teamed up with Jet
Lai in Romeo Must Die and Cradle to the Grave.
And Steven Seagal in Exit Worms. He was a legitimate
box office straw. He was. He was making, like...
$5 million a picture. He had the look, the voice,
the presence. He even had his own reality show,
DMX, Soul of a Man, on PT. For a while there,
he was just everywhere. But with all that fame
came friction. And we have to talk about the
beefs. Because DMX was, well, he was not one
to bite his tongue. No, not at all. And the most
famous one is probably the one with Ja Rule.
Which is interesting because they were in a group
together for a minute, right? Murder Inc. The
group that never was. It was supposed to be this
super group. Jay -Z, Ja Rule, and DMX. Can you
even imagine that lineup today? That would have
been the dream team of that era, so why didn't
it work? Egos. Massive, massive egos. And a lot
of internal tension. DMX specifically had a huge
issue with Ja Rule. He accused Ja of stealing
his signature style, that gruff, gravelly, barking
voice. I mean, if you listen to early Ja Rule,
you can hear the similarity. You can. And DMX
took it very personally. He felt like his identity,
his very soul, was being co -opted for pop hits.
He released diss tracks like, we don't give a
fuck. It was a deep, deep resentment. Did they
ever make peace? They did, to their credit. They
eventually squashed the beef years later at the
VH1 Hip Hop Honors in 2009. And then there was
Jay -Z. That was a different kind of tension.
That went all the way back to a rap battle in
the Bronx in the early 90s. They supposedly battled
on top of a pool table for hours. So who won?
Well, it depends on who you ask. Jay -Z had the
flow and the wit. DMX had the raw aggression
and the energy. They were like two kings of New
York fighting for the same crown, but with totally
different styles. Jay -Z was the cool, calculated
hustler. DMX was the raw, emotional, loose cannon.
They respected each other, but yeah, there was
always that friction there. You mentioned emotional,
and that brings us to the other side of DMX.
The side that I think made him truly unique.
The faith. This is the central paradox, isn't
it? You have a guy known for hardcore lyrics
about grime and violence and death who read the
Bible every single day. And not just in private.
Every album had a prayer. And these were not
skits. They weren't jokes. No, they were sincere,
vulnerable moments of complete submission to
God. The beat would drop out and he would just
speak from the heart. He was a transitional deacon.
He openly aspired to become an ordained pastor.
Wow. He viewed his life and his survival through
everything as a divine mission. He famously said
he was kept alive to give a message that Jesus
loves them. It's incredibly powerful. You'd be
in the club listening to Party Up, and then on
the drive home, you're listening to this man
crying out to God for forgiveness. It just, it
made him human. It grounded the entire persona.
It showed that all the aggression was a response
to pain, and the faith was the only thing holding
that pain back. But unfortunately, the pain often
won. And we have to move into the shadows now.
Because as successful as he was, his legal rap
sheet is, well, it's extensive. It's a pattern
that spans decades. We're talking about over
30 jail stints. And the charges, they range from
the mundane all the way to the completely bizarre.
Let's talk about the JFK incident, because when
I read this in the notes, I had to double check
that it wasn't a movie script. Right. So this
was June 2004. DMX is at JFK Airport in New York.
He crashes his SUV through a parking lot gate.
OK, that's about enough right there. But then
he gets out of the car and tries to carjack another
vehicle. But here is the kicker. He claims to
be a federal agent. While trying to steal the
car. Yes. He told the driver, I'm an FBI agent.
He was under the influence of drugs at the time,
Valium and crack cocaine. It's a terrifying situation
for the people involved, but it also just speaks
to the level of dissociation and chaos that was
entering his life because of the substance abuse.
He had completely lost touch with reality in
that moment. And then there's the animal cruelty.
This is the one that really hurts the fans the
most, I think. Because he was the dog. He loved
dogs. It's a tragic, tragic irony. He faced multiple
charges in 1999, 2002, 2007. Police would raid
his homes and find pit bulls in just horrible
conditions, neglected, without water. How do
you even reconcile that? Well, DMX often blamed
his caretakers. He was on tour for months at
a time, leaving these hangers on and friends
in charge of the dogs. But ultimately, as the
owner, it was his responsibility. It just reflects
the chaos of his personal life bleeding into
every single aspect of his existence. He couldn't
take care of himself. And consequently, the things
he loved most suffered, too. And then there were
the financial issues. Fifteen children. Fifteen
children with nine different women. The financial
strain was just immense. The child support obligations
were astronomical. He filed for bankruptcy three
times, though the courts often dismissed the
filings because he wasn't fully disclosing his
income. It was just this endless cycle of earning
millions and losing millions. And tax fraud.
Right. In 2017, she was convicted for failing
to pay taxes on about $2 .3 million in earnings.
He served a year in prison for that. But all
of this, the arrests, the money problems, the
bizarre behavior, it all seems to circle back
to one thing. Addiction. Addiction. And the story
of how his addiction started is one of the most
heartbreaking things I have ever heard. It really
changes how you see everything. It's the rosebud
of his life. It's the absolute root of the trauma.
And for this, we have to go back to Reddy Ron.
The mentor we mentioned earlier, the rapper that
a young DMX beatboxed for. Exactly. DMX was 14
years old. He looked up to this guy. It was his
birthday, apparently. And they were celebrating.
And what did Reddy Ron do? According to DMX's
own account, Reddy Ron passed him a marijuana
cigarette. A blunt. DMX had never smoked before,
but he wanted to be like his mentor, so he smoked
it, thinking it was just weed. It wasn't. What
was it? It was laced with crack cocaine. Kenny
didn't know. He had no idea. He said he felt
a rush he'd never felt before. His heart started
racing. His head was spinning. And then he found
out what it was. He was furious. He was hurt.
He confronted him and said, why would you do
that to me? I looked up to you. That's not just
an introduction to drugs. That's a violation.
It's assault. It's the poisoning of a child.
It is a profound betrayal of trust. by a father
figure. And addiction experts will tell you when
your introduction to a substance is traumatic
and non -consensual like that, especially at
such a developmental age, it completely rewires
the brain. Right. He wasn't partying. He was
tricked. And he spent the next 36 years fighting
that demon that was put inside him that day.
It reframes his entire struggle. He wasn't just
wild or out of control. He was fighting a biological
dependence that was forced on him when he was
just a kid. Exactly. And he really tried to stop.
He went to rehab many times, 2002, 2017, 2019.
He would cancel entire concert tours to put his
health first. He wanted to get better. He publicly
struggled with it. And that's the thing. He never
hit it. He let the whole world see the struggle.
Which brings us, unfortunately, to the final
chapter. The collapse. There was a warning shot
in February 2016. He was found unresponsive in
a Ramada Inn parking lot in Yonkers. The police
revived him with Narcan. At the time, his team
claimed it was an asthma attack, but the use
of Narcan strongly suggests opioids were involved.
And then April 2021. April 2nd, 2021. He suffered
a massive heart attack at his home. Reports indicate
it was likely triggered by an overdose. The critical
factor here was time. What do you mean by that?
Paramedics worked on him for 30 minutes to get
his pulse back. That is a very, very long time
for the brain to be without oxygen. He suffered
from what's called cerebral hypoxia. By the time
he got to White Plains Hospital, the damage was
catastrophic. He was on life support for a full
week. Yes. In a vegetative state with multiple
organ failure, the world held a vigil. It was
this strange week of everyone just praying for
a miracle. Fans gathered outside the hospital,
blasting his music, holding candles. It was a
really powerful scene. But on April 9th, 2021,
Earl Simmons passed away. He was only 50 years
old. 50. It feels so young. And it is. But then
you consider the life he lived, the abuse, the
addiction, the stress. In a way, it's a miracle
he survived as long as he did. The odds were
against him from day one. The send -off, though.
The send -off was fit for a king. Or maybe more
accurately, a general. It was incredible. The
celebration of life at the Barclays Center in
Brooklyn. You had Kanye West's Sunday Service
Choir performing. But the visual that I think
will stick with everyone forever is the procession.
The monster truck. A massive custom monster truck
carrying his red casket with long -lived DMX
painted on the side. Driving. through the streets
of New York, and behind it, hundreds and hundreds
of rough riders on motorcycles, popping wheelies,
revving their engines. It was loud. It was aggressive.
It was perfect. He was exactly how he should
have gone out. Exactly. And the funeral service
itself, the homegoing celebration, had that red
casket, and it was labeled with one word, faith.
But there was a moment during the tributes that
caused a little bit of a stir. Lyre Cohen again.
The Def Jam executive who signed him. Yes. In
his tribute, he called DMX a gremlin. A gremlin?
That sounds pretty insulting. It sounded very
odd to the public. But in context, he was trying
to distinguish between Earl Simmons, who he described
as a sweet, wonderful man in DMX, the gremlin,
or the artistic beast that took over when the
microphone was on. It was an affectionate, if
maybe clumsy, way of describing that duality
we've been talking about. The man versus the
beast. So we look back now. What is the legacy?
Where do we put him? Oh, it's massive. First,
he redefined the genre commercially. We talked
about the shiny suit era. DMX ended that single
-handedly. He made it okay to be gritty again.
He proved you didn't need a polished, radio -friendly
image to sell tens of millions of records. He
also changed the emotional landscape of hip -hop.
Correct. He made it okay to cry. He embodied
emotional honesty. Before DMX, being hard meant
being emotionless. DMX showed that being hard
meant facing your pain, screaming about it, and
praying about it. He gave men, specifically black
men in America, permission to be vulnerable.
And statistically, he just stands alone. 75 million
records sold. The only artist with those first
five albums debuting at number one. I mean, that
record might stand for a very, very long time.
And culturally, he's still here. You've got the
movie Deadpool using X Gone Give It to Ya, which
introduced him to a whole new generation of kids
who weren't even born in 1998. And the tributes
after his death. Everyone from LeBron James to
Viola Davis. The New York State Senate declared
December 18th Earl DMX Simmons Day. He's enshrined
in the culture. There was a posthumous album
too, right? Exodus? Yeah, released in 2021. It
featured Jay -Z, Nas, even Bono from U2. It felt
like a final gathering of the greats to honor
him. You know, when we look at DMX, it's so easy
to get caught up in the barking and the bikes
and the arrests. But when you really unpack it
like we have today, you see a man of such incredible
extremes. Extreme talent, extreme pain. and extreme
faith. He was the divine master of the unknown
who took the unknown struggles of the streets,
the addiction, the abuse, the loneliness, and
he made them known to the entire world. He made
us look at the darkness. And he was always, always
trying to bring some light into it. So here's
the question we want to leave you with. DMX changed
hip -hop by stripping away all the glamour and
showing the ugly, raw truth. In today's music
landscape, which is so highly curated, so polished
for social media, so incredibly brand safe, is
there even room for another artist as raw and
unfiltered as DMX? Or was he a once in a lifetime
phenomenon that the industry would never allow
to happen today? That really is the question.
Think about it. And please check the show notes
for the full list of sources we used for this
deep dive. Thanks for listening. See you next
time.