Meanwhile, Method Man and Redman ladle the cut with punchlines, and DMX uses his verse to shout out energetic ski-mask threats. Produced by Erick Sermon, LL Cool J’s street hit from his 1997 album Phenomenon is not only famed for inaugurating Def Jam’s late-Nineties “Survival of the Illest” era, but also for sparking a subsequent war of words between seasoned vet Uncle L and brash newcomer Canibus. LL Cool J featuring Method Man, Redman, Canibus, and DMX, “4, 3, 2, 1” (1997) Here are 16 of DMX’s most essential songs. Effortlessly balancing raw charisma with hit-making savvy, X had a major impact on the sound and direction of an era in hip-hop, and the catalog he built stands as a landmark of passionate, profound performance. The Yonkers, New York, rapper, who died April 9th at age 50 after being hospitalized with a heart attack days earlier, burst onto the scene in the Nineties with one of the most distinctive voices on the radio - a commanding presence on the mic, from his earliest guest appearances to the five straight multi-platinum albums he released starting in 1998. “ you couple that with the aggression he also used in his music, it was subversive and game changing … I don’t think there is a Chance the Rapper speaking so confidently about Jesus and his need for Jesus without ‘Prayer’ or ‘Lord Give Me a Sign.DMX was a larger-than-life force in rap music at the turn of the millennium. “ spoke specifically about Jesus … to talk positively, inquisitively, passionately, reverently, and even at times desperately about Jesus … wasn’t new to Black ‘secular’ music but that was reserved for R&B acts or if you rapped and you spoke about Jesus at award shows,” Patton said. Steve Patton, who writes and speaks on hip hop and Christianity, told Sojourners over text that the way DMX spoke about his faith was “boldly unique” in hip hop. “There is a season for everything and a time for every matter under the heavens,” DMX read, quoting Ecclesiastes 3 with his iconic and passionate voice. In 2020, DMX led an Instagram Live Bible study of Ecclesiastes, with over 14,000 people tuning into the stream, according to CBS News. In a profile for GQ, “Dark Man X: The Resurrection,” Mark Anthony Green wrote that “ a devout believer in God, DMX looks at the bad, all of it, as testimony.” He told rapper Talib Kweli that he was 14 years old when another rapper tricked him into smoking cocaine. One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer.”ĭMX struggled with addiction throughout his life.
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The days, the months, the years, despair. The wish, that the streets, would have took you, when they had you. The options, get shot, go to jail, or getcha ass kicked,” DMX rapped on the song “ Who We Be.” “The silence, the dark, the mind, so fragile. “What we seeing is: The streets, the cops, the system, harassment. She said that the “theology and the highs and lows” of DMX’s life had “spoken to me more than all the systematic theology I learned in seminary.”ĭMX was known for his gruff vocals and tough delivery, and popularly known for songs like “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem,” and “Party Up (Up In Here).” DMX’s songs told the stories of his life, often combining conceptions of the secular and sacred. In 2012 he was ordained as a deacon in his church in Arizona, and in 2016 he announced that God was calling him to become a pastor.Īnthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said on Twitter that DMX was an icon “of the rap game, but also person not afraid, despite all of his frailties, to call on God regularly.” His first label release was It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot, followed by Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. From early in his career, DMX - which stood for Dark Man X - filled his music with theological and spiritual references.