The Triumph and Tragedy of DMX
It’s tough to make indelible memories if you never leave your damn house and spend your days tapping away at a laptop. That’s one of the many reasons the last year has been so difficult.
I’m a deeply self-conscious, painfully self-aware homebody but I live for the thrill of live performance, for those unforgettable nights I get to experience my favorite artists live and in person.
That powerful, profound spiritual connection between artist and fan is at the core of You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me and The Weird Accordion to Al: Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition.
So it is perhaps unsurprising that my two most vivid memories of the late DMX are both live. Otherwise they are wildly different and represent both the giddy highs and agonizing lows of a singularly checkered career.
My first vivid memory of DMX came when he co-headlined the Hard Knock Life Tour with Jay-Z, with the dynamic duo of Method Man and Redman and DJ Clue as the opening acts. This was 1999, when Def Jam was far and away the hottest and most popular hip hop label in the world and Jay-Z and DMX were its marquee stars.
I saw the tour during its stop at the massive Rosemont Horizon, just outside of Chicago and I could be mistaken but even though the tour took its name from a Jay-Z anthem I distinctly recall DMX closing rather than Jay-Z.
THAT’s how volcanic and undeniable DMX was at the height of his popularity. Even Jay-Z, a popular choice for greatest rapper of all-time and a peerless live performer, didn’t want to go on after DMX because his set could only suffer by comparison.
In that respect it was a little like The Rolling Stones following James Brown in The T.A.M.I Show. It didn’t matter how sexy or dynamic or charismatic The Rolling Stones might have been at the start of their glorious career: compared to James Brown they were a bunch of pasty-faced Limey losers with all of the energy and excitement of Jeb Bush speech.
I did not go to the show a DMX fan. Being a tedious and mostly wrong twenty-three year old hip hop writer I was on record as finding DMX excessively derivative of Tupac Shakur and didn’t care for Swizz Beatz’s production.
But I could not deny the power and intensity of DMX as a live performer. He was mesmerizing, raw, a force of nature, a raspy-voiced angel-demon with a direct line to both heaven and hell. He was the streets. He was gospel. He was a preacher fighting an all-out, ultimately losing war with his demons and his compulsions.
But more than anything, DMX in his prime was a goddamn star. He didn’t just conquer rap; he was also a movie star who headlined big-budget, Joel Silver-produced hits like Exit Wounds and Cradle 2 the Grave as well as the cult classic Belly.
My second unforgettable live experience with DMX came thirteen years later when DMX was slated to play the 2012 Gathering of the Juggalos in Cave-In-Rock, Illinois the same night as The Game.
I was skeptical that DMX and The Game would show up. DMX at the Gathering seemed too good to be true for a very good reason: it WAS too good to be true.
The night DMX was scheduled to perform that evening’s host, Dustin “Screech” Diamond, insisted that neither DMX nor The Game would be performing because they were scared of Juggalos.
Less than a decade later both Diamond and DMX are gone.
I can’t say I was surprised that DMX was a no-show. I would have been shocked, in fact, had he shown up.
By 2012 X’s best days were over. He released five albums in the first five years of his recording career, including three straight albums that debuted at number one, and only two since 2003’s The Grand Champ, the last of which, 2012’s Undisputed, came out nine years ago.
It’s easy to figure out why DMX was unable to maintain the extraordinary success of his early albums and films. He was too hot and too huge not to burn out quickly.
Drugs, fame and mental illness proved a fatal cocktail for DMX, just as they have for so many other great artists who died young. X’s life was ultimately a tragedy and a cautionary warning but it was also a triumph and it’s important not to lose sight of all that he accomplished before darkness consumed him and snuffed out his inner light for good.
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