Life is full of ups and downs, and that's true everyone sharing this crazy Earth.
But it's extra true of some people — like Earl Simmons, better known as DMX.
From his highs to his lows, here's the untold truth of DMX.
When CheatSheet compiled a list of times DMX was either sent to rehab, committed himself
to rehab, or had a near-death experience because of his addiction, it became painfully clear
just how long he struggled with drugs.
In 2017 alone, the year after he was resuscitated after a heroin overdose, he cancelled tour
plans twice to try to deal with his addiction.
It was a struggle that started years before his music career.
In 2020, X got candid with Talib Kweli on People's Party, when he said that it was the
same person who had introduced him to the world of hip-hop that also introduced him
to the substance that he would struggle with for the rest of his life: crack.
X had been just 14-years-old when he was given a blunt laced with the much more dangerous
narcotic.
As he recalled,
"He passed the blunt around and...
I hit [it].
I never felt like this before...
I later found out that he laced the blunt with crack…"
DMX continued,
"Why would you do that to a child?"
"Right."
"He knew I looked up to him."
He went on to say that drugs were never quite the problem — they were a symptom of a deeper
problem that went back through his childhood, and that's what came out in his music.
DMX told Rolling Stone in 2000,
"I didn't have much of a childhood.
It was always dark in our house, and depressing.
That's what I remember."
He grew up with four sisters who, he said, his mother always favored.
When it came to him, it was hand-me-down clothes and being relentlessly bullied — which,
in turned, caused him to act out even more.
A smart student who was easily bored, he got into his first serious fight in just first
grade.
That, he recalled, is when he stabbed a classmate in the face with a pencil, and from then on,
he was labeled as a problem.
He recalled,
"They thought I was a bad kid, pain in the ass.
They wanted to treat me like every other kid in the class.
Can't do that to me.
... I thought a lot more than every other kid in the class."
At the end of the school year, his mother dropped him off at what would be the first
of many institutions.
The result was a complicated relationship.
He told Rolling Stone:
"So many times, I thought about killin' [her].
But I would always think of how I would feel if she was gone, and I knew I wouldn't like
that.
No matter what she did, I knew I still loved her."
Fans are familiar with DMX's music and distinctive style, but when Rolling Stone got a peek into
his CD collection in 2000, there were some surprising things there — including Earth,
Wind, and Fire, Teena Marie, Donna Summer, Men at Work, and Regina Belle, among others.
X said that his taste in music very much came from a time, a place, and a feeling:
"When it was music playin', it was' cause people were over.
It was usually durin' the holidays, and they were havin' a good time.
... That's why I like these songs.
It was, like, the only time I was happy as a kid."
When he talked to Rolling Stone again in 2006, he was singing Bill Withers and the praises
of Lou Rawls — among other R&B classics, and adding a shout-out to early Michael Jackson.
He told them,
"I always had an awkward attraction to music.
Some people just listen to songs; I felt songs, as far back as I can remember."
DMX was riding along on a high point in 1999 — he had released two albums that went straight
to the top, but an announcement from MTV suggested that he wasn't about to forget where he came
from.
He was heading back to a group home in Dobbs Ferry, New York, called Children's Village.
He had been a resident there for around five of his teenage years, and it was his intention
to spend some quality time there.
He spent the weekend, celebrated his birthday there, and talked one-on-one with some of
the current residents.
GQ says that he first got noticed in 1987, when he was selling his own mix tapes.
But it's also worth noting that the Children's Village home he spent his adolescence in wasn't
a pleasant place to be.
In 2020, The Hudson Independent reported on a massive series of lawsuits that were being
brought against the home on behalf of former residents who accused the institution of a
range of offenses, including physical and sexual abuse, and negligence, covering a time
frame of 1970 to 1995.
Teenage heartbreaks can help us bridge the gap from childhood to adulthood, and when
DMX talked to GQ in 2019, he had no trouble answering the question about the first time
he'd had his heart broken.
He'd met a girl from Connecticut, he said, and what followed was the kind of obsessive
love that 17-year-olds are so good at.
He went to jail for robbery and she went back to Connecticut.
When he got out, he started looking for her.
Her mother directed DMX to where she was working, and after promising to meet him after she
got off of work, she left him waiting.
The mall closed, security booted him off the premises.
He added,
"I waited outside for like another hour.
I was like, 'Damn, maybe she just had to leave, maybe she had to get a ride..."
Later that night, X was at a local club.
He saw her, and when he said he didn't have any money, she simply scoffed at him and walked
away.
It stuck with him for years, and he always hoped he would meet her again, so he could
tell her who he was and what he'd become ... but not for the usual reasons:
"Not to throw it in her face, but I ain't even going to front.
I really just wanted to ask her why she did that."
Right from the beginning, DMX always took his music very, very seriously: GQ says he
once described it by saying it, quote, "isn't just for the moment — it's forever," so
it's admirable that he only wanted the stuff he really liked out there for eternity.
And that almost didn't include what became one of his biggest songs: "Ruff Ryders' Anthem."
He told GQ,
"I wrote it in 15 minutes.
I actually didn't want to write it.
I didn't want to do that song.
The beat was simple and repetitive."
Those were some harsh words, and it was only released because producer Swizz Beatz persuaded
him to include the song.
If he hadn't been so persuasive — or if X hadn't listened — it's entirely likely
no one would have ever heard it.
As it played out, it did get released and the people did respond.
When VH1 reached out to viewers for their top 100 Hip-Hop songs, "Ruff Ryders' Anthem"
came in at number 79.
Billboard liked it, too — it spent 20 weeks on the charts, and peaked at Number 33.
Aside from a few brief mentions in various song lyrics, Complex notes that DMX was hesitant
for a long time to talk about any mental health issues he struggled with.
While speculation ran rampant, he did touch on something in a 2020 episode of BET's Ruff
Ryders Chronicles that wasn't just surprising but painfully honest.
DMX said that there were "a few people" inside him and continued:
"They're different things.
There's a few things, a few people in me — they get me through life."
It very quickly became clear that he wasn't interested in elaborating:
"I wouldn't want anyone to know anything.
I don't talk about them.
... They're there to get me through life.
I don't know if I made them or if God gave them to me, or maybe circumstances and situations
did."
He wasn't the only one to mention them, and his ex-wife, Tashera Simmons, added that "X"
was simply another personality — and it was one that he had created to protect Earl.
According to her, Earl was "the child that could've been: and DMX once said that, quote,
"I'm Earl when I'm with my children."
She said, too, that X and DMX were two separate personalities.
"[X] is the angry one.
DMX is the entertainer; he's another protector of Earl, but so much nicer."
Rap really hit a stride in the late 1990s, and according to MTV, the world very nearly
saw a major supergroup assemble.
It would have been made up of DMX, Jay-Z, and Ja Rule, but according to Irv Gotti, the
occasional feud, argument, or bit of trash-talk that went public at the time was just the
tip of the iceberg.
It wasn't until a 2011 appearance on RapFix Live that Gotti told what might have been
something akin to the whole truth, and it started with,
"Jay and X didn't like each other at all.
And it was always competitive."
The whole thing went back to 1994, and a rap battle.
X, accustomed to being the winner, suddenly found he had some serious competition in Jay,
and he didn't like it.
Things just got more and more tense when the next year, X had been given the closing verse
on a collaboration before anyone else had even been consulted — and that added insult
upon insult.
More insults were traded in verse form, and what could have been a planned supergroup
fell apart before the idea even truly got off the ground.
In 2016, DMX got honest about his religious beliefs.
According to Deseret News, he wanted to become a pastor, and he added that he believed the
reason he had a career was because of God.
"You never know how far God is going to allow me to get or how many people He is going to
allow me to reach."
He went on to very literally practice what he preached, and in April of 2020, just as
it was becoming very clear how dangerous the COVID-19 pandemic was going to be, he held
a live Bible study on Instagram, before thousands of viewers.
His devotion was nothing new: in 2020, he told GQ that his favorite book growing up
had been a children's version of the Bible from the Jehovah's Witness and that he'd read
the full Bible multiple times.
When asked about his goals, he said,
"I just need to have a purpose.
And I don't even know that purpose, because God has given me that purpose since before
I was in the womb, so I'm going to fulfill that purpose... whether I want to or not,
whether I know it or not, because the story has already been written."
Sometimes, truth really is stranger than fiction, and in 2014, Rolling Stone ran a story that
sounded like it just had to be fake: DMX was, apparently, going to go toe-to-toe with George
Zimmerman, the man who had been acquitted of his role in the death of Trayvon Martin,
in a boxing match.
Promotor Damon Feldman was already boasting that DMX had proudly said he was going to
"beat his ass," but at the time, nothing about the fight had been concretely decided.
Still, DMX said:
"I am going to beat the living s--- out of him...
I am breaking every rule in boxing to make sure I f--- him right up."
That was in the beginning of February, and just a few days later, Rolling Stone was making
another announcement: The fight had been cancelled.
What happened?
Originally, Feldman claimed he'd had a change of heart:
"Zimmerman was the wrong person to have in this.
I looked into the eyes of my son and daughter today and couldn't imagine someone killing
them and getting off scot-free.
... It was a tough decision because I could have made two million dollars here, but at
least I have my dignity."
But Sky News says that wasn't the whole story, and at the heart of the fight's cancellation
was a massive backlash and a wave of threats against those involved.
On April 2, 2021, media outlets began reporting that DMX had been hospitalized.
Reports describe an incident in which an apparent drug overdose led to a heart attack, which,
in turn, led to the rapper being rushed to the hospital.
Over the next few days, news reports on his condition continued to be sketchy, with some
claiming that he had been removed from life support and was capable of breathing on his
own, while others described him as being in a "vegetative state."
Relatives were allowed to visit his hospital room, and while the outside world waited for
an update, tributes and well wishes continued to flow in.
On April 9, as reported by People, DMX died in the hospital at 50-years-old.
His longtime lawyer, Murray Richman, summed him up like this:
"He is truly an amazing person.
He walked into a room, he lit up the room.
He couldn't help making you feel good in his presence."
If you or someone you know is struggling with drug addiction be sure to reach out to the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at 1-800-662-HELP
(4357).