His stepdad, who hung a Sopranos poster in their downstairs computer room, didn’t seem to mind when we watched SpikeTV. After school, his mom would bake us frozen bagel bites as we sat around shooting rocket launchers in Halo. While my parents were actively screening what I watched and listened to, going so far as to Google the lyrics to albums I wanted to buy, Andrew’s were decidedly more laissez-faire. Or, should I say, how my friend Andrew discovered him.īefore Napster and the Pirate Bay, explicit content was shared person-to-person in real time, on burned CDs or in family computer rooms. He also crossed over to the silver screen, using the rapper/actor archetype established by Tupac to help grow his fan base, with roles in Belly, Romeo Must Die and 2003’s Cradle 2 the Grave, which is how I discovered DMX. Bolstered by ubiquitous singles, including “What’s My Name,” “Party Up (Up in Here), and “Where The Hood At,” he became the first artist to ever have their first five albums debut at number one on Billboard.
Over the next five years, DMX would push rap’s popularity to staggering new heights. But while songs like “The Intro,” found the rapper predicting his eventual triumph over everyday evil (“Bitches gon' give me head for free/ cause they see/Who I'ma be, by like 2003”), few expected him to be so Nostradomus about it. Songs like “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem” stripped the genre of Bad Boy’s Cristal and COOGI sweaters, exposing listeners to the horrors of life on the street, and the spiritual war they sparked in the mind and soul of DMX. The rapper’s 1998 debut, It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot, attracted critical and commercial acclaim, snagging the top spot on the Billboard 200 in its first week, and subsequently signalling gangster rap’s return to grittier roots.