In his last years, DMX became more of a human to me than he was during the bombardment of headlines in the 2000’s. A continuation of the media’s push to paint a picture of out of control characters, like Ol’ Dirty before him. One headline after another, but rarely would there be a deeper look into what had happened and what preceded it. Things don’t just happen. Nor do people change overnight. But they do become stars and receive international attention overnight.

It was a friend at work who showed me the Drink Champs video of him praying. That made an impact on me. He was in an environment he trusted, and let his guard down. For now we saw in all honestly the man that had been struggling for so long with addiction and more. Praying to god to be better. Off course there were the tv run ins earlier, with Oprah and Dr. Phil or something. Again, that is not exactly a safe environment. Not the tree of trust like in the Old School with Will Ferrell.

Must have been after Grand Champ that I started paying less attention to his output. Which is the reason that it took me around 10 years to discover songs like Come Tru (Move) with Busta. Interestingly enough, this is also the period that his output started slowing down. With a gap from 2006 to 2012.

Turns out this gap had a reason: DMX was working on a double album of which one side would be gospel. Rolling Stone did a write up of the project and the people involved back in 2021. A long read I can really recommend if you want to get a better idea of who DMX was.

Now hopefully this project will still see the light of day one day. Because his last album, Exodus, really felt incomplete to me. You could feel that verses needed to be added by X. But sadly he was already gone. R.I.P.

How DMX Met the Devil in God’s Country:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/dmx-gospel-album-1271728/

PS: Fuck Joe Arpaio