DMX — REST IN ETERNAL PEACE (18/12/70 — 09/04/21)

Famed hip hop schol­ar Dr. Regina Brad­ley often describes the idea of hip hop sens­ib­il­it­ies which artic­u­lates how hip hop exists as a way of life, way of exist­ing, and mak­ing sense of the world that goes bey­ond the music itself.

If any­one has hip hop sens­ib­il­it­ies more than most it is none oth­er than Earl Sim­mons, bet­ter known as DMX.

The news of his passing at the age of 50 due to a drug over­dose and heart attack hit the hip hop world hard.

One of the reas­ons why this news has put an ache in our hearts was because of DMX the man, not just the entertainer.

In many ways the fact that he just by inches avoided that fatal knock on heaven’s door estab­lishes the over­all story of his life, which is, barely get­ting by.

He was Hip Hop’s wounded war­ri­or, a poet­ic and lyr­ic­al geni­us whose fero­cious deliv­er­ies and hard­core rhyms made him stand out above the rest because what you saw was what you got.

He had the strong storytelling skills of the Notori­ous B.I.G. with the aggress­ive man­ner­isms of a Tupac, Busta Rhymes, Ice Cube, and Eminem.

Sol­dier­ing his way out of a child­hood of poverty, viol­ence, crime, and abuse in Yonkers, New York to the heights of the game while nev­er let­ting the best of those hip hop sens­ib­il­it­ies be co-opted and com­mer­cial­ized to a cer­tain degree is what drew legions of fans to X.

There was noth­ing phony about him, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But his life and his very pub­lic struggles should remind us all about the sys­tem­ic fail­ure to address trauma, espe­cially that of black men.

DMX came of age at height of the rap­id grow­ing inequal­it­ies at those cru­cial inter­sec­tions of race and class along with the expand­ing pris­on indus­tri­al com­plex and the surge of crack cocaine ravaging com­munit­ies of color.

On the micro level, he was an aban­doned lost soul who was deprived of uncon­di­tion­al love all around him with the excep­tion of his beloved grandmother.

He was phys­ic­ally abused by his moth­er and after a series of troub­ling beha­vi­or and acts of crimin­al­ity, he was then dropped off at a reform school by his moth­er without him know­ing any­thing about it.

X grew into a young man with sear­ing anger and a trust of nobody and very few around him gave him that much needed shoulder to cry on, but soci­ety itself couldn’t wait to cast aside him and oth­er young black men and they had the pub­lic policies in place to do so.

His only sal­va­tion was music and that led him down the path of achiev­ing his own unique icon status.

But selling mil­lions of records and ador­ing fans doesn’t com­pensate for that uncon­di­tion­al love he missed out on and the suc­cess can even com­poun­ded those traumas.

Fur­ther­more, his battle with his addic­tions and oth­er lifelong demons should serve as a cau­tion­ary tale about the dangers of liv­ing in a soci­ety where a tox­ic defin­i­tion of man­hood is expected.

Men are taught from an early age that in order to be accep­ted and val­id­ated we have to be strong, tough, dom­in­ant, intim­id­at­ing and if we don’t then we are deemed weak, soft, sissy, or a wuss and none of us want to be seen in that light. We are told to not speak of our struggles and dis­play any level of vulnerability.

X him­self was caught in that trap that men are temp­ted to fall into and because of that he lost him­self in his battles with drugs and his own per­son­al short­com­ings when it came to him being a par­ent and hus­band and also at times a pro­duct­ive mem­ber of soci­ety. We should put that into the con­text of a man who nev­er knew any real sense of peace or con­tent­ment and was deprived of any oppor­tun­it­ies to redefine his manhood.

To sum up, DMX’s life and death should serve as that wake up call par­tic­u­lar for men in hip hop and beyond.

We need to reject these warped notions of man­hood and cre­ate spaces of heal­ing that can be attached to the music and cul­ture that gives so much light.

There also needs to be a broad­er talk about the lifelong impact of untreated trauma in a world in which those trau­mas are exacer­bated by insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism and classism.

The ruff ryder has been through so much and one can say that he is now at peace.

Rest in Peace X.

 

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I am a viol­ence pre­ven­tion edu­cat­or, act­iv­ist, journ­al­ist, aspir­ing film­maker, adjunct pro­fess­or of social justice and civic engage­ment at Domin­ic­an Uni­ver­sity in River Forest, Illinois. I am based in Chica­go, Illinois.

About Zachary Draves

I am a violence prevention educator, activist, journalist, aspiring filmmaker, adjunct professor of social justice and civic engagement at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois. I am based in Chicago, Illinois.