If you’re a fan of DMX you already know everything about him. By now, you’ve likely read the stream of tributes that have come out since his passing last week. I wasn’t even sure if I should write anything about it. What the hell would I have to add? I’ve never even met the guy. I did have a funny incident with him and a bathroom at his birthday party back in the day.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t a big fan of DMX’s music when it came out. I was slowly emerging from my underground hip hop backpack days when I started my career as a journalist at Blaze, a hip hop publication from Vibe. It was 1998 and for me, it was all about lyrical dexterity and this dude was barking. WHAT?!
I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. There were some heated arguments about X at the office. A coworker, who’d done a bid, took me aside one time in the office kitchen to explain to me X’s appeal. He said X was speaking for the dirty, hungry, grimy cats who couldn’t get into the jiggy clubs but instead waited outside to rob the drunk party revelers who’d spent the night popping bottles of Cristal.
His breakdown helped a bit but I never ended up bumping X’s CDs like that. I enjoyed his guest appearances. I still don’t think any of his albums are classics. His music, to me, was better felt. His songs ignited every party. I loved his shows. I was lucky enough to see him at a few Summer Jams, the closing night of The Hard Knock Life Tour in Miami, and Ruff Ryders/Cash Money Tour in New Orleans. The first and only times I’ve ever seen grown men in the audience cry at a concert was at DMX’s shows.
In the last few years, there have been a few documentaries that have come out about celebrities who lived through very public implosions. Whitney. Amy. Britney. I felt bad after I’d watch each one. Obviously their hardships. The ways in which certain people close to them took advantage of them and betrayed their trust.
But mostly I felt bad about the jokes I’d cracked about them during certain difficult moments in their lives. The cheap laughs about their addictions, their mental breakdowns, and their appearances. Luckily society, for the most part, has gotten a lot more understanding and empathetic about those things since then.
We laughed at DMX too. At his numerous arrests, his mugshots, his erratic behavior. If you weren’t there then you don’t really know. Once his star faded, a familiar cycle took place. The one where you fall from grace, hit rock bottom publicly, and survive, and somehow manage to still laugh at yourself about all of it. Well, the world will love you even more because of it. His ability and willingness to laugh at and in spite of his stumbles put us all at ease.
I don’t really know what you’re supposed to do when someone famous you were once a fan of passes away. I don’t like that I allowed some of the reactions to bother me. I certainly understand our need to romanticize and hyperbolize when such deaths occur. Sometimes, it feels disingenuous. It feels self-serving. It feels like parts of history are being rewritten for the most dramatic effect. Is it our constant desire to make sense of death?
Collective grieving online is a rather newer experience. Like everything on social media, it can bring you joy, anger, frustration, sadness, relief, and every other emotion available. It can feel like there’s a race for the best take. For the likes and RTs. One of my best friends can’t stand that people post photos of themselves with the recently deceased celeb. He doesn’t understand why it bothers him tho. And sometimes it can make us feel less alone in our grief.
I watched all the videos and read all the threads about DMX enjoying life, spending time with strangers, making kind gestures, dancing, singing, and laughing. When he was admitted to the hospital I showed my lady the “Slippin’” video. I told her a bit about his difficult childhood and remarked that he always had a youthful vulnerability in his eyes. How could you not care for him?
I saw a Tweet with a vid of X playing with one of his 15 children. It said something about how he was a loving father. I thought about how easy it was for us to jump to these conclusions based on a short video. I thought about how we choose how we remember what we want to remember. I thought about our complexities and contradictions. I thought about how no one is ever just how one group remembers them to be. I thought about how we are a collection of memories and how often our memories fail us. I thought about how I had no idea if he was or was not a good father.
I saw a Tweet from NY Congressman Jamaal Bowman about Tashera Simmons, DMX’s ex-wife. They were married for 11-years and had four children together. I wondered how they were doing. I went to her IG and didn’t see anything about X’s passing. Then I went to their eldest son Xavier’s IG and also didn’t see anything about X’s passing. I wondered how they must have felt seeing everyone posting about someone who was once very close to them.
I listened to an episode of Freedom of Truth, Tashera’s podcast, from 2017 where she interviews Xavier. They both talk about feeling abandoned, neglected, mistreated, and feeling angry towards X at different moments in their lives but choosing to understand and forgive him in the end. I listened to Xavier’s music. On “Dogtown” he talks about watching his father beating his mother and being bullied at school.
I went back and listened to the podcast because Tashera said something that cleared up a lot of my mixed feelings about DMX’s passing. She said that X tried his best and that she didn’t resent him because she learned something about people, “They can’t give you what they don’t have,” she continues. “I believe that, from the bottom of my heart, he gave over and beyond what he was given.”
The people closest to us see the best and worst of us. They see our funny and angry and silly and moody and sad and grumpy and depressed and motivated and hateful and loving. They see it all. We trust them to show it to them.
Towards the end of the episode, Tashera tells Xavier about finding peace in her life. She recalls her rough childhood and she thinks about how she would have wanted to be treated by her parents when she was the age of her children. And how that is what she tries to do for them. Xavier begins to respond, takes a pause, and breaks down in tears.
Click the photo to read the story. I still stand by my Tweet.