One more artist in heaven. A childhood friend was telling me lately that many, too many rap singers had bid farewell over the last few years. Quite true. Prodigy (2017), Mac Miller (2018), Nipsey Hussle (2019), MF Doom (2020)…The macabre list grew longer this week with the death of Earl Simmons, better known as DMX, at the age of fifty years old in a New York hospital. The rap artist passed away last Friday due to a heart attack caused by an overdose.

DMX inspired the youth all over the world, in his homeland of the United States of course, but also across the Atlantic Ocean, especially in Europe and Africa with tracks like X Gon’ Give It To Ya and Get It On The Floor (featuring Swizz Beatz). Growing popular in the end of the nineties, Simmons began by practicing beatbox on the underground scene of New York in 1984 before getting much experience with the famous battles depicted in the movie 8 Mile, where two fellows fight against each other with the words as a weapon. His notoriety, at his paroxysm in the beginning of the 2000s, brought him to release not less than eight studio albums. 

DMX, among others, collaborated with artists like The Lox, a hip-hop group from Yonkers, the city in the surroundings of New York where DMX spent most of his childhood. He also worked with Jadakiss, Styles P, Jay-Z, Marilyn Manson, Faith Evans, and 50 Cent, just to name a few.

Simmons did not hesitate to see beyond rap: his talents enabled him to start a career in cinema as well with about twenty movies to his credit: Romeo Must Die (2000) and Cradle 2 the Grave (2003) are surely amid his greatest ones. The one who was saying to the Rolling Stone magazine that he did not really have a childhood will undoubtedly have his name remembered by the hip-hop community and a bunch of youngsters that grew adults now for a while.