Deep Album Cuts Vol. 197: DMX
DMX is going up against Snoop Dogg with the next Verzuz song battle on Instagram on July 22nd, and I've been meaning to post an X playlist for a while now, so here goes.
DMX deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Prayer
DMX deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Prayer
2. Fuckin' Wit' D
3. Look Thru My Eyes
4. N****z Done Started Something (featuring The LOX and Ma$e)
5. ATF
6. Bring Your Whole Crew (featuring P. Killer Trackz)
7. Keep Your Shit The Hardest
8. The Omen (featuring Marilyn Manson)
9. It's All Good
10. Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood
11. Blackout (featuring Jay-Z and The LOX)
12. Comin' For Ya
13. Here We Go Again
14. The Professional
15. Good Girls, Bad Guys (featuring Dyme)
16. When I'm Nothing (featuring Stephanie Mills)
17. I'ma Bang
18. We Go Hard (featuring Cam'ron)
19. It's Personal (featuring Jadakiss and Styles P)
20. Cold World (featuring Adrenna Mills)
Tracks 1, 2, 3 4, and 5 from It's Dark And Hell Is Hot (1998)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 from Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood (1998)
Tracks 12, 13, 14 and 15 from ...And Then There Was X (1999)
Tracks 16 and 17 from The Great Depression (2001)
Track 18 from Grand Champ (2003)
Track 19 from Year Of The Dog...Again (2006)
Track 20 from Undisputed (2012)
DMX didn't have the longest reign on top, but few if any rappers have made a bigger impact in a shorter amount of time -- 3 enormous multiplatinum albums in under 2 years, plus a couple more platinum albums that kept him ubiquitous for a few years after that. 1997 hip hop wasn't entirely the simple shiny suit picture people make it out to be now -- it was the summer of Wu-Tang Forever after all -- but the way DMX's first two albums completely dominated 1998 and set the tone for what was to come was huge. I think he deserves a lot of credit for bringing street rap to new commercial heights at a time when an equally popular counterbalance to Bad Boy might otherwise have been hard to find. I mean, the fact that over half of this playlist is from one year doesn't even feel wrong, the same way half my CCR playlist was from 1969.
For my part, I associate It's Dark And Hell Is Hot with my first job. I washed dishes in a restaurant, and the other dishwasher played that album in the kitchen a hundred times. I mainly remember Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood for X's turn toward shock rap -- the cover art, the Marilyn Manson feature, and that amazing couplet that opens the first full song, "Bring Your Crew" ("I got blood on my hands and there's no remorse/ and got blood on my dick 'cause I fucked a corpse"). But listening back to these records now, I was surprised to realize that Flesh Of My Flesh might actually be my favorite DMX album, partly because the best songs aren't the singles like on some of his other records -- it's kind of crazy to think that "Keep Your Shit The Hardest" and "It's All Good" weren't all over the charts. And the violin solo at the end of "Flesh Of My Flesh" is so cool and unexpected.
DMX projected a particular image and sound so well on his biggest hits -- the barking, the anger, the anthems -- that I think his versatility has been forgotten a little bit. His albums had storytelling songs, songs where he'd pitch his voice up or down to have back-and-forth conversations with God and Satan, all sorts of flows, all sorts of nerdy ambitious MC stuff that came from the years and years he spent honing his craft before his career suddenly exploded. And although Swizz Beatz obviously launched the biggest career out of X's producers, Dame Grease and P. Killer Trackz really did the bulk of the best songs on those albums and had much more varied and sophisticated styles. Plus you get stuff like "I'ma Bang," a Just Blaze production from fall 2001 that sounds nothing like The Blueprint, much like the Just song I put on the Fabolous deep cuts playlist. And "We Go Hard" is one of my favorite No I.D. beats, it always surprised me how well DMX and Cam'ron could sound on a song together.
It's kind of entertaining to put on the albums and hear much brighter and more upbeat songs than anything he ever released as a single, like "Good Girls, Bad Guys," which is really entertaining but sounds like something he didn't want to make and only would've released as a single if the album didn't sell huge right out of the gate like it did. "When I'm Nothing" in particular is just incredible, DMX sounds oddly great shouting over this big beautiful disco groove. Maybe if these songs had been singles, X would've been all over radio a little longer but we'd look at him a bit more like we look at Ja Rule. But I think these songs are pretty enjoyable since they never got overexposed.
Obviously, DMX has had a lot of rough patches in more recent years, and you can hear his music decline over the course of his career. Even the version of 2012's Undisputed on streaming services that has explicit lyrics tags is actually a clean version, so I apologize for the terrible lyric edits on the last track on the playlist. And I skipped over the 2015 album that the label that released Undisputed put out without X's permission. There's also crap like a 2011 album of re-recordings of his greatest hits, the bad 2011 version of "Ruff Ryders Anthem" actually has more plays on Spotify than the 1998 original. But DMX has always been an underdog (no pun intended) that I want to root for, even in the Verzuz battle where Snoop easily has the upper hand, I hope he holds his own.
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on Friday, July 17, 2020 at 11:54 AM.
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