Image via Getty/Vallery Jean
“The shit I see every day brings tears to my eyes/ How I holla at my niggas brings ears to my cries”
DMX’s opening bars on LL Cool J’s “Fuhgidabowdit” summate one of an artist’s most important duties. For all the armchair A&R-ing we do while talking about what makes a great artist, the answer is very simple: be relatable. In a suffering society, that often means sharing pain with the millions who are also “finding meaning from their suffering,” like he famously expressed on “Slippin.”
Those who related to DMX’s struggles are the same people who are calling him their all-time favorite artist in the wake of his tragic death at the age of 50. To them, he became the greatest soon after he gained national recognition with his first two albums, snarling over Swizz Beatz and Dame Grease production with the kind of fury that could only be a defense mechanism for immense pain.