Dark Man X
I hated running, but this was going to be an awesome run. My father had finally taken me to Best Buy and I bought a new portable CD player. I had been saving up for one. I choose a black Sony with 45 seconds anti-skip protection. A huge upgrade from the 15 second anti-skip on the one that I had “borrowed” from my mother. That one would often skip and freeze while my overweight frame pounded the pavement on my runs through the neighborhood.
After I got home I immediately changed into shorts and a sweatshirt. I put one of my favorite running CD’s in my new toy. Then I put on my headphones and turned the volume dial all the way up.
The voice of DMX was blasted into my ears:
“Just ’cause I love my niggas (Ruff Ryders)
I shed blood for my niggas (Ryde or die)
Let a nigga holla, “Where my niggas?” (Get down or lay down)
All I wanna hear is, “Right here my nigga”
(We here nigga)
You won’t take this from me baby
You will not take this from me baby
Ya know, grrrrr”
The music was loud, violent, homophobic and full of rage. But the rage was far from senseless. When you feel completely alone and like no one cares about you — rage is the only sensible emotion. Because without it you would be sucked into depression and sadness. As a black teenager lucky enough to have a father it was beaten into me that crying is not the way I would make it in this white man’s world — if I made it at all.
Not that you need a father to teach you that lesson when you are black. In fact many of the black men I know who learned it at the earliest ages never knew their fathers.
We all learned it in a painful way.
Running through my parent’s backyard and across our neighbors yard towards the road I could feel my lungs constricting. Due to my severe asthma, running always felt like gasping air through a straw. More than a few times I had serious asthma attacks while running, but I had made the decision that I was going to get in shape, or die trying.
I rarely saw other people on my runs. It was the type of neighborhood where everyone has a house and a yard, but people were almost never outside. A small and quiet community that was surrounded by farms and forests, with the nearest store over two miles away. The only sound you were sure to hear while out was the barking of dogs as you passed by certain houses.
But the only barks I could hear came through my headphones. The hardcore rap lyrics about drugs, guns and violence included may references to dogs.
And barking was part of X’s style.
Even though running felt like suffocating I couldn’t stop. I had to get fit. Getting fit would make my life better. If I was fit people would start to like me. I would have more friends. People wouldn’t make fun of me. Plus it was who I was supposed to be.
Most white kids only know black people from TV. Which meant they know that all blacks are musical, funny, athletic or broken.
I was tired of being broken. So I kept running. The pounds came off and as expected more and more people started to like “me”.
-
They needed to “check” the CDs we brought with us on the mission trip to the Czech Republic. The church leadership wouldn’t tolerate us listening to vulgar music, even in the privacy of our own headphones. The chaperone checking my CDs’ was a short, older white man with a Fu Manchu moustache. He was a huge fan of country music. I put the first CD in the player and quickly hit the back button so that the last track of the album started playing instead of the first.
The voice of DMX blasted out:
Let us pray:
I thank you Lord for my birth and everything that’s followed
I thank you Lord for today and I will pray for tomorrow
I thank you Lord for the love of my life and a friend
I made a promise and I’m loving my wife ’til the end
I thank you Lord for your guidance ’cause it’s all that counts
And right here, right now, Lord this is your house
I thank you Lord for a dream that came true to light
And I ask you to bless everybody in this room tonight
I don’t always do the right thing and I ask you to forgive me..”
The devout Christian man was transfixed. When the prayer ended and the song started he pulled off the headphones and looked me in the eyes. I could see the look of rapture as he said:
“Amazing brother, I can feel the holy spirit through this man when he prays.”
Despite the fact the song is positive and builds off the prayer the rugged hip hop beat and fast rap lyrics quickly took him out of his zone. He listened for a few more seconds, smiled and told me that the album was appropriate for the trip.
His reaction bummed me out a bit. If X’s emotion and heart moved him so much in a form that he was familiar with, I would have expected him to at least listen to the whole song. Was the bass of the beat that disagreeable to his ears? Is it that difficult to understand rap lyrics? Would he instead prefer Johnny cash singing:
“Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bed
I stuck that lovin’ .44 beneath my head”
But on the other hand I was glad he didn’t love the song. He might have wanted to hear another song on the album. Then not only would I not be allowed to take it on the trip, but it also would have been confiscated and destroyed. While there is no doubt I also would have been punished, I had major doubts if anyone would try to understand “why” I liked the music.
Of course as a confused teenager I imagine the best answer I would have come up with is “Because I like it”.
-
“What we seeing is!
The streets, the cops, the system, harassment (uh-huh)
The options, get shot, go to jail, or getcha ass kicked
(Aight) The lawyers, the part, they are, of the puzzle (uh-huh)
The release, the warning, “Try not, to get in trouble” (damn!)
The snitches, the odds (uhh), probation, parole (what?!)
The new charge, the bail, the warrant, the hole (damn!)
The cell, the bus, the ride, up North (uh-huh)
The greens, the boots, the yard, these hearts (uhh!)
The fightin, the stabbin, the pullin, the grabbin (what?!)
The riot squad with the captain, nobody knows what happened
(What?!) The two years in a box, revenge, the plots (uhh!)
The twenty-three hours that’s locked, the one hour that’s not
(Uhh!) The silence, the dark, the mind, so fragile (aight!)
The wish, that the streets, would have took you, when they had you
(Damn) The days, the months, the years, despair
One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer”
-
“That nigga X is a crack head. Don’t get it twisted he can spit, his music is fire and the nigga crazy, legit crazy you hear me, but the nigga smokes crack.”
Sitting outside my mans cell in Federal prison we are talking hip hop. My man is from New York and says he doesn’t know DMX personally but word gets around. He claims to have dealt with the L.O.X. in his past. The L.O.X. are a hardcore rap trio on the same record label as DMX. My man goes on to talk about how real they are. If you wanted pounds of that loud back in the day they had it on lock.
He keeps talking and I think about all the crackheads we were locked up with. Most of them were clearly mentally ill. And they all had real numbers. When the mandatory minimum sentence is five years for five grams, and 10 years for 10 grams (or 100 times as severe as the mandatory punishment for powdered cocaine) you didn’t need to be a kingpin to get 20 or 30 years. Especially if it wasn’t your first charge. The Fair Sentencing Act which would send many of these mentally unwell men home very soon.
Most of these men were as unprepared as they were excited. None of us were shocked to see them back a few months after their “release”.
-
According to his Wikipedia page DMX became addicted to crack when he was 14 years old. He also suffered from Bi polar disorder and severe asthma.
-
Holly, a white woman, stumbles in at 5am looking exhausted. She is the personal training manager and it’s that time of the month where she had to hand calculate our paychecks from the countless slips of paper that tracked our training sessions. Sitting down at the desk next to me she says:
Sometimes you gotta drink some coffee,
Put on some gangsta rap.
And handle your shit.
She closes the door and starts a playlist on her phone. After a few songs “Party Up” — DMXs most well known song comes on. Despite our different backgrounds we both start rapping along.
-
“I’m gon’ live forever, I’m never gon’ die
Only thing I fear is that I’m never gon’ fly
Carry my weight but I’m never gon’ cry
Shit I think a nigga straight ’cause I’m never gon’ lie
Now if I take what he gave me and I, use it right (uh-huh)
In other words if I listen and, use the light (uh-huh)
Then what I say will remain here, after I’m gone
Still here, on the strength of a song, I live on (hmm)”
Earl Simmons (December 18, 1970 — April 9, 2021)
Blessed is the true Judge.
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