Apr
Get At Me Dog Remembering The Life Lyrics & Legacy of DMX
The legendary rapper died at age 50 on Friday after suffering a heart attack.
“Either let me fly or give me death / Let my soul rest, take my breath / If I don’t fly I’ma die anyway / I’ma live on, but I’ll be gone any day.” — DMX, “Let Me Fly”
The world is mourning the greatest rapper ever to spit, bark, growl, and snarl into a microphone. DMX was one of rap’s most unique personas, releasing ferocious hits and following it up with soul-bearing hymns. He was a force of nature during an incredible run from 1998 through 2003, and his apex remains one of the greatest creative and commercial peaks of any rapper. X struggled with addiction and legal trouble his whole life, and his demons would define the latter part of his career. Despite those flaws, there’s been a genuine outpouring of support since his passing because he was a beloved figure whose music lives on in people’s hearts.
DMX was a one-of-a-kind rapper, but duality was his calling card. “Everybody knew Earl, but there was another Earl,” he once rapped. His lyrics were often poetic and symbolic—loaded with motifs of canines and cats, light and dark, dreams and nightmares—but he was also visceral, comfortable bringing a chainsaw to the slaughter or soaking his chiseled physique in blood. He had a bombastic delivery, but his verses had smooth transitions. His life was filled with pain, yet he rapped like he was invincible. He was a complicated figure who spoke from the heart, tough as nails yet never afraid to cry.
His signature songs included hardcore slugfests like “What’s My Name,” “Who We Be,” and “Get At Me Dog,” yet he also shined on lighter tracks like “How’s It Goin’ Down,” “What These B-tches Want,” or the unflinchingly honest “Slippin.” His albums featured the “Damien” trilogy—songs where he conversed with the devil—and he titled his debut, It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot. But that album also included “The Convo,” a song where he speaks with his God, and he ended his live shows and albums with prayers.
The opening lines to the second verse of the It’s Dark cut “I Can Feel It” featured many characteristics of his style:
When he shot to stardom in the late ‘90s, his peers were sporting shiny suits and getting jiggy. “Let my man and them stay pretty, but I’ma stay sh-tty,” he rapped on “Get At Me Dog.” X valued strength, spirituality, and, most of all, survival. His contemporaries were quick to switch styles to keep up with the times, but X achieved platinum success without ever compromising his booming synth-driven sound.
The Yonkers MC remains one of the all-time best-selling rappers, having sold over 23 million records in his career. He became the biggest rap star in the world following the deaths of 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. He was so big in 1998 he once claimed he made $144 million for Def Jam that year. In his autobiography E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX, he recounts hearing Lyor Cohen saying, “DMX is going to save the company!”
His charisma carried over to the big screen, where he starred in movies like Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, and hip-hop cult classic Belly. On the 2001 song “We Right Here,” he alluded to his movie career saying, “I can go away for a minute/Do some other sh-t, but bounce right back” before boasting about his sales:
The line wasn’t an exaggeration; he was the first artist to have five straight albums debut at No. 1. He was beloved by the streets, but his appeal went far beyond. His performance at Woodstock ‘99 highlights the pinnacle of his appeal; he was one of the few rappers who graced a stage that was mostly headlined by rock acts. During a recent appearance on Drink Champs, DMX declared his Woodstock performance his most memorable, noting how there were so many fans that “the people blended with the sky.” He didn’t need a hype man on stage; the fans chanted every word back to him.
Swizz Beatz once told me: “They don’t understand that people couldn’t come on stage after X—the biggest of the big. We were on tours with everybody. Nobody could follow up after X.”
The Woodstock performance tasted so sweet because the ride to it was so rough.
Earl Simmons was born on December 18, 1970 in Mount Vernon, New York, and raised in nearby Yonkers. His childhood left him with traumatic scars; his father left his family shortly after his birth, he suffered from asthma, and was abused by his mother so badly she once knocked out his teeth. He was kicked out of school for fighting and throwing chairs at teachers. He would spend his teenage years in group homes, wandering the streets, and doing robberies. He detailed his “cruddy life” on “Slippin’” rapping:
On “Slippin,” he also raps about his drug use (“Damn, look how that rock got him”) and his dreams of rap stardom, though he doesn’t mention his introduction to rap was intertwined with his introduction to crack. Last year on Talib Kweli’s People’s Party podcast, X recounted how he started rapping under the guidance of local Yonkers rapper Ready Ron, who he saw as an older brother. His mentor betrayed him, tricking him into smoking a blunt laced with crack when he was 14-years-old.
“Why would you do that to a child?” DMX asked, fighting back tears. “He was, like, 30, and he knew I looked up to him. Why would you do that to someone who looks up to you?”Ready Ron may have given DMX the curse, but he also introduced him to his gift. “He introduced me to the best part of my life, which would be rap,” he added. X honed his skills as a battle rapper for the next 13 years, going from neighborhood to neighborhood battling anyone brave enough to face his wrath (including a young Jay-Z). In the BET documentary series Ruff Ryders: Chronicles, he recalled how most of his opponents turned into his fans by the end of the battle.
His talent was clear, but it would take years to blossom. He was featured in the Source’s coveted Unsigned Hype column in 1991 (for comparison, Biggie got his a year later). He signed a single deal with Ruffhouse Records, resulting in the 1992 song “Born Loser.” It didn’t take off, but you could see the seeds of his style growing underneath the forefront of his traumatic upbringing:
He was eventually dropped from the label, but the money from the deal helped him and the Ruff Ryders built out Powerhouse Studios in Yonkers. X spent the next few years building a buzz on mixtapes. The grinding eventually led to a legendary meeting with Lyor Cohen in 1997 brokered by a young Irv Gotti.
When Cohen got to the studio, it was filled with rappers not named DMX who all wanted a shot at rapping for the industry bigwig. When X finally showed up, the crowd parted “like the Red Sea.” There was only one problem: DMX’s jaw was wired shut after catching a recent beatdown (an occupational hazard for a stickup kid). It didn’t matter. Long before Kanye West would make a song out of it, X began rapping through the wire. “I could feel the wires in my mouth pulling, straining to keep my jaws together,” he wrote, in his autobiography.
Even those wires couldn’t contain X’s manic energy. He broke through the wires and kept rapping until Cohen finally declared, “DMX is the man!” and signed him on the spot. For DMX, breaking the wires was like breaking out of the cage, the dog was finally loose. He would go to terrorize the rap game the rest of the year with show-stealing verses on posse cuts like Ma$e’s “24 Hrs. to Live” and LL Cool J’s “4, 3, 2, 1,” before scoring his own hits in 1998 with “Ruff Ryders Anthem” (a song he didn’t actually want to make) and “Get At Me Dog.“ Years after he first began making noise, he had finally conquering the rap game.
Even though he ran the charts, it didn’t mean he could outrun his demons. When he wasn’t breaking Billboard records, he was breaking the law getting caught in an endless string of incidents. Once his five-year peak ended, there were more lowlights than highlights. Contradictions abounded. He loved dogs but was hit on animal cruelty charges. He was one of Def Jam’s biggest stars ever, but then-label president Jay-Z had to clear $12 million in debt for him to leave the label. He was compassionate, but his lyrics were routinely homophobic or misogynistic.
Like all of us, he was flawed. Unlike most of us, he was also adored by his fans. Since his death, people like Eve, Busta Rhymes, Jet Li, and many others have shown love to X on social media. You’d expect that from his collaborators, but the same affection has been shown from figures you might not expect, like Tony Hawk, comedian Lilly Singh, and pop star Charlie Puth.
Swizz Beatz delivered a touching eulogy on Instagram, highlighting X as a humanitarian. Many others have been reflecting on the many ways he touched people’s lives. Twitter has been lit up with anecdotes that would be hard to believe if they were about anyone less genuine. There’s stories dancing at a random wedding, mopping the floors of a Waffle House, and giving back to Children’s Village, the foster home where he spent part of his childhood. There are so many stories that one Twitter user lamented, “I’m literally the only person who didn’t get to meet DMX damn lol.”Unlike many other legends, he actually did get a chance to smell the flowers. When he squared off with Snoop Dogg during Verzuz, Snoop played his hype man, rapping the names of the women from his “What These B-tches Want” verse alongside him, even though they were supposedly battling. On Drink Champs, X expressed surprise that everyone from Lil Wayne to Bono was down to help out on his next album, leading host N.O.R.E. to tell the man whose first single was called “Born Loser” that, “The world wants to see you win.”
On Drink Champs, DMX mentioned how his next album was near completion. For better or worse, now that he’s gone, his posthumous album will be highly anticipated. We’ll all get one more chance to rock out with X. For all the pain he experienced in his life, we did get to see him win. That’s how we choose to remember him. His life may be over, but his legacy lives on because just like he told GQ in 2019, “My music isn’t just for the moment, it’s forever.”
