Earl Simmons (December 18, 1970 – April 9, 2021), known professionally as DMX, was an American rapper and actor. He is regarded as one of the most important figures of 2000s hip hop. His music is characterized by his "aggressive" rapping style, with his lyrical content varying from hardcore themes to prayers.
He began rapping in the early 1990s and released his debut album It's Dark and Hell Is Hot in 1998, to both critical acclaim and commercial success, selling 251,000 copies within its first week of release. DMX released his best-selling album, ... And Then There Was X, in 1999, which included the hit single "Party Up (Up in Here)". His 2003 singles "Where the Hood At?" and "X Gon' Give It to Ya" were also commercially successful. He was the first artist to debut an album at No.1 five times in a row on the Billboard 200 charts. DMX sold over 74 million records worldwide.
DMX was featured in films such as Belly, Romeo Must Die, Exit Wounds, Cradle 2 the Grave, and Last Hour. In 2006, he starred in the reality television series DMX: Soul of a Man, which was primarily aired on the BET cable television network. In 2003, he published a book of his memoirs titled E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX.
Early life
Earl Simmons was born on December 18, 1970, in Mount Vernon, New York. He was the son of 19-year-old Arnett Simmons and 18-year-old Joe Barker. Earl was Simmons' second child; she had given birth to a daughter, Bonita, two years prior, and later gave birth to one daughter, Shayla, and two stillborn sons. His father, Barker, was an artist who painted watercolor paintings of street scenes to sell at local fairs. Barker moved to Philadelphia and was largely absent from his life.
As a child, Simmons suffered greatly from bronchial asthma, being taken to the emergency room almost nightly due to him waking up unable to breathe. He was raised as a Jehovah's Witness but became disillusioned with the faith after an incident where he was hit by a drunk driver while crossing the street. A month later, an insurance representative went to his house to try and reach an agreement to prevent his family from suing. Simmons claims he was told that his family could have been awarded a settlement of $10,000 and possibly even more for the injuries he sustained. However, his mother rejected the settlement as she claimed that Jehovah's Witnesses are taught to be self-sufficient, although the group's official doctrine at the time did not prohibit suing or receiving settlements.
Simmons went through a disjointed childhood that included being beaten by his mother and her various boyfriends so badly that he lost teeth and sustained numerous bruises and cuts on his face. When Simmons was five years old, his family settled into the School Street Projects in Yonkers, New York. When he was six years old, his mother knocked out two of his teeth with a broom after he erased something in her notebook. At school, he threw chairs at teachers and stabbed another child in the face with a pencil. When he was seven, an aunt got him drunk on vodka. The same year, he was jailed for stealing cakes from a market. One summer, his mother locked him in his bedroom, allowing him to only exit for trips to the bathroom. At the end of the fifth grade, at age 10, Simmons was expelled from school and sent to the Julia Dyckman Andrus Children's Home for 18 months. X states that he actually enjoyed it there at first. He received 3 meals with a dessert every day, an allowance every week, colored televisions and stereos he could use, and occasional vacations. Also, for Christmas, the school gave each child $25. Every so often, Earl would receive visits from his family which he described as his favorite times. They would go out on the lawn and play frisbee, sleigh ride when it was snowy, and just socialise. Earl and a kid he met at the group home decided to experiment like kids do. They wanted to see if they lit a blue flame to the basement floor, would the floor turn blue. He was charged with arson, after this he and the kid (Adam) started fighting a lot and it became a major problem. X attempted to choke him to death one day and was taken from the normal school population and had to stay in an unused office during school hours. He also had to move out of his cottage and live in the infirmary. Later, Earl was sent to Children's Village. In what he described as a defining moment of betrayal, his mother tricked him by telling him they were just visiting the home, then she enrolled him there.
When he was 14, Earl returned to Yonkers. Simmons began living between the streets, his grandma's place, and couch surfing at a friend's house. This had been regular for X since he was a young child, even sleeping in Salvation Army clothing bins a few times. At a young age, he began to feel a connection to dogs, and started befriending stray dogs and even stealing dogs. During his time in group homes he had started beatboxing and became very engaged with Hip Hop. After performing for his friends, they encouraged Simmons to continue writing music at the behest of his teacher. When he returned home, Simmons met Ready Ron, a local rapper, who was impressed with Simmons' beatboxing skills and asked him to become his partner. Simmons chose the name "DMX", which came from an instrument he had used at the boys' home, the Oberheim DMX drum machine. It later was also interpreted as "Divine Master Of The Unknown" and "Dark Man X".
As a freshman at Yonkers Middle High School, DMX was the second-fastest on the track-and-field varsity team. However, he had bad grades and a sparse attendance record. He turned to robbery as a way of making money to eat and buy clothes, jewellery and supplies for his dog: his first was a purse snatch theft in Yonkers that netted him $1,000 (equivalent to $2,800 in 2022), which he used to buy a leather dog collar and dog harness for his dog, and a pair of Timberland boots for himself. After celebrating a friends birthday, X hit a blunt handed to him by Ready Ron. It was laced with crack, shortly after Earl had build up a strong addiction to crack. By the end of the year, he attended school just to rob people and was robbing three people per day to fund his addiction for crack. He also started carjacking. X was locked up for a few months for stealing a dog. Later after being released went to school with a shotgun strapped to his leg one day to commit a robbery, and a few days later was arrested again and sentenced to two years at Industry Institution, a low security unit in upstate New York. Two days in, Earl and his cellmate, a white kid from an upstate town, escaped. They walked three days in the snow to the town Earl's cellmate lived in. They stayed in the basement of a friends house, and there his accomplice left Earl by himself. Earl was found by the family and they fed him and let him stay until they gave him money to get home for his birthday.
In 1988, while Earl was in the Hamptons with a friend that he drove in a stolen car, he was arrested and his "friend" snitched on him, giving police all the information they needed. He was sent to Suffolk County Jail where he battled other inmates, namely K-Solo.
