DMX’s Final Interview Should Be a Wake-Up Call

We’ve lost too many important rappers over these past few years, in startling succession and at tragically young ages. In 2018, writer and academic Jesse McCarthy dedicated his magisterial essay “Notes on Trap” to “the many thousands gone,” specifically naming six rappers who never made it past their teens, 20s, or 30s; in 2019, music critic Craig Jenkins wrote that we were “losing another rap generation right before our eyes,” noting, among many others, the successive deaths of Lil Peep, Fredo Santana, Mac Miller, and Nipsey Hussle. These deaths hurt so acutely for many reasons: They are emblems of the longtime oppression of Black Americans, the discriminatory systems that either failed or actively neglected them, and the consistent persecution of their modes of expression; several of these rappers never made it past their middle ages, if they even made it there at all; the mourning and calls for an end to these tragedies have been sounded for decades; hip-hop’s long fight for mainstream acceptance, and its staggering success and longevity across nearly five decades, cannot save its artists alone. He says that he “would like to look back on my life before I go and just thank God for everything.” What we get from the interview, beyond the awe-inspiring stories of X’s life, is a true American story, an honest reflection of life in a cruel country that forces Black artists into nightmare circumstances and relentlessly punishes them for trying to escape. I wished that Shock G could’ve reminded the world about how the Digital Underground changed popular music altogether, beyond even the monumental achievements of giving the world “The Humpty Dance” and a rapper named 2Pac.