DMX Reigns as the Dark Prince of Hip-Hop

We’re behind the wheel of a black Cadillac Escalade, cruising down Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where they drive like it’s Sunday afternoon every day, all day. They move along at a careful pace, never cut each other off, come to a full stop for pedestrians, and — no matter what, even if someone does cut someone off — they never, ever honk. But the black Escalade of our story is being driven, no, commandeered, by Earl Simmons, 29, of Yonkers, New York, alias DMX. DMX doesn’t drive like they do in Beverly Hills. DMX drives like he’s mad. Hellbent. Fearless.

His left hand is tight on the wheel, knuckles turned toward him; his right is busy with a Newport and a plastic cup of Rémy Red; his feet are unaware of any shade of gray — he’s hard on the gas, then hard on the brakes, mashing one pedal or the other, jerking the mammoth Caddy forward, sweeping into traffic, swiping in front of the smaller cars, bobbing and weaving past the palm trees, the Mondrian hotel, the Beverly Center, the U-Wash Doggie, the Cash Cow Café.

Late one Monday night, he screeched to a halt in the middle of an empty inter-section and thought out loud, “Where the hotel at?” A bodyguard said, “It’s back there, behind us,” and X sent the truck into a full-speed 180 that felt, for a long three seconds, like we were sliding over the road, not gripping it at all but hovering just a bit above it, on the precipice of being completely out of control as we leaned hard to the right and my stomach churned with fear and I was certain, as I was each time we pulled off, that this time, on this street, he was really going too fast and was now going to have the smashup I knew was imminent every single time we started moving.

“I wish I had my license,” he said once the car straightened out and we were zooming toward the hotel. “Yeah,” a bodyguard said. “I wish you had it, too.” I sat silently wondering whether X meant, “I wish I had my license in my pocket” or “in my legal possession.” (As it turned out, it was the latter. A few weeks later, DMX spent the night in jail after an arrest outside Buffalo, where he was on tour, for driving with a suspended license and possessing a small amount of marijuana.) Then, embracing and mocking the cliché that his life can sometimes resemble, he said, “You know how famous rappers do.”

This roller coaster was made a touch more surreal by the sound of Stephanie Mills — “Tell me, whatcha gonna do with my lovin’?” — on the stereo full blast. “This is all I fuck with beside my shit,” he said later, meaning disco-y R&B classics. In his black traveling CD case there are four hip-hop albums, three of them from him or his camp, along with Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits, a few Earth, Wind and Fire collections, The Best of Candi Staton, Chic Live at the Budokan, Teena Marie, Sha-lamar, Chaka, Cameo, the best of Men at Work, Evelyn “Champagne” King and The Best of Regina Belle, signed by her: “To DMX, You are a most beautiful spirit. Stay positive and sweet. Love R.” DMX grew up with this music in his childhood home. “When it was music playin’, it was’ cause people were over. It was usually durin’ the holidays, and they were havin’ a good time. I had to look out my room down the hall, but I could see people dancin’ and hear the music. That’s why I like these songs. It was, like, the only time I was happy as a kid.”

DMX is among the hardest-working men in modern showbiz. Less than two years ago, he was known only to hardcore rap fans; today, MTV reports he has the highest Q rating of anyone on the network. He has released a remarkable three albums in that time: It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot in 1998 (which sold 3.7 million copies), Flesh of My Flesh . . . Blood of My Blood (2.8 million) in December’ 98 and . . . And Then There Was X (1.9 million so far), which came out the day after Christmas 1999 and debuted at Number One. He also made time to shoot a pair of films. He starred in the visually stunning though narratively chaotic Belly, and he plays a small part in the new action vehicle Romeo Must Die, co-starring Aaliyah, Jet Li, Delroy Lindo and Isaiah Washington.

His onscreen and on-mike personas are very similar — he gives you a man you know is tough at a glance, who’s gritty and growling whether he’s whipping your ass or philosophizing about the constant struggle that is life. He is sonic testosterone, a man’s man who’d rather ride with his niggas than anything else. He is a direct descendant of Tupac, giving you the adrenaline-addled masculinity with occasional thought-provoking sentiments, though without the political framework or the public drama in his offstage life.