DMX Bio

   Despite all the excitement that currently surrounds him, only a select, informed crew of heads may recall DMX’s first go around (with the 1992 promotional single, "Born Loser") for Columbia Records. Like many talented MC’s signed to their first deal, X was left in the unfortunate scenario of languishing while other artists on the label’s roster prospered.
"Columbia tried to put me behind other groups," DMX reflects of the situation. "They were like, 'Well, we're gonna put out Kriss Kross, then we're gonna put out Cypress Hill and then we're gonna put you out.' And I was like, 'Well I'm better than all of them niggas.' So I didn't wanna wait. They let me out of the contract and I'm glad that they did." "I always knew there would be a point when someone would say, 'Somebody needs to make money off this nigga cus he's hot'. That's when Irv Gotti brought me to Lyor Cohen at Def Jam. I guess it's that point now. I guess the world wasn't ready for the gutter until now. Now they ready for the gutter shit, so now they get the fuckin' gutter.

    Having originally earned his name by way of his human beat boxing expertise, DMX later experimented with other acronyms true to his evolving, revolutionary vocal steez (Divine Master of the Unknown) while honing his skills around his home in Yonkers' School Street Projects. Along the way, he bumped heads and built long-lasting friendships with fellow Y-O residents and Bad Boy Recording artists, The Lox. "Those are the pups," DMX says of Bad Boy's latest rising stars. "I trained 'em, raised 'em, they doin' their thing and I'm proud of them. I didn't teach I em everything they knew cuz they were doin' it before me, but I influenced them."

    Winner of The Source magazine's prestigious "Unsigned Hype" award for January of 1991, the native of Yonkers, New York has recently crashed the airwaves and mix tape circuit with a number of unforgettable guest appearances (LL Cool J's "4,3,2,1," Mase's "24 Hours to Live," Mic Geronimo's "Usual Suspects," The Lox's "Money, Power and Respect," Ice Cube's "We Be Clubbin' (Remix)" and Onyx's "Shut 'em Down",) inducing a fever pitch buzz for the release of his kinetic debut single for Ruff Ryders/Def Jam, "Get At Me Dog."

    If there was one defining characteristic to hip hop in 1997, it was the jiggy factor- an aesthetic of unapologetic flash, fashion and glamour that ruled everything around us and made hip hop life nice and organized. Of course, for each movement there always exists a counter-movement; for each yin there is a yang; and for each designer-label clad champagne sipper, there must be an uncompromised figure lurking in the shadows, ready and willing to reclaim rap from the penthouse to the pavement. Embracing this return to the anarchy, enraged and raw, Def Jam Records presents 1998 as the Year of Pandemonium. The human embodiment of such exhilarating and unadulterated chaos exists in none other than Ruff Ryders/Def Jam's very latest lyrical sensation, DMX.