US rapper DMX’s debut single was called “Born Loser”, a harshly comical account of African-American impoverishment and failure released in 1992. It proved a self-fulfilling prophecy: his record label promptly dropped him. Five years later, he returned to a different major label with the single “Get at Me Dog”. This time, he cast himself as a one-man crime wave rampaging around New York’s streets like a delinquent action hero. The comical loser had become a ruthless winner.
The all-star line-up on his posthumous album Exodus testifies to the extent of his victory. DMX was one of rap’s most successful artists, the first act ever to top the US charts with his first five albums. But Exodus’s arrival a month after DMX’s death from a heart attack aged 50 also points to the failures that dogged his life. A drug addict and multiple felon even as the platinum records mounted up, the rapper was scarred by a brutal upbringing of poverty, illness and parental violence. In DMX, being a winner and a loser were inextricably tangled.
Exodus pairs him with rap super-producer Swizz Beatz, who made his name working with DMX during the rapper’s heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The album was mostly recorded before his death in April, although the bitty nature of DMX’s contributions suggests a degree of incompletion. Surrounded by guests, the rapper at times seems like a visitor at his own party. But the famousness of the rappers and singers playing cameos gives the album a due sense of occasion.
Jay-Z and Nas swap verses with DMX on New York rap throwback “Bath Salts”. Lil Wayne features on “Dog’s Out”, a dully staccato track based around DMX’s signature canine imagery. Alicia Keys (who is married to Swizz Beatz) has a singing role on the nicely bombastic ballad “Hold Me Down”, while Bono turns up on aspirational plodder “Skyscrapers”. Snoop Dogg gets smutty on “Take Control”, a routinely crude exercise in macho sex talk.
The lack of younger rappers present depicts DMX as a rapper of his time, not an influence over later generations. He attacks the microphone with gruff intensity, in the heavyweight boxer-style of classic rap. His voice sounds sandpapery, corroded by time. “I ain’t 50 years old for nothing!” he cries at the end of the album’s highlight, an old-school street-rap link-up with Griselda Gang’s Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine and Benny the Butcher on “Hood Blues”. The sense of absurdity that always flickered beneath the hardcore rap persona is still there.
His capacity for introspection is also present. Always prepared to go beyond cartoon bravado with hints of a deeper personality, he bids his farewell on Exodus with a meatily sentimental treatment of fatherhood, “Letter to My Son”, and a recording of him leading a church congregation in prayer, an appeal to a higher Father. “Lately so many of us have gone astray,” he declares, eyes fixed on a larger scheme of failure and success.
★★★☆☆
‘Exodus’ is released by Def Jam
