The
Rapper, who has died aged 50, parlayed his life’s difficulties into thrilling, combative, witheringly witty musicDMX obituaryDMX: A life in picturesListening to a DMX song from the late 1990s is like riding a wrecking ball through a gated community. The
music video for Stop Being Greedy – one of many confrontational highlights from the rapper’s 1998 Def Jam debut, It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot – shows DMX hunting a wealthy white man across a mansion, before eventually feeding the poor soul like a T-bone steak to his pet pitbull; the rapper’s exhilarating, half-barked vocals gave the sense that he wanted to eat the rich.
![DMXs powerful work confronted an American hell of trauma and poverty](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/6cadad9f02c20a8f8569caa59ab47e06384c23f0/320_382_1709_1025/master/1709.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctb3BpbmlvbnMucG5n&enable=upscale&s=76707a7ef1a22bad40a3a1b61ae23d0a)
It’s a song about the poor feeling so ignored that they have no choice but to confront the ruling classes (“Ribs is touching, so don’t make me wait / Fuck around and I’m gon’ bite you and snatch the plate”) and violently rip up their rules, and its message reflected an urge by DMX – who died on Friday at the age of 50 – to liberate a hip-hop culture that by 1998 had become too preoccupied with shiny suits in tacky music videos filmed inside a blingy Rubik’s Cube.