DMX Exodus album review

Retracing his steps seems to reinvigorate DMX, and it does Exodus prick.
Photo credit: Noam Galai / Getty Images

Rap doesn’t have a retirement plan. For every Jay-Z or Nas, veterans known as much for the contents of their investment portfolios as for their records these days, there are dozens of beloved artists who don’t too. The blows dry on everyone in time; You are either prepared for it or you are fighting to make ends meet. In an area renowned for its history and expense, this drop can be subtle. Maybe your favorite rapper is starting to sell offbeat products during his public appearances, use his social media accounts to promote weight loss supplements, run motivational seminars, or appear in delicious ads for them. local businesses. These delicate relationships often seem like fun, but they never bode well. When your audience loses interest, your bargaining power diminishes. What happens next is rarely pretty. We’re talking about a great game of giving artists their flowers the way they should be, but love doesn’t keep the lights on.

The value of Verzuz Battles born of the pandemic, beyond the nostalgia for the well-being we feel as viewers, is to reconnect artists with audiences scattered from the peak commercial performance of performers. It’s a space for a musician to show us what they’ve been up to and for us to remind them that we care. According to Swizz Beatz, it was in the days following his Verzuz last summer, DMX wanted to make a new album. It had been almost a decade since his last official studio album (not counting the choppy and unapproved compilation Redemption of the beast, what was released against the wishes of the artists in 2015), a difficult period marked by sporadic guest spots, money problems, an upsetting episode of Iyanla, fix my lifeand disturbing arrests. DMX wanted to prove that he still had something to say, to appropriate his status as a 50-year-old survivor, to once again match minds with his peers and successors. Swizz was paying him forward for the man who had helped him put it on.

Ruff Ryders Anthem introduced many hip-hop fans to DMX, but it was also Swizz’s first successful beat, the start of a hit parade that has kept the Bronx-born beat-maker afloat ever since. The couple broke up in the years, however, when X made headlines for everything but music. New York hip-hop was changing, and the man whose first three albums went platinum over an 18-month period was out of step with his time. He was always good for a shot; you may not remember the more devious parts of the Large Field and Year of the dog again albums, but Get It on the Floor, Where the Hood At? and Lord Give Me a Sign endured. Promising cuts on off-peak rides, such as Redemption of the beasts Freeway collab Where You Been? or what they don’t know about the years 2012 Undisputed, suggested that all DMX needed was a favorable etiquette situation and a producer who understood their strengths and process.

Exodus, the new DMX album released today, is posthumous by circumstance but not by process; During a private listening session earlier this week, Swizz said the record was finished long before Xs suddenly hit this spring. (Swizz said Complex that his only interference after the fact was cutting records.) The guests are people X wanted to work with. These are songs that he had every intention of listening to. This isn’t always the case with a posthumous rap release, in which records are often tinkered with bits and pieces of what was left behind and the ambitions of an executive producer with too much hollow on their chip give rise to shocks. bizarre couples between deceased artists and living producers and artists who might never have met. It is on a posthumous album that Biggie met Korn, which we discovered what 2Pac looks like on Eminem’s beats. Exodus does not push X beyond his comfort zone. It draws notable figures into the orbit of the Yonkers stars.

Exodus It is the sound of sparks rekindling, of friends meeting again. X cleans rust. Swizz is striking a precarious balance between loud ’90s street rap, fluid R&B, stadium rap, and modern minimalist boom bap. The loudest songs are reminiscent of the heyday of the Ruff Ryders. Above, Thats My Dog unites X with his former label mates, the LOX, proving that the still hot chemistry of recent summers Bout Shit was no accident. Lil Wayne is in rare form on Dogs Out, a follow-up to Tha Carter Vs Swizz collab Uproar, where the Louisiana veteran effortlessly skates again on an East Coast production. Bath Salts song by Jay-Z, Nas and DMX Swizz was teasing since the battle with Timbaland considered the inspiration for Verzuz appears here minus the voices of Jadakiss that we heard in a 2017 snippet, though it’s no less powerful. (Nas runs away with it, compensating to say shit like I am Based on coins, essentially the Scarface cryptocurrency on Sorry Not Sorry, DJ Khaled’s single where he and Jay last faced off.) DMX holds up in all scenarios, although it’s not quite at one. level to give Jay a run for his money, like he did 20 years ago on classics like Flesh of my flesh, blood of my bloods Blackout and Busta Rhymess Why We Die.

Dive deeper into the album and the flurry of creative threats of violence over abrasive beats cools off, but the emotional intensity increases. This is where Swizzs has the smarts as a pop-rap producer and Xs knows how to make unique personal essays feel universally synchronized. Skyscrapers, a track that has been floating in one form or another since at least 2012, is the perfect fit for the painful persistence that DMX expresses in its deep cuts and the rare opportunity that take a song away from Kanye results in a more moving. Take Control is cut from the same fabric as Its All Good and What These Bitches Want, the too exciting song for the ladies that flirts with outright offense but sneaks into your good graces with a smooth hook, this time on loan from Marvin Gayes Sexual Healing. (Yes, the sample cost part of the post.) Retracing its steps seems to reinvigorate DMX, and it does. Exodus prick. It was the ground for a new career path, not the unexpected end of the road, although Swizz notes that his friend sometimes called this album his last, expressing a strange premonition or a serious commitment to disappearing into gospel music. . in the years to come, as will the rappers’ stated intention in his final days.

Exodus documents DMX tightening the flow and figuring out how to get the most out of a gruff, less agile instrument. It’s not as crisp as the 90s classics, but it does make some of the 90s albums seem bloated. And that’s a big improvement over exercises from the 2010s like the mixtape titled Mixtape and the Biggest Hits With A Twist comp, on which the rapper re-recorded his classics a decade before Taylor Swift did the same. In his finest moments, which come when X lets his guard down and talks about the fallout from a wild life and the missed opportunities to get closer to his children who haunt him at night, Exodus is a catalog of everything that’s missing though now that DMX is gone. He was meant to become a grizzled, tough elder, sharing how he slipped off the edge, how to restore balance when our lives are messy, so we were aware of the pitfalls of the streets, the party life and the music. . business. You can hear it in Walking in the Rain and Letter to My Son (Call Your Dad), the hard-earned advice drawn from adversity, the intriguing honesty. Not knowing where DMX could have taken your ship next is painful.

Not being entirely sure that we (both this magazine and rap consumers at large) would talk about this album at all if it was released during his lifetime, or if it would have overcome our vague disinterest in everything which is not of the mark. – new and modern, our inability to rally in numbers around anything that doesn’t come with a promotional push is something we can work on. Check out your heroes, especially in lean times. Unsubscribe from ageism in music. You’re going to want someone to speak artfully about your concerns when you’ve washed, no matter how far away that may seem. The gift never goes away, but sometimes it has to be nurtured. And feeding doesn’t happen if we send our greatest poets to the pasture in middle age. This is something DMX seemed to see clearly. I’m not 50 for nothing, he says in Hood Blues. He knew he was there to lead.