I find myself oddly compelled by DMX, a strange, very dark, extraordinarily charismatic, probably mentally ill, frequently arrested rapper originally from Baltimore. Some of it, I’m guessing, is the typical white liberal Jewish psychosexual fascination with Id-y, feral-seeming, angry, good-looking black men.
Some of it, also, is the dramatic contrast between the feral aspect of DMX, the unchecked masculine aggression, and the unusual vulnerability he allows himself as an artist. His art is so much about pain and paranoia that even his misogynistic stuff, of which there’s plenty, is redeemed somewhat by the absence of any suspicion, on the listener’s part, that it’s opportunistic. Unlike, say, 50 Cent, who’s too obviously savvy to not know that he’s pandering with the guns and bitches stuff, DMX literally seems incapable of controlling himself beyond the efffort he exerts to ignore the voices in his head long enough to record an album.
Anyway, this is my favorite of his videos. Just pure force.
Also, while we’re on the topic, there’s this drenched-in-homoeroticism video. Mmmm, topless muscleboys in prison.
Ooh, and this one’s good too.
