During this Covid-19 quarantine life I think we can all admit that we are all going a little stir crazy. We can’t go to the places we normally go to for fun and can’t even hang with our friends much which is personally making me go a little crazy. Then, add on the fact that we haven’t had many live sports to watch and it makes it even worse. Baseball is starting up again later this week and NBA is coming next week which is great! We don’t know if either season will finish but it at least gives us something to talk about in group texts other than Barry memes and TikTok videos. We are all in a rush to find something to look forward to in our lives and last week I saw something that caught my eye while scrolling on Instagram. Earlier on in the quarantine life we had RZA battle DJ Premier on IG and while the technology was lacking, it was still cool to see two greats go song for song through the classics they’ve produced over the years. There have been some other cool battles like this as well but none that have been must watch ones for me personally. But this next one is dope! DMX vs. Snoop? The East Coast Vs. the West Coast? Two top dogs of the 90’s going head-to-head tonight on Wednesday, July 22nd at 5pm PST / 8pm EST? Yup…. I’m in. For those that don’t know, Verzuz puts on the battles and each artist will play a song and social media reacts with comments. Then, the next artist plays a song and they go back and forth. It’s a good one to check out if you’re in need of some entertainment. You can watch via IG live by clicking on either Snoop or DMX’s profiles or you can watch via Apple Music.
We all know the names of course so that alone starts to get us hype. I’m a big Snoop guy growing up on the West Coast so that’s a no brainer. But DMX had some MEGA bangers over the years as well. Snoop has stayed relevant for close to 30 years now and I can’t see how his tech game isn’t on point for this battle. And DMX goes way back with Swizz Beatz who happens to run Verzuz (who is hosting the battle) with Timbaland so I gotta imagine that DMX will have some decent tech on his side for his performance. Let’s cross our fingers and toes on the sound and video quality are good as that can tank any performance!
Since DMX is first on the billing, I want to start with him. Earl Simmons was born in 1970 and raised in Yonkers, New York. His childhood was about as rough as anybody’s can be. He had horrible asthma which had him in and out of the hospital constantly. He grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness and was abused repeatedly by his mother and her many boyfriends so young Earl’s early years weren’t good.
In an excerpt from Shea Serrano’s phenomenal book, The Rap Year Book, he writes,
“DMX’s early existence was built largely around isolation. The most overt and literal case involves his mother quarantining him as a young child alone in his room for thirty days straight with the door closed as a punishment. He was only allowed to leave to get water and use the restroom.”
I was sickened reading that and it answers a lot of questions I’ve long had about X. There has always been this narrative about Earl being a drug addict and the media sticks with that story and never sheds light on anything else about him. There’s so much more to his story that’s important to truly understand X. Earl was abandoned by his father and abused by his mother and her various boyfriends who taught him about life by knocking his teeth out and leaving his face all bruised and cut up. Do you know how hard it is to come out the other end from a rough start like this??? X found comfort wandering the streets of NY and befriending stray dogs who felt alone like him. His love of hip hop grew at the boys’ home that his mom finally placed him in as a 14 year old. Hip Hop was the perfect outlet for Earl as he had a lot of pain inside of him that he needed to express through some kind of creative outlet. If X didn’t turn to writing, who knows where he would have ended up.
While DMX started making early noise on the hip hop scene in the mid90s, it wasn’t until 1998 when I first heard him. And in ‘98, you heard DMX everywhere. Early in ‘98, DMX’s first single on Def Jam dropped and it was MAJOR. “Get at Me Dog” was theme music for my last few months of high school that year. It was hype music for all of us and what we listened to in our cars on our way to house parties or a kegger at a nearby park. We actually pressed pause on our West Coast Rap CD’s and gave X some shine because he grabbed your attention with his yelling and barks. DMX’s music made you want to drop and do 100 pushups and flex on anybody around. He had that affect on you. He made you feel bigger than everybody else through his words and delivery on the mic.
Did you know that DMX dropped 2 albums in his first real year in the game? Yup, he did. It’s Dark and Hell is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood both came out in 1998. Early ‘98 represented the end of my high school life while late ‘98 was my freshman year of college. 1998 was a big year of my life (Padres in the World Series too!) and DMX was right there with me in my speakers. That summer I worked at Nordstrom as a stock boy for the Men’s Sportswear department to help save money for college. Being a stock boy at Nordstrom meant making the sales floor look nice before the store opened. It also meant keeping the back stockroom clean and organized during store hours so the sales team could come back and find what they needed to sell. Our posse in the Men’s Sportswear department in the late 90’s was filthy. We had 4 or 5 homies that were either in the back getting hype or on the sales floor selling some sick Dockers’ khakis and maybe a crisp Faconabble collared shirt or two. One thing we had in common though. We all would be rapping DMX lyrics with my boombox that I took with me wherever I worked. We all loved hip hop and Jammin Z90 (90.3 on your San Diego FM dial) was our soundtrack for work. The “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” dropped in May of 1998. I’m not sure there is a better summer banger than this. All of my childhood friends were getting ready to go off to college which was sad for sure. But we had the “Ruff Ryders’ Anthem” and a lot of other DMX bangers knocking in our speakers to help us not get soft in the process.
Snoop Dogg aka Calvin Broadus Jr. was born a year after DMX in 1971. Snoop was born and raised in Long Beach, California was given the nickname of “Snoopy” after the Peanuts cartoon which he loved. He was musically inclined as a child where he sang and played piano at church. He made money any way he could and was a hustler from an early age. Calvin loved sports and gravitated towards football which helped offset his time in the streets where he began gangbanging in his teenage years. Snoop also loved rapping where you could find him battling other emcees in the hallways at school. Teachers would see big crowds thinking that kids were fighting but it was the total opposite. Young Calvin was entertaining at an early age and laying the foundation for the star he would soon become.
Snoop was in and out of jail after he graduated high school in ‘89 until he finally linked up with his cousin Nate Dogg as well as friend Warren G. They called their group 213 after the Long Beach area code. Dr. Dre first caught wind of Snoop at a bachelor party where Warren G (Dre’s stepbrother) played 213’s demo tape to Dre. Check the clip from the amazing doc The Defiant Ones to hear Dre talk about more on how he first heard and met Snoop.
Snoop and Dre finally linked up when Dre was starting to work on his debut solo album The Chronic which was following his departure from NWA and Ruthless Records. Dre’s first solo song after he left NWA was off of the Deep Cover Soundtrack. The song “Deep Cover” dropped in 1992 and it was the rap game’s first true introduction of Snoop Doggy Dogg. This song was released right around the time of the Rodney King police beatings so the tension was already high with police brutality. The song was also known as 187, which is the California police code for murder. In the song, Dre and Snoop wax poetic with a chorus that talks about murder on an undercover cop. As a 12 year old down the coast in San Diego, I couldn’t get enough of this song when it came out. I was white by definition but hood in my heart through the gangsta rap music I loved. The rap songs I listened to as a kid made me see how people with a different skin color than me were mistreated by the police and the media. Rap music opened me up to the ills of the world around me.
Dre’s The Chronic album dropped later that year in 1992 and it took over the music industry. The album let Snoop shine over dope beats from Dre and everybody loved that album. Everybody didn’t listen to rap back then so being white and liking rap wasn’t widely accepted. I had to hide my love of gangsta rap because of the way the media portrayed the new art form. White parents in America thought that if you listened to gangsta rap that life would imitate art but they couldn’t be more wrong. The white kids of the 90’s who loved rap music were starting to learn about the world around them through rap music. The media showed us the war on drugs but the music actually took us to the streets to let us know what was really going on. I got true life experiences in rap music through poetry from gifted writers who grew up with much less than me. These rappers taught me more about life than my school textbooks. Snoop’s arrival on The Chronic album let the world know that a new star was born.
People loved Snoop and he didn’t even have a solo album yet. While the hype for 50 Cent’s debut album was crazy, I don’t think it comes close to the buzz that Snoop had for his first album. Nas is dope and all and his hype for Illmatic was major too but Nas wasn’t bumped on the West Coast and didn’t crossover outside of rap. The Chronic brought new fans to rap music so when Death Row Records dropped Snoop’s debut, Doggystyle, it had mass appeal globally. I remember that late November 1993 release date like it was yesterday. Albums used to get released on Tuesdays back then and I remember walking down and up Genessee after school (it’s a trek!) with a crew to Wherehouse Music at UTC mall so we could get the album. At that time you had to be 18 to buy music with a parental advisory sticker so we had to bring our homie’s older bro with us who looked of age. Our posse was deep with 5 of us and we were basically fighting over who got to hold the CD. We went back to our homies’ pad to put the album in their boombox so we could finally listen to it. The first verse on the album wasn’t even from Snoop (shout out to Lady of Rage!) and Snoop just has a little sing song verse on the intro. But then we get to “Gin N Juice” and it was amazing.
All my homies passed around a blunt while we listened to Doggystyle for the first time but I didn’t smoke. I was too busy getting my high off off of Snoop’s lyrics while flipping through the album’s liner notes. I don’t remember ANY album releases in detail like this. We all have idols and Snoop was a God to me. Our childhood crew of homies listened to Doggystyle all through junior high school and up until we graduated high school in ‘98. How many albums have that type of longevity? House parties were filled with Snoop, DPG, and Quik. Literally everybody (girls included) would be rapping ALL of the lyrics of the songs we listened too. Neighbors of our house parties must have been impressed hearing all of the white kids rap “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None)” in total unison. I guessed impressed is the wrong word because cops would sometimes show up because of our music and shenanigans and shut down our fun. Rap music took over our lives and served as the soundtrack for when we kicked it.
I still wonder to this day what my parents thought when I was watching Snoop perform “Murder Was the Case” at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards on the couch in our living room. Snoop had beat the murder case with a new perspective on life. It was the DOPEST live musical performance I had ever seen and I was glued to the TV screen that night. I bet I can say that for EVERY one of my homies as well. Snoop was the big homie. We loved Snoop.
So man… DMX? Snoop? LEGENDS. I love those dudes like they were my brothers. I love rap music. I’m 40 years old now and this is music I loved when I was a kid. But this is timeless music. If you are a kid wondering what life will be like when you’re 40 let me tell you this. If you play your cards right, your homies now will be your homies then. And the songs you’re bumping now will be the songs you guys all still love in the future. I love my homies and we have a bond through sports and music. Without those two I don’t know we’d be. In the next 2 weeks time we get DMX Vs. Snoop, the start of the MLB season, and the continuation of the NBA season. HELL YEAH!! We all can’t kick it still but we have more things to talk about. I miss y’all but we still “kick it” through my 2 favorite passions, sports and music. See y’all soon!
Side note 1: When I think of DMX I can’t help think of my homie Tony and our days in the Nordy’s stockroom. We kept that boombox near and whenever DMX’s “What’s My Name” would come on the radio, Tony and I would scream one line of DMX’s lyrics in unison. “I’M NOT A NICE PERSON” was the line and we would always laugh hysterically after yelling it because it remains one of the softest raps from a hardcore rapper ever. I think Tony and I probably spent hours breaking down that line and how ill-fitting it was from a rapper like X. Classic times.
Side note 2: Being a Padres fan is rough. We always have these so-called prospects that get hyped up and then flame out. Xavier Nady was supposed to be a superstar for us and when I think of him I think of George ALWAYS yelling “X Gonna Give It To Ya” when we talked about him. Nady is long forgotten (he did hit bombs tho!) but that song isn’t. Every time I hear the song I think of X Nady and shake my head. X never gave it to us on the Pads but DMX always brought the place down. (Insert DMX bark here.)
Side note 3: To promote one of Snoop’s albums on No Limit Records, some records stores had life-size cardboard cutouts of Snoop. Snoop is 6’4” so this was a beast! I was with one of my main homies when we first laid eyes on it at a record store at the mall and we had to have it. My homie grabbed that cardboard cutout and we walked out of the record store with tears in our eyes because we were laughing so hard. I can’t even remember how we got it in my tiny car but we did. From there it lived at my homie’s house for years. No clue where that thing is now but that memory will forever live with us.