It has been a difficult journey for Ruff Ryder.
DMX, the howler hip-hop legend who fights for his life at White Plains Hospital after suffering a drug-induced heart attack, had a tough row to grow up.
“[My mother] hit me two f-king mouth teeth with a broom, ”he told GQ in 2019 of the abuse he would have suffered at the hands of his mother when DMX was only 6 years old.
And when he was a teenager, his then mentor allegedly tricked him into smoking marijuana with crack cocaine.
Before his booming baritone and his magical pun on songs like “Ruff Ryder’s Anthem” and “Party Up (Lose My Mind)” earned him the status of a multiplatinum sales artist, he was just a troubled boy. of Yonkers named Earl Simmons.
“Earl is a person who still has a lot of things he suffered in the past, when he was a child,” his former director, Nakia Walker, told Houston Press in 2011.
“He clings to things, instead of talking about things and releasing them. It is expressed through its music ”.
But now, 50-year-old Dark Man X has life support and is in a “vegetative state,” as his family and fans watch over the medical facilities. According to reports, he will undergo a series of critical brain function tests on Wednesday.
Born on December 18, 1970 in Mount Vernon, New York, to parents Joe Barker and Arnett Simmons, the future Grammy-nominated teacher fell in love from the first moment.
“[My father] he never called me on my birthday or helped me grow up at all, ”Simmons said in his 2002 autobiography,“ EARL ”. In his memoirs, the rapper said that Barker, an artist, only appeared when he had to sell paintings in New York City.
DMX believed that his mother, who was only 19 when she became pregnant with him, did not know how to love him.
“Kids don’t come with an instruction manual,” the lyricist told GQ. “Four sisters; I’m the only guy. Maybe he didn’t know what to do with me. “
Their relationship, full of physical and emotional torment, became even more strained when a judge ruled that his mother was “unable” to care for him.
At ten, Simmons had been expelled from school for fighting and throwing chairs at teachers and was arrested twice for arson and assault. The difficult time behind bars would become a recurring trend in his life.
He was finally ordered into the rehabilitative custody of the Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial Children’s Home in Yonkers, which was about 20 minutes from the floor of a bedroom he shared with his mother and sisters, for a stay of 18 months.
But he was reportedly kicked out of the facility for allegedly setting fire to his roommate, according to the 2011 music and faith fusion volume “Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in Rhythm and rhyme “.
Once back at his mother’s house, he often fled to escape his abuses and the revolving door of sympathetic boyfriends. He would sleep in the clothing containers of the Salvation Army and befriend lost dogs. (Despite his troubled past, Simmons and his mother have since amended).
And at 14, a trusted man who was twice his age gave him the first taste of drugs.
“It simply came to our notice then [marijuana] bluntly and … I was carried away, “the emcee tearfully revealed to fellow musician Talib Kweli on the” People’s Party “podcast in November 2020.
“It simply came to our notice then. It confused me. I later learned that he tied the blunt with crack … Why would you do that to a child? “Simmons questioned during the emotional interview.
“He was 30 years old and he knew I was looking at him. Why would you do that to someone who looks at you? “
Simmons lamented in addition to the life-changing deception through the song “Pain,” in which he says, “I smoked crack at 14 for the first time / Given by a – – – that I idolized / The my love is real, but after that, what I saw in his eyes / He was a snake, and who he loved was just a costume ”.
The distressing incident would sound the initial gun of the lifelong Simmons battle with substance abuse.
But shedding light on her dark traumas in public has helped the rude megastelone cope with the anguish of her childhood.
“Letting go of some of these things [has helped]He told Kweli. “I really didn’t have anyone to talk to because [growing up] in the hood, nobody wants to hear that ”.
“No one even wants to help you talk,” he added, noting that expressing your feelings was seen as a sign of weakness in your community.
“But talking is actually one of the bravest things you can do. One of the bravest things you can do is … let it go. “