"And Then There Was...X," by David F. Green, Jr.
My introduction to the energetic, charismatic wordsmith DMX was in the winter of 1998. I, like many others, became familiar with him from his verse on the now infamous LL Cool J song “4,3,2,1,” which featured him and other artists including Method Man, Redman, and a then-unknown Canibus. Following that song, I would be introduced to one of my favorite mixtapes of all time, Canibus vs DMX. In many ways, DMX captured the complexity of urban street culture, and he did so with w