Rap Music

[elevenism]

RIP Earl Simmons AKA DMX. 1970 - 2021. This one hit harder than all of the other rappers who passed in my lifetime (I was too young to listen to rap when Tupac or Biggie passed)...

Me too, man. Pac got killed pretty quickly after I started listening to him, so there wasn't some deep emotional thing going on for me with that. It reminds me of some song I heard that says something like "I didn't cry when Pac died, but I will when Hova does."

Also, it's horrible that all these younger artists are overdosing and getting shot, but that just isn't the hip hop I listen to. The first rapper that we lost that REALLY hit me hard was MF DOOM, and now, DMX.

After reading your post, it occurred to me that this is one of the first HUGE name rappers to go, for those of us who got SERUOSLY into hip hop in the JayZ/Nas generation rather than the Biggie/Pac era. It's only separated by a very few years, but they were FORMATIVE years, you know?

I mean, it sounds like I'm a little older than you- I was 16 when Pac got killed, but it still applies.

[Xen]

I feel you too, this was definitely heavier for me as it's the first time one of the artists that I listened to in my youth passed away. I'm 34 right now, so I was 9 when 2Pac was murdered and 10 when Biggie passed. I kind of stopped listening to mainstream rap about 10 years ago, so I haven't kept up with the latest trends in hip-hop. MF-DOOM was also difficult when I found out but in all honesty but I wasn't a huge fan of his work like I was for DMX. I grew up in a fairly conservative family that looked down on rap music, but it didn't stop me from discovering rappers like DMX, Nas, Jay-Z, Eminem and such from friends at junior high school at the time. The cool kids at school at the time were all listening to rap, and I was getting picked on by some of them because I was nerd, so I had this idea to "freestyle" to them to show them how cool I was. Looking back it was so stupid, but I managed to say "X' Gon Give It To Ya" in my lines (my last name starts with an X) and that drew a huge reaction from those guys and they left me alone for the rest of the time in school. That's one of the moments that stood out for me in my youth, using a line from a DMX song to stand up to my bullies.