Welcome to the New York Times Popcast, you're, we right here, dog, a music news and criticism.

I'm your host, John Caramannica.

It has been a very anxious week waiting for updates about DMX, knowing that he was in the hospital, knowing that he was in a precarious state.

We're recording this on Friday afternoon, DMX passed away this morning, he was 50 years old.

If you didn't live through it, it may be hard to fathom just how titanic a presence DMX was in rap music in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Here was someone who was relentless, uncompromising, signature, aesthetic, forceful, dexterous lyricist, penitent, prayerful, macho, aggressive, just so many different things embodied all in one performer.

In a few minutes, we're going to be joined by Smoky Fontaine, Smoky, co-author DMX's autobiography within back in the early 2000s, so we're going to get deep on X's career and life and childhood and various stories that would help give context for the performer and artists that DMX became.

I did want to share just a couple of things, I never had the fortune to interview X, I did write about him in his music quite a bit, but I never had the fortune to interview him, but in my appraisal in the paper, I talked about the first time that I saw DMX pray on stage and just to share a little bit more about that.

Cash Money Rough Riders Tour in 2000 was just the biggest, most epic tour that you've ever seen in life at that point.

It was a mind blowing thing, I saw it twice, the first time I'm pretty sure it was in Baltimore, I don't know why I went to Baltimore to see it.

And I remember I had parked in the parking lot and I was really stressed because I had to drive back to New York and I was like, I can't be stuck in the parking lot after the show, so I had started kind of making my way towards the exit right as DMX's set was coming to a conclusion.

And I was close, the exit was near the stage, you were almost like kind of at the foot of the stage, and I kind of hit the door almost, and that's when X starts praying.

And I just stopped cold, just had never seen anything like that, never experienced it, it was such a jolt of a feeling, so intense, so physical, so emotional.

It was overwhelming, and I definitely got stuck in the parking lot then, because there's just no way I could turn away from that.

It was just an unreal channeling of faith and hard earned wisdom and tragedy all put together who's crazy, very intense, very, very intense.

Every time you go to a DMX concert, there's a prayer, and it was never any less moving, the way that X wrapped and spoke, the gruff tone in his voice, the certainty of his speech, the intensity of the pattern, is impossible to do anything but be absorbed by it.

The other thing, and this is a little bit lighter, even though I didn't interview DMX, I did edit in interview with DMX.

It's my first issue when I worked at vibe in 2006, Cho Shikondo, who was known for very pugnacious, kind of a rowdy, interviews with artists, had interview DMX, and it was just a, I reread it, I'll pull it up.

He's asking him about smack DVDs and beefs with Jay-Z, and the thing I love about this interview, with all DMX interviews, is just how unvarnished it is.

He's talking extremely greasy about LA read, and when he came in the office, this was DMX talk, when he came in the office, I don't know how he did it, but he came in with wind, so his scarf was like, and then the action of a scarf blowing behind him.

He wasn't even walking, feet gliding like he was on a dolly, what a tremendous image of LA read, not necessarily kind one, but a tremendous one.

Also in this interview DMX says that he never wears flip flops, thugs don't do flip flops, I'm never that comfortable, not even in my own house, which may seem like off the cuff, and maybe even a little bit funny, but there's a real almost like, there's a tragic underpinning to that.

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