Ready to Meet Him

So many words have been written in the past few days—the past week, actually—about the talent, the humanity, the vulnerability and the spirituality of a man who burst onto the world stage around the turn of the millennium dripping in blood, attack dogs at his side, delivering genuinely shocking tales of murder and mayhem and what one hip-hop-friendly magazine, which was not alone in its opinion, dubbed the third grossest rap lyric of all time. The words, the ones written in the past week that is, are beautiful and, by and large, true, and they capture the complexities and contradictions of the most explosive rapper, and one of the great live performers, of our most recent fin de siècle, who succumbed last week to a lifetime of pain and struggle. The same pain and struggle that served as both text and subtext for those extraordinary, and extraordinarily troubling, raps. I'm going to keep this relatively short and let other writers do the talking. What interests me right now, what has always fascinated me most about DMX, is the voice with which he did his talking. A voice that the writer TOURÉ once described as "the sound of gravel hitting the grave." A voice that "growled like a dog, credibly and often." A singular and fantastic hip-hop instrument that EARL "DMX" SIMMONS wielded as the perfect finishing piece in stripped down productions that answered the space he built into his raps with even more space. He was a man who understood sonics, not surprisingly. He took his stage name from a classic early drum machine, the OBERHEIM DMX. Future drum machines should use his voice as a patch. And users of that patch should note that for all the satanic imagery in his music, he spent more time directly addressing GOD than SATAN. He was, against all the odds of his own life, a man of faith. And a man of good, even great, humor. The third grossest rap lyric of all time is genuinely funny, as DMX often was. He turned his pain and struggles into humor and into art and life lessons and into hip-hop gold and platinum. Catharsis for his fans, if not always for himself. He never did leave the pain and struggles behind. MusicSET: "He Overcame, He Saw, He Conquered, He Struggled: DMX's Ruff Ryding Life."

'Twas Friday

And though there was no newsletter, people still put out new music, including TAYLOR SWIFT, who launched her master recording reclamation project with FEARLESS (TAYLOR'S VERSION), of which I'll have more to say later this week (here, in the meantime, is what ALEXA and SIRI have to say about it)... Chicago jazz-funk-electro-plus explorers DAMON LOCKS AND THE BLACK MONUMENT ENSEMBLE, whose NOW is a musical conversation/response to 2020's social justice protests... Malian kora master BALLAKÉ SISSOKO... The ambitious hip-hop sprawl that is BROCKHAMPTON... And MERRY CLAYTON, MIGUEL, VIJAY IYER/LINDA MAY HAN OH/TYSHAWN STOREY, RHIANNON GIDDENS & FRANCESCO TURRISI, the late MO3, KID INK, LAKEYAH, PEGGY SEEGER, SUFJAN STEVENS, SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE, LES CHANTS DU HUSARD, REVEREND PEYTON'S BIG DAMN BAND, BALMORHEA, YOSHINORI HAYASHI, CFCF, JEAN-MICHEL JARRE, SKULLCRUSHER, ONYX, BLACK FORTUNE, MATTHEW E. WHITE & LONNIE HOLLEY, the late LARRY CORYELL, ÅRABROT, SWEET OBLIVION, CHEAP TRICK and ARI HERSTAND.

Rest in Peace

B.B. DICKERSON, bassist, singer and founding member of WAR... HOWARD WEITZMAN, lawyer who represented MICHAEL JACKSON, DIDDY, JUSTIN BIEBER and many other music, film and sports stars... Techno DJ, producer, label owner and fashion designer TIM BAKER... RALPH SCHUCKETT, session keyboardist and founding member of UTOPIA... ETHEL GABRIEL, who produced at least 2,500 records for RCA VICTOR at a time when female producers were almost unheard of... New York opera superfan LOIS KIRSCHENBAUM, who left behind a wonderful obituary and a rent-controlled East Village apartment full of autographed mementos... Country songwriter BILL OWENS, who was instrumental in his niece DOLLY PARTON's career... Avant-garde jazz saxophonist SONNY SIMMONS... Pop/disco singer/songwriter PATRICK JUVET... Brazilian bassist SÉRGIO BRANDÃO... Jazz drummer DUFFY JACKSON... PAUL HUMPHREY, frontman of Toronto new wave band BLUE PETER... Ticketing executive BEN TAYLOR, who specialized in festivals for FRONT GATE TICKETS... STONE ANDERSON, bassist for Alabama rockers ROB ALDRIDGE & THE PROPONENTS.