DMX's "X Is Coming"

I've been pretty adamant in saying that DMX is a Tupac clone. I still think he is. However, that doesn't mean that he isn't--or wasn't, as the case may be--a good emcee. 1998's "It's Dark and Hell Is Hot" may not be classic, but it's damn close. Not only is it a defining album of the post-Pac Era, but it showed that the tortured thug persona that Pac had adopted later in his life would live on, for better or worse. The album is DMX at his best: sometimes brutal, sometimes reflective, all the time menacing. No track epitomizes this better than "X is Coming." Dame Grease lays the foundation for the song, first by interpolating Freddie Kreuger's "1, 2, Freddie's Coming For You" at the beginning of the track, and second by giving X an appropriately dark beat to spit over. (Listening to this song and most of "It's Dark," it's odd that Swizz Beatz is the producer most associated with X given that it was Dame who was responsible for most of the album's production.) Make no mistake, though: DMX is the star of this show, and his rhymes are chilling in their brutality, complete with a straightforward, no-nonsense delivery. For X, it's kill or be killed, and he intends to kill you; the second verse, featuring a bonechilling reference to rape, is especially shocking. As brutal as the song is, it's definitely one of the better ones in a catalog filled with commercial hits. Without the gift of hindsight, one would have to consider "It's Dark and Hell is Hot" to be the first step in a long and successful journey for DMX. With hindsight, it still stands as that; however, it also stands as a constant reminder that it never got better (qualitatively) for Earl Simmons.