Stop being greedy...

Tuesday: The Hunger
written by JusHH

A little while back I broke down “Tuesday”. I talked about the excitement about buying that highly anticipated album and the experience of buying it in the store and bringing it home for the 1st time. Well you guys liked it so I’m gonna make it a regular thing. Whenever you see “Tuesday” in the title, know that I’m gonna bring back to the time when fifteen bucks meant a life or death decision…

You remember 1997. The year of the Puffy. How he sampled every 70’s and 80’s beat and melody and made crazy hit records. This frenzy had the whole industry boppin’ in their videos and wearing suits with a little bit of shine. So in the shadow of the deaths of two legends, Hip-Hop was happy again. But it wasn’t hungry. You know the hunger, right? That raw, aggressive passion that all rappers have when they are trying to get a deal. That hunger that drives emcees to create the dopest verses that you’ll ever hear. When you feel that your entire career is riding on each 16 you pen, that’s the hunger. But in 1997, that urgency to take over the game or be the best was missing. Even the best rappers at the time got “comfortable”. (yeah Hov, I’m talking about you and that “Sunshine” video) It’s like every rapper lost their damn mind for 12 months.

Well, except for one.

Apparently, the shiny suit memo didn’t get to Yonkers, NY. Because a certain rapper with a certain canine appetite didn’t exactly follow suit. I remember when I first heard DMX. He had the grittiest, rawest voice. His energy behind his rhymes was just insane. There was no way that you could hear him rhyme and sit still. And oh my god, did he just bark? Yes, he just barked on a song. The video for “Get at me dog” was shot at The Tunnel a.k.a. the “tuck your chain in” nightclub and it resembled a 3 minute riot. X wasn’t about making friends, or following anyone’s lead. He basically told every rapper in the game, “f**k you, I’m coming for all of your lunches.”

It was the perfect movement. You had a hungry rapper who took no prisoners and a hungry producer who put everything he had into every beat he made. Swizz Beats was no one in 1997 and he knew that. So he too was coming for people’s lunches and made beats that gave dudes whiplash. And then you had the Ruff Ryders; a very deep motorcycle club and extended crew that wanted to show the world who they were. You couldn’t avoid them and for those who chose to ignore them got bit – literally.

DMX tore up the clubs, the radio and any mixtape (yes, actual tapes) that he was featured on. So when his debut album, It’s Dark and Hell is Hot was slated for release, all eyes were on him. I was so excited for this album. I just couldn’t predict what I was going to get. X was a walking, talking atom bomb and exploded on every beat that he took on. So yeah, I was in the store that Tuesday and put up the fifteen. I was never the same again.

From the opening bass line, I knew it was over. It sounded like the calm before the storm. Just building the anticipation, you knew it was about to go down. And X didn’t disappoint. “One two, one two, come through, run through, Gun who, oh you don’t know what the gun do?” It was officially a wrap at that point. Songs like “Ruff Ryders Anthem”, “Stop Being Greedy” and “ATF” put every rapper on notice and explicitly informed them to step their games up pronto. It was one of the best Hip-Hop albums you could ever want to hear. I still bark and howl when I listen to that album 10 years later. It brings me back to a time when a rapper made music that he wanted to make, not music that he thought I wanted to hear. The best music ever created was always created with that mentality. It was so impactful that Jay-Z now refers to any impactful moment as “DMX’ing the game”.

It should be no surprise that after DMX came onto the scene, other people’s music suddenly sounded different. Rapper’s no longer tried to fit in or meet status quo. They got hungry again. They went back into the lab and brought that competitive fire. No rapper was safe from criticism so every rapper brought their A game on verses again. The shiny s**t got thrown out and people went back for their champion hoodies. There is no better evidence of X’s impact than with The Lox. They were riding side by side with Puff, singing songs like “If you think I’m Jiggy” but as soon as the barking began, the rap trio wanted off their label and wanted to ride with the Double R. So yeah, DMX changed the game back in ’98 and made the collective stomachs of the game growl. But just as the game tried to keep pace with the Dark Man…

He dropped another album a few months later. Yep, the same calendar year. I guess X wasn’t finished eating.