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DMX, at a concert in Warsaw in 2014.RAFAL GUZ / EFE
Rapper Earls Simmons (Mount Vernon, New York) died today in the White Plains hospital, at the age of 50, due to multiple organ failure.
The musician had been admitted to the medical center since last weekend, when he suffered a myocardial infarction caused by a drug overdose.
The announcement of his death has been made by his family through a statement.
Simmons was better known by his stage name DMX, Dark Man X, or The Divine Master of the Unknown, and was one of the best-selling rappers in music history.
At the end of the nineties and beginning of this century he chained several albums that swept the sales charts thanks to their violent lyrics.
In addition, like many other hip-hop creators, he worked on television and film series, and even had his own series in 2016 on a cable network:
DMX: Soul of a Man.
Yotuel Romero, a rapper with a mission: to demand "homeland and life" for Cuban youth
A giant talent, thirty million records sold, killed at 24: Notorious BIG, the construction of a myth of 'hip-hop'
DMX took its name from a digital sound creation machine and started rapping at age 13.
In 1998 he released his first album,
It's Dark and Hell Is Hot,
and he directly became a star, with his defense of
hardcore rap
, very close to punk.
His second album,
Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, was
also released in 1998, and the third appeared in late 1999:
... And Then There Was X
sold more than six million copies, and was converted with the time at its greatest success.
He was the first musician to place his first five albums at number 1 on the sales charts.
His best-known singles include
X Gon Give it To Ya
(with more than 416 million views on Spotify despite being a
single
released in 2003),
Party Up (Up in Here)
or
Where the Hood At ?.
The artist grew up in the New York neighborhood of Yonkers, never left New York and was the father of 15 children.
At present, he was preparing a new album with collaborations from Bono, Lil Wayne, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg or Usher.
His criminal record was, unfortunately, also long, and he spent two seasons in prison in 2009 and 2010. In 2018, he was sentenced to one year in prison for tax evasion.
With his strong, tattooed physique, according to the dark rap he created, he did well on screen and made several appearances in films such as
Romeo must die
(2000),
Open wound
(2001),
Nacer para muerte
(2003) or
Pimp
(2018).