DMX, acclaimed rapper with SC connection, dies at 50
The growl is gone.
Rapper DMX, who lived for a while in South Carolina, died Friday at the age of 50 in White Plains, N.Y., after a heart attack, according to reports.
With his aggressive hip-hop vocalizations that were often compared to a dog growling, a comparison he embraced, DMX is probably best known for his anthem “Party Up (Up in Here),” a ubiquitous hype-up song for sports, weddings and parties.
Between 1998 and 2012, he released seven albums, selling more than 17 million records in the United States, Yahoo Entertainment reported, making him the fifth-most selling rap or hip-hop solo artist in the country for a time. He won two American Music Awards and was nominated for three Grammy Awards between 2000 and 2002.
Born Earl Simmons, the rapper lived from the late 2000s to the 2010s in Lyman, South Carolina, a suburb of Greer in Spartanburg County. His time in the Palmetto State was shadowed by celebrity-gawking headlines about low-level traffic offenses and substance use charges. In 2017, federal authorities charged him with tax fraud and, after a prison sentence, he moved from South Carolina to New York in 2019.
In July 2019, The State reported that a sketch of a person sought by the Columbia Police Department looked almost exactly like a photo of DMX. After investigating, The State found out the person in the sketch was described as looking like DMX and that the artist had used a photo of the rapper as reference.
The department’s Deputy Chief Melron Kelly confirmed that DMX was not a suspect in the case at the time, saying “I guarantee you he’s not.”
After The State’s article, DMX responded to the sketch by telling celebrity news outlet TMZ, “I think they (messed) around ... drew a picture of me and added hair to it.”
Simmons had been hospitalized for a week after the heart attack. Rumors that the cardiac arrest was connected to a drug overdose have not been confirmed, according to the Associated Press.
