My favourite DMX song is ‘Damien’. With Dame Grease proving the perfect beat, the song is off his first album—‘It’s Dark and Hell is Hot’. In my late teens, X was thee man. I was drawn to him by his aggression and ability to switch voices and characters. He actually did it in other songs such as ‘Ready to Meet Him,’ where he plays both God and DMX in conversation, with God advising DMX: ‘No matter how hard it rains, withstand the pain’.
Growing up in a very religious home, I was always intrigued by DMX’s religious and satanic imagery.
In ‘Damien’ (1998), DMX adopts the evil theme and gets in a haunting introspective dialogue with the Devil, Damien. The song is inspired by the film, ‘The Omen’(1976) and named after ‘Damien’, the Devil’s son – it’s Antichrist antagonist. Damien, pretending to be a ‘guardian angel’ D (DMX) cried for in order to help him succeed, entices him with fame and riches in return for X doing some evil work, murdering people, essentially selling his soul.
He promises D, ‘ you and me could take it there, and you’ll be the hottest n*gga ever living’.
And that he is ‘about to have you driving, probably a Benz. But we gotta stay friends, blood out, blood in.’
Whilst DMX gets tricked into committing crime killing some people who Damien accuses of hating him, in the third verse, he refuses to continue working for the Devil when he learns that his next job entails killing his friend.
Damien: Ayo, remember that kid Shawn you used to be with in ’89?
DMX: Nah, that’s my man!
Damien: I thought I was your man?
DMX: But yo, that’s my n*gga!
‘The snake, the rat, the cat, the dog; how you gonna see them if you live in the fog?’ goes the chorus of this artistic masterpiece.
What I like about this song (and most of his songs like ‘Stop Being Greedy’) is that DMX constantly confronts his duality: the good and the bad. A recurrent theme in his albums that he masters by also switching voices to play another character, another personality. DMX likes parables and analogies, so I think ‘Damien’ is also a useful metaphor that he brilliantly uses to explore the complexity of human beings and the ongoing temptation of selling one’s soul for the riches. And that sometimes, it’s hard to tell whether one is taking the best decision due to being clouded by the fog: ‘how you gonna see them if you live in the fog!’
Or perhaps DMX was simply telling us of the entertainment industry and that he, in a way, sold his soul?
It’s worth noting that DMX has Damien II, with Marilyn Manson (named ‘The Omen’) on his second album and the last of the trilogy, ‘Damien III’, on his 4th album…
Blessing Kgosi e tsile Kgasa 