The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 6

6A Thursday, July 22, 1 999 The Journal News RK SPECIAL REPORT www.nyjournalnews.com Yonker-born rapper connects with hi roots; 4 'S-'f try. As night turned to morning, one last aspiring lyricist made his way into the studio. It was DMX, long considered one of the hottest rappers in Yonkers, but virtually unknown outside the city. There was only one problem his jaw was wired shut It was broken during a fight a few days earlier. "He was getting mad, he wanted it so badly," Cohen said.

"He started rapping anyway, forcing the words out of his mouth. Every rapper in the building started running like they were cockroaches and the lights suddenly went on." For the next two weeks, Cohen put aside his other business dealings and refused to leave Yonkers. He moved on only after signing DMX to a contract "It was as easy as it gets," Cohen said. "My mother, an Israeli immigrant, is 70 and listens to classical and chamber music. -4 TV 3 'vlU- An' I 4 1 1 i i s-.

T4 1 I mm 1 v. .3 i -v -t I PKoros by Mark VerganTtie Journal Newt Yonkers rapper Stonewall Odom, aka Big Jinx, clowns with another Yonkers singer, Ella Fitzgerald, at the Yonkers train station. Rapper DMX, who was born in Yonkers as Earl Simmons, look to the streets and took up music after his family disintegrated when he was a small child. 1 i BRIAN KOHN and SEAN WEBBY The Journal News -The three letters are scrawled in ghostly white graffiti on a brick wall of the School Street housing project and are splashed on the shirt of a kid hanging in Getty Square. They boom in a menacing growl from the sound system of a black Expedition barreling down Ash-burton Avenue, in the heart of "theY-O." DMX was originally the brand name of a drum beat machine used to make beats for pop and rap musicians.

But in the Y-0, his hometown of Yonkers, and far beyond, it has become an acronym for Dark Man of the Unknown a self-proclaimed thug and street rapper who has burst out of the projects with a pack of pit bulls, a long arrest record and two albums that have sold almost 6 million copies. DMX, born Earl Simmons and known as in his old neighborhood, might just be the biggest star from Westchester since Ella Fitzgerald. "He is a perfect example that you can be different and follow the style you always have and blast off," said Funkmaster Flex, the Hot-97 disc jockey known for launching rap careers on his prime-time, New York City-based radio show. "I think he's going to get much bigger." The 28-year-old rapper's first two albums both went to the top of the Billboard charts, making him the first artist ever to have two albums debut at No. 1.

DMX has sold 5.7 million records in two years, putting him in the same league as artists such as Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. This weekend, he'll take the stage at Woodstock '99 in Rome, N.Y. In the same way Springsteen shined a national spotlight on the New Jersey shore, DMX has shared his international fame with his old housing projects and the tough Hudson River city where he grew up? Kids, both black and white, from cities and suburbs throughout the country, now know Yonkers as DMX's hometown "the Y-0, home of the brave." To many people who live in the 'hood, the towering build ings at School Street or the barracks of Mulford Gardens, the recognition has given them pride of place and a role model who speaks in their words, about their lives. is Yonkers," said Charlie Walker, known as C-Brown in the School Street projects where he befriended DMX. talking about what we Jmow." His fans, family members and the rap industry's power brokers see the rapper as an uncompromising voice of the streets.

By sharing the real stories of his life in Yonkers on Jrack after track, DMX, they say, has "kept it real." DMX's songs address with brutal honesty the pain of growing up without a father, of what he calls the "cruddy life" of drugs and crime, and of his fear pf passing that destructive legacy to his own son. "Damn, was it my fault, some-thin' I did to make a father leave his first kid?" he raps in "Slip-pin." At times, the mugger-turned-millionaire seems to have left the "cruddy life" behind. He's moved to a spacious suburban home in Teaneck, J. Last year, he married his longtime girlfriend, Tashera, at a lavish affair in the Bronx. The couple have a son, Xavier, whom DMX calls Gerb, and another child on the way.

i DMX has volunteered at a Yonkers community center on Thanksgiving, and returned to Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry where he was sent at the age of 12 to tell kids not to repeat his mistakes. On both of his records, he talks to the devil as well as to God. He spits rhymes about the war between good and evil, a war that often takes place within his own soul. He growls with pain. He prays.

"I come to you hungry and tiredYou give me food and let me sleepI come to you weakYou give me strength and that's deepYou call me a sheep and lead me to green pasturesOnly asking that I keep focus in between the chapters." "The moment the public takes the opportunity to read the words and understand, they are going to be stunned," said Lyor Cohen, the record executive -nut She would have signed him." DMX's first single for Def Jam, "Get at Me Dog," took off after it got heavy airplay on Funkmaster Flex's show on Hot-97. DMX calls his friends "dogs," a phrase now common in high school hallways and housing projects across the country. Dogs, both human and canine, are a running theme in his music: He raps often of his love for his pit bulls, and has a special place in his heart and tattooed onto his back for his first pit Boomer, who was hit by a car several years ago. DMX's rapping, widely praised by rival rappers for its style, mixes his flowing, furious rhymes with bursts of barks and growls. "Just his voice alone does it" said Robert Cordova, also known as 730 Rob, who owns an urban gear store in Getty Square and has known DMX for more than a decade.

"He's a rapper who doesnt even need music or beats behind him." Rap insiders now are even praising his lyrics, which have not always been considered his strength. When several rap magazines ranked the top 50 lyricists in the past several years, DMX didn't even make the cut "You can say the lyrics are scary, but what he is really saying is that he wants to achieve," said Russell Simmons, who founded Def Jam records and is largely considered the father of rap music. "People hear the language and they tune him out But you've got to listen." In the Yonkers neighborhood where the rapper grew up, they love both his delivery and his devotion to the Y-0. "He's like the Michael Jordan of rap," Cordova said. "Every- one else comes after him." DMX still returns to the Y-0 regularly when he's not touring, free of the entourage that usually shadows him, except for his beloved pit bulls, Bandit and Bobbi.

Friends say he hasnt forgotten who he is. "Nobody gets more love than and nobody is respected more," said Kasino, a 23-year-old rapper who rhymed on DMX's first album. In December, DMX returned to Children's Village to chat informally with kids in the same position he was in 15 years ago. "He said he felt really connected to the place," said Aman- funny. There is no prize but respect.

Family members say he wrote his own words to songs performed by his heroes, Run DMC. At his grandmother's Yonkers house, he fought his first rap battles, busting rhymes with two younger uncles BJ and Buzzy. "They'd be in the kitchen all the time battling," said another uncle, Buckeye Holloway. "He was a good rapper even then. He'd wipe 'em out" His grandmother died in 1994.

Simmons was crushed. He later dedicated both of his albums to her. As a teen-ager, Simmons hooked up with another Yonkers rapper named DJ Superior, or Michael Murray by birth. In 1987, Superior had big dreams for himself and his posse of local hip-hoppers, including DMX. Along with another youngster, known as Big Jinx, they formed a group, Gangstas of the Ghetto.

"He was robbing people for money, and I was showing him a different way," Superior said. "We could do a party or a battle and charge people $5 apiece. Five times 400, that's money." But it turned out to be chump change for one of the crew. Late into the night of March 17, 1997, several dozen rappers were rhyming rapid fire at a tiny Yonkers recording studio, trying to impress Cohen, a rising record executive at Def Jam, a leading label in the rap indus- Michael Murray, aka DJ Superior, with his dog, Tokill, at his home in Mulford Gardens in Yonkers. was losing control at home.

At 12, Earl Simmons was sent away for the first time. For 20 months, beginning in September 1983, his home was Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, the final and most severe step in the state's child welfare system. "I didn't like it one bit," said Irene Todd, Earl's 84-year-old great-grandmother. "His mother just didn't want to be bothered with him. He was just a devilish little kid." Todd, who rarely leaves her Yonkers apartment without a bandana sporting the name of DMX's Ruff Ryders record label, is the mother of Mary Ella Holloway, Earl's paternal grandmother.

It was Holloway who brought him home on weekend furloughs from Children's Village and eventually took him in after his release in April 1985. Family members said she was the adult Earl trusted most. Mary Gaines, head of the Nep-perhan Community Center, came to know Simmons when he was sent to the center's youthful offender program. He dreamed even then, she said, of climbing out of poverty. His first scheme was to resell basketball sneakers at a profit "He always said he wanted to be a millionaire before he was 26," she said.

"He's bright very smart, and always has been." Even as a young boy, Simmons was drawn to the street poetry of rap. In the streets, rhyming is a battle skill, a form of verbal judo. The ability to spit a long and intricate rap is as valuable as jewelry or a tough dog. The real rap battles, fought with microphones and background beats, are organized like boxing cards. Rapper against rapper, project vs.

project The raps are merciless, dirty and 71; mum tftirt It I i sBT Ik tela flM 'C TV" fv4f ft. K'. -7 month later, DMX tangled with a Yonkers police officer who asked him to turn down his car stereo. He was questioned in Denver earlier this year regarding a stabbing, but police there never charged him. Before his music career took off, the rapper had a series of convictions, mostly involving drugs.

His attorneys have suggested police may be targeting the urban legend. "He is not going to get special privileges because of who he is," said Sgt Robert Itzla, a spokesman for Yonkers police. "On the other hand, we are not gonna pick on him." Some rap insiders say that DMX's constant run-ins with the law are actually helping his career. "Controversy sells, kid," said the rapper Jadakiss, whose real name is Jason Phillips. He's part of another Yonkers rap group, the LOX, which has sold nearly million records.

"That's part of why he's blowing up." Similar controversy pushed the last two major hard-core rap stars into new heights of fame and, eventually, their deaths. DMX has been compared at times to both Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. That worries Def Jam's Cohen, who has attended each of Simmons' criminal trials. "Unfortunately, I do not believe he is going to see the fullness of his life," Cohen said. The rapper's great-grandmother says she worries about the Dark Man inside Earl Simmons.

"I cant get mad at him," Todd said. "I'm so proud of him. I just tell him, 'You got to slow down a little bit, 1) who gave DMX his big break. "This guy is ridiculously deep." But in his lyrics and his life, DMX's passion often flares into rage. He's been arrested three times in recent months alone most recently, when he was charged with stocking his Tea-neck home with an automatic weapon, hollow-point bullets, a bullet-proof vest and 14 unlicensed pit bulls.

He sometimes raps in shocking images of sexual assault, bastard children and bodies floating in the harbor. In a rap of revenge, DMX warns: "I'm comin' in the house and I'm gunnin' for your spouseflrying to send flier) back to her makerAnd if you gotta daughter older than 15, I'm a rape her." Earl Simmons was born Dec. 18, 1970, in Yonkers, the only child of Joseph Holloway and Arnett Simmons. The couple had been dating for about three years when their son was born. The relationship broke apart when DMX was a small child.

His father, a portrait artist, soon married another woman, Kathy, and moved away to start a new family. Joseph and Kathy Holloway now live in Philadelphia with three children of their own. DMX once left his father tickets for a concert there, said Rhonda Holloway, the rapper's aunt. During the show, she said, his father sat near the back, crying. Father and son never spoke.

Neither of DMX's parents could be reached for this article. And the rapper, who is not currently promoting a record, did not respond to requests for an interview through his record company and friends. When his family disintegrated, young Earl did what many young men in the inner city do he took to the streets. It was there that Simmons lived and witnessed many of the dark and violent images he later became famous for. "This is the dirt," said Walker, an aspiring model who makes ends meet working in food services at St Joseph's Medical Center in Yonkers.

"You're watching your mother smoke crack, people you know getting killed. We respected the drug dealers around here. You grow up with hatred. It's you against the world." It didnt take long for Yonkers police to get to know Simmons. At the same time, his mother da Cooper, a spokeswoman for the village.

"He told them a lot of things they hear all the time, like staying in school and listening to their counselors. But here's someone who has everything they think they want money, fame, girls falling all over him. To have an idol reinforce the messages we are already giving them was really powerful." Last Thanksgiving, DMX asked to serve turkey to the homeless at the Nepperhan Community Center, where he had spent time in the youthful offender program. Still, some old friends admit feeling twinges of envy as they've watched DMX "blow up" get rich and famous. Recently, DMX flew his old pal, Superior, to the Bahamas for an all-expenses-paid week "I feel like I should be with him, it's real hard, but there is $3 million here and your friend is over there," said Superior, who works as a director of the Yonkers Community Action Program.

"Whatchu gonna do? I'll get there. I'm smart enough not to cry about it" DMX's success as an entertainer has not ended his frequent clashes with the police in Yonkers and beyond. He was pulled off the stage by police last weekend in Trinidad, after breaking the country's obscenity laws. The recent Teaneck arrest stemmed from the mysterious shooting of DMX's uncle and manager, Ray Copeland, who was wounded in the foot inside DMX's home. In May, DMX was arrested in Yonkers.

He was accused of assaulting a motorist who he thought had cut off his wife. A 1hER WEG0 AGAIN I pi-'1-, r.i BW Vto. An old poster touting a rap showdown between DMX and Bill Blass, promoted in Yonkers by DJ Superior..