Big kap push em up1/17/2024 ![]() ![]() Before that song was on Ruffhouse, it was an independent record they pressed up. Not long after that I met DMX, when he had that “Born Loser” song. I grew up in the Bronx, but after a couple years I moved to Yonkers. Following the rapper’s death last week after a heart attack, the DJ spoke with Rolling Stone about DMX’s career and his contributions to hip-hop. The two men became musical collaborators - DMX contributed to several Funkmaster Flex mixtapes, spawning a pair of minor hits - and shared a love of muscle cars. DMX was on a pair of the Top 15 most-played singles from Hot 97 in 1999, according to Mediabase, and had another Top 10 on the station the following year. When DMX returned later in the 1990s with a series of choppy, roiling hits for Def Jam - he cracked the Top 40 for the first time as a solo artist with “Get at Me Dog” in 1998 - Flex was at the New York hip-hop institution Hot 97, where he continued to support the rapper. “His delivery was aggressive, his voice was aggressive,” Flex recalls. ![]() While “Born Loser” missed the charts, it still caught the ear of a young New York radio DJ named Funkmaster Flex, who played the song on the airwaves at the station WBLS. The single’s tone turns defiant - “Since I was born with no hope, I ain’t got nothing to lose” - but that didn’t help the track’s commercial fortunes. In the early 1990s, he released “Born Loser,” a loping anti-anthem for the down-and-out: “Even when I was little, nothing went my way/I got beat up and chased home from school every day,” DMX rapped. DMX’s first foray into major-label hip-hop was a failure. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |