At times, there is no king or queen of New York-other times two, three, or five people might have credible claims on the title. What it does is trace the chain of custody, like a title belt in boxing, of that elusive thing that DMX had in 1998. A critical reader might have questions like “How could this model be tweaked to reflect the contributions of someone like Kool Keith?” Or “Where the fuck is Prodigy?!” But this project is not aiming for a universal lens-instead it’s trying to identify those moments when a rapper’s supremacy becomes unquestionable. Sometimes two deserving artists reach the height of their powers at the same time sometimes, as with Ghostface (and debatably with Cam’ron), a rapper’s time on the throne does not align with his or her creative peak. It naturally does not document any of the underground movements that, collectively, come to be just as crucial as any single star. This exercise is not perfect and does not provide a holistic view of rap in New York in any given year. Some reigns are years long and others last a handful of weeks all had a creative and cultural impact that helped shape a genre and a city. So we looked back and forward from that midpoint-from recorded rap’s beginnings in the late 1970s all the way through the present-to pinpoint who, at any moment, was the king or queen of New York rap. While record sales are one thing-and those videos of him controlling thousands of fans like a marionette are another-it’s difficult to quantify just how monstrous his impact was in 1998, the year he dropped two chart-topping albums and knocked hip-hop, and the industry around it, off its axis. To coincide with the release of DMX: Don’t Try to Understand, we set out to give the proper context for where X fits in the annals of New York rap. Today, we’re looking into the lineage of the kings and queens of New York rap, a title DMX held in 1998 and burnished like no one before him or since. Over the next few days, we’re chronicling the rapper’s rise and place in hip-hop history. On Thursday, Ringer Films will debut the latest installment of its HBO Music Box series, DMX: Don’t Try to Understand.
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