The late DMX leaves an enormous sonic legacy behind him – but don’t overlook his film work amidst his exceptional music.
The first time anybody saw DMX on screen, he was stepping out of a car. He was in a shiny black leather jacket, gold links weighted on his neck and heading into hip hop pantheon The Tunnel, turned by director Hype Williams into a hallucinatory neon blue hellscape. His name flashes up on screen and we see the back of his bald head. An acapella remix of Soul II Soul’s classic ‘Back to Life’ is a calming contrast to the flash of the visuals. It’s the intersection of grim and gloss.
This is Belly.
It was a film released in 1998 just months after DMX’s debut album went straight to number one, and weeks before his second album, a record that would also take over the charts and go multi-times platinum. America’s next rap superstar was here.
Belly served as the perfect introduction of DMX to America and the wider world. Even though the film was something of a disappointment (it didn’t help that Williams used most of the budget on the opening and the wild lighting) and was savaged by critics at the time, it captured his essence as an artist. Belly, like X, was part poetry, part virtuoso stylistics, remixing nearly a century of crime cinema with a hip hop aesthetic. Aping filmmakers such as Brian De Palma, Abel Ferrara and the Hughes Brothers without remorse, Williams combined those influences with his own now-iconic music video imagery to create one of the most distinctive crime films of the 90s.
At the centre of the film are two friends, Sincere and Buns, played by legendary MC Nas and DMX respectively. They head up a cast of mostly rappers and unknowns, as well as Frank ‘Billy Batts’ Vincent (who also doubled as acting coach on the film). X plays it perfectly. There’s no shortage of rappers who’ve migrated to acting – Tupac, Andre 3000, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, LL Cool J and many more – but here, X nails this role as naturally as he spits rhymes. He shouts the bravado of Buns the same way he barks ad-libs on his hits.
But it’s when the bravado cracks you see just how good of an actor he actually is. His body throbs with energy, he can’t physically stand still, he’s somewhere between a prowling tiger and coiled snake. It’s the same energy that would go on to make him a terrific action hero.
The final act of Belly is carried on X’s broad shoulders as the film takes a conspiratorial turn. Buns is tasked to assassinate a Muslim preacher who looks remarkably like Louis Farrakhan and speaks like Malcolm X. Instead of murder, he commits the radical act of embracing peace and Islam – it’s a spiritual struggle that mirrored X’s real life relationship with Christianity. The pain that waters his eyes and shakes his body is so real, it’s hard to imagine the only performing this man had done was in a music video or on a stage with a microphone in hand.
Belly was too strange, too radical to be the hit all hoped it would be. It’s hard to imagine the backers of the film thought they’d be getting a startling, hyper-violent rumination on American capitalism when handing their millions to Williams, who had popularised the flashy big budget hip hop video in the 90s. After all, he was the man behind the Mad Max-inspired California Love, the shiny suits of ‘Mo Money Mo Problems’ and Missy Elliott’s inflated rubbish bag outfit in ‘The Rain’ video. Even pre-9/11, ending a movie with the one main character converting to Islam and the other moving to Africa was radical and beautiful.
Following Belly, DMX’s star carried on shining. He was arguably the biggest rapper in the industry and Hollywood wasn’t done with him either. What followed was three collaborations with producer Joel Silver and director Andrzej Bartkowiak, and two with the one and only Jet Li.
ArrayThe first of such collaborations was Romeo Must Die (2000), a modern day retelling of Romeo And Juliet with a fusion of hip hop and martial arts. It was a showcase vehicle for Li, fresh on the American scene, and its female lead RnB star Aaliyah, who was looking to crossover into movies before her tragic death in a plane crash in the summer of 2001.
In this one, X plays Silk, a nightclub-owning gangster, because in the movies, is there any other type? It’s only a supporting role but he steals his scenes. Taking full advantage of that trademark growl of a voice, he makes it seem like he’s in the film a lot more than he actually is. Some of this may be because the studio took full advantage of his fame and seemed to put him and Aaliyah on every poster.
Silk lords over his club from behind an impossibly large window, with one particularly standout moment where he threatens to start firing on the crowd from his booth after a fight breaks out. It’s no small feat to pull off such a ludicrous situation with the amount of plausibility on display, which gets to the crux of DMX’s abilities as an actor.
His supporting role in Romeo Must Die was followed by a co-lead turn alongside Steven Seagal in Exit Wounds (2001). X, pretty much like everyone else on the planet with the exception of Vladimir Putin, had a difficult time with Seagal’s bizarre whims and manner of talking down to him, but that didn’t stop the film from becoming a hit – the last of Seagal’s career. Exit Wounds is part-hardboiled action movie, part-convoluted thriller and DMX plays a billionaire tech genius who’s working undercover to bring down a cabal of crooked cops (see: convoluted).
It’s not just Seagal who gets to bust an action movie or two in this one either, as X gets in on the fight scenes, using his size and incredibly expressive body to punch, kick and throw his way to justice. As usual, Bartkowiak’s action is well handled and X has great camaraderie with Anthony Anderson which lightens the mood.
There’s no shortage too of post-Matrix slow-mo scenes, a nifty way of making your leading man look like the coolest dude on the planet. Arguably, at this stage, that’s what DMX was. In fact, back in 2001 it was hard to imagine DMX not being a superstar and going on to have another decade of success – hit movies, massive records, massive records in hit movie. There was probably only Eminem who was a bigger deal.
DMX’s final film with Silver, Bartkowiak and Li came in 2003 with Cradle 2 The Grave. Probably the best of the three films, it revolves around a diamond heist, a kidnapped daughter and the odd couple partnership of DMX and Jet Li. The charisma of the pair powers through the standard screenplay with Tom Arnold and Anthony Anderson again thrown in for some comic relief. It’s the early 2000s in a nutshell, a symbiotic beast of martial arts, hip hop, rap metal and UFC with B-movie superstar Mark Dacascos as the villain.
If any scene best encapsulates DMX’s brief but weirdly brilliant movie career it’s him wearing a leather trench coat leading a car chase on a quad bike whilst ‘X Gon Give It To Ya’ blasts as loud as possible in Dolby surround sound. It gloriously captures his charisma, his presence, his popularity.
He should look ridiculous, but doesn’t. The song is so on the nose it should make you roll your eyes but to this day it remains his most successful international single. He gets to beat up an endless number of anonymous henchmen (whilst Jet Li takes on the entire UFC roster, including future Expendables teammate Randy Couture), dressed not too dissimilarly to how he suited up in Belly – all black with shimmering jewels. DMX was a star.
As the pain and the addictions took their toll in real life, the music of DMX declined and with that so did the films. He only had one further cinema release – the Ernest Dickerson directed noir Never Die Alone (2004). It’s an entertaining mix of existential pulp and hood violence. DMX was struggling, though. His legal problems were never-ending, his adaptations no secret. Arguably, it was partly what made his music so compelling: the edge was real, he was larger than life, but none of it was a gimmick.
Photo: Scott Gries/ImageDirect
DMX was a natural superstar, a born performer who could also be cripplingly shy, capable of creating both a riot-like anthem of defiance and soulful ode to God. An electric presence of hyper-masculinity open about his struggles with faith and the abuse he suffered as a child, X was a captivating contradiction, an icon of late 90s and early 00s culture.
His last significant appearance on film came in Chris Rock’s 2014 release Top Five. He contributes a cameo as himself near the end of the movie, after Rock’s semi-autobiographical character ends up in the drunk tank. X sings a profanity-laced version of Nat King Cole’s ‘Smile’ to the comedian in his trademark gruff growl, enunciating every syllable with humour and heart as only he can.
It’s the funniest moment in the film and it is now clouded with an increased sadness following the rapper and actor’s tragic death at just 50. Just smile motherfucker.
