E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX – A Candid Story of Struggle, Addiction, and Triumph - Softcover

DMX; Fontaine, Smokey D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060934034 ISBN 13: 9780060934033

Verlag: Dey Street Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Raised in the ghetto, abandoned as a child, addicted to drugs and women all his life but still able to produce four consecutive #1 hip-hop albums in a row...this is the life and times of the darkest and most dangerously introspective hip-hop artist ever—at the height of his career and completely uncensored

His real name is Earl Simmons. As a child he placed higher on tests than his fellow students, and liked to spend mornings with his mother and sisters playing games and making pancakes. But for young Earl—a boy growing up on the streets of Yonkers, New York—that kind of childhood didn’t last long. Beatings, abuse, and neglect very soon had him moving on to other things, like robbing, stealing, drugs, and, eventually, jail. Along the way, however, he found a talent and a passion for rhyme.

After 27 years of chaos, struggle, and survival, DMX became one of the biggest stories in contemporary music. But his character goes beyond that. He’s also a father, a husband, and more important, someone who never gave up, and never stopped chasing his dreams. He has dedicated his life and his music to expressing the thoughts and feelings of those who have never been heard before—just as he was never heard as a child.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Smokey D. Fontaine is the former music editor of The Source and coauthor of What's Your HI-FI Q? He has written extensively about the entire spectrum of hip-hop and rhythm and blues for more than a decade. He lives in New York.

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E.A.R.L.

The Autobiography of DMXBy Fontaine, Smokey D.

HarperEntertainment

Copyright © 2004 Lee DMX
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060934034

Chapter One

First Memories

My name is Earl Simmons. I was born December 18, 1970, in Mount Vernon, New York, the first and only child of Arnett Simmons and Joe Barker. I've always hated my first name because it always sounded so corny to me and no, I don't have any middle names. Why my mother couldn't give me the names of some of the other men she dated, I don't know. There were certainly enough of them around. My mother found out she was pregnant with me when she was nineteen. It was bad because she already had a two-year-old, Bonita, and hadn't planned on having another baby. So she moved into this home for unwed mothers in Mount Vernon and asked her sister to take Bonita off her hands for a while because her "nerves were shot." My sister ended up staying with her until way after I was born while my mother tried to get her life together.

When I was one, my mother's mom died and even though she didn't grow up with her, my mother lost the only other person she felt she could look to for help. Laverne wouldn't take both of her kids, so my mother was forced to realize that she had to find a place of her own. Yonkers had more low-income housing than Mount Vernon, so that's where we went.

We lived in a small, dark, one-bedroom apartment in a building called the Roker. My mother was on public assistance and it was really hard for her to take care of us and pay all the bills and the rent at the same time. I was also sick a lot as a child. I inherited a bunch of allergies from her and bronchial asthma from my father. My shit used to be real bad. I remember many scary nights waking up not being able to breathe. My mother used to have to take me to the emergency room and they would often end up keeping me overnight. Sometimes my asthma got so bad they would keep me for a whole week and they never could find the right thing to do. One night I had to go back to the hospital three different times because the drugs they were sending me home with kept making me sick. Then the doctors would give me breathing treatments. I had to lie down in this criblike bed that had a white net over it and they would pump in this medicated air. You couldn't move or get out and I remember being trapped in there having to just breathe in and out for hours. In the spring and summer I was under that net almost every week. I never knew if it helped or not. One time I had such a bad asthma attack my sister told me that my heart stopped beating and the paramedics had to take me out of my house in one of those sit-up stretchers because I almost died. I don't remember that, but I do remember the day I got hit by a car.

I was playing by myself in the street and found a dime. I was so excited; it was all silver and shiny. I immediately wanted to go to the store but the problem was that I knew I had to cross Riverdale Avenue to get there, and that was a pretty major trip for a kid my age.

But after a few seconds, I summoned up my courage and with a little burst of speed, made it across and got to buy what I wanted: a lollipop and a superball. You know those balls that bounce all crazy and go in different directions? Yeah! I'm the man ...

It was on the way back that I caught it. The impact was so hard, I got knocked halfway up the street, all the way under a parked car. But for some reason, even though I was badly hurt, I didn't feel nothing. All I was thinking about was how my mother was going to whip my ass because I wasn't supposed to be outside.

When I tried to get up, this white lady with a clipboard was standing over me; she must have been checking parking meters or something.

"Stay down! Stay down!" she kept yelling.

Then other people walked by and they started screaming. I can imagine how folks must have felt to see a little boy pushed under a car like that, though. Everyone crowded around and then somebody gave me a jacket to put under my head and I just lay on the street until the ambulance came.

Luckily, I didn't break anything, so I got better in a few weeks, but what hurt the most was when I found out later that I could have gotten some money from the accident. See, not only had the driver run a red light, but he was also drunk. A month after the accident an insurance company man had come to my house talking about a settlement and my mother turned down ten thousand dollars!

"Thank you, but we don't need your money, sir," my mother told him. "My family is Jehovah's Witness and our faith teaches us to be self-sufficient."

Huh? That was the loot that was supposed to be mine when I got older, the money I could have been straight with! Half of the kids in the ghetto get a little bit of money when they reach a certain age for something that happened to them when they were younger. Why not me? And if the insurance company was offering ten thousand dollars, my mother could have held out and got a lot more, too. Hitting a child, drunk driving, and running a red light? I didn't understand why Jehovah's Witness would have wanted to mess with my money ...

Continues...

Excerpted from E.A.R.L.by Fontaine, Smokey D. Copyright © 2004 by Lee DMX. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Dey Street Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0060934034
• ISBN 13: 9780060934033
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Product Safety Manager; enquiries@harpercollins.ie; ; HarperCollins, Macken House, 39/40 Mayor Street Upper; Dublin 1; D01 C9W8; Irland