The DMX song DMX always hated: “He didn’t want to do the song”
Just because a DMX song was a hit doesn’t mean he loved it. The Yonkers rapper landed one of his biggest singles in 1999 with ‘Party Up (Up in Here)’, peaking at number 27 on the Hot 100 and receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Solo Performance.
However, Dark Man X revealed that the Swizz Beatz-produced record was his least favourite song. During a GQ interview, he stated that he felt the track was disrespectful, describing the beat as “club-oriented” but said he “spit some real shit to it.” He believed there was a disconnect between his lyrics and the song’s vibe.
Swizz once said that DMX didn’t want to finish ‘Party Up (Up in Here)’ when they were recording the track. “I’m always gauging the room,” he told Rolling Stone. “Because you could come in in a mood — you’re thinking about your girl — and if I’m pushing a party song on you, it’s just not going to work.
“I mean, it worked for DMX one time with ‘Party Up’. But if you listen to ‘Party Up’, he does everything against the track. Like, you could tell he didn’t want to do the song. But I forced him, because we was on a deadline. It’s the most disrespectful verse I think he ever did, and it’s the biggest song we ever made.”
During another conversation with Complex, Swizz claimed the lyrics on ‘Party Up (Up in Here)’ were how DMX felt the day he recorded them. “‘Party Up’ was at a time when things were moving fast,” he said. “X was probably frustrated coming to the studio that day like, ‘Y’all gone make me lose my mind!’ A lot of the stuff we were doing was in the moment.
“When he says, ‘Y’all gone make me lose my mind!’ it’s probably what he was really feeling. So we said, ‘You’re not the only person who feels like that. Everybody feels like that.’ We took that frustration and excitement and put it into a hit song.”
Swizz revealed that the outro of ‘Party Up (Up in Here)’ landed him some big payments. “The ‘meet me outside’ part was spur of the moment but it got famous and people started paying me extra to do the outro,” he explained. “I would charge $15,000 extra just for the outro at that time. Even today people want that on their tracks. I just went in there bugging out. I didn’t think they would keep the ‘One, two, meet me outside.’”
He added, “That outro came from me DJing and always wanting to control the crowd. Being a DJ was my biggest secret weapon. I was thinking about how people would react in the club. I knew how to control the crowd so I knew how to make records for the crowd. I’d think, ‘When I play this in the club they’re gonna go crazy.’ I still use that.”
Appearing on the …And Then There Was X album, ‘Party Up (Up in Here)’ is three times platinum and is DMX’s second-biggest song on Spotify with over 365 million streams. The music video has also accumulated 188 million views on YouTube.