When A$AP Rocky first fell in love with rap during his formative years, there was nobody he idolised more than DMX, and for personal reasons, the music of the New Yorker meant a significant deal to him.
Both rappers were born in New York, but Rocky and his family moved to Pennsylvania when he was a child. Understandably, this was a daunting move for him, as he didn’t know anybody in his new town. However, Harlem was a dangerous place to grow up, and somewhere his family left with his best interests in mind.
Rocky was nine when, in 1998, his family left NYC for Harrisburg, and that same year, DMX blew up. For a short period, he was the only rapper that mattered as he dropped It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot, and Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood within a twelve-month timeframe.
However, even though both albums went to number one, DMX was shunned by the Grammy’s. In response to this, Jay-Z boycotted the ceremony after receiving his first set of Grammy nominations in 1999 off the back of his seminal masterpiece Vol. 2…Hard Knock Life and ”Money Ain’t A Thang”.
These two records spoke to Rocky greatly, and he named them both in a list of his favourite albums of all-time to Complex. “I was just moving to Pennsylvania and leaving Harlem at that time, so I was pretty homesick,” he said about 1998’s It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot. “DMX kept that New York feeling for me. I could vibe out to that and relate to that.”
Meanwhile, commenting on Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood, Rocky added, “I was thugging. I wanted to be a Blood. I was a bad-ass little n****, and I was fucking with that shit. Him and Drag-On was flaming up.”
DMX’s aggression spoke to Rocky on a deep level, and he felt a kinship with the rapper. After all, he was this kid from Harlem who found himself in foreign surroundings with a burning level of rage inside. DMX reminded him of his elders from home and ensured that he never lost his streetwise New York instincts.
