Credit: Spotify

DMX lost his life way too soon. The Yonkers rapper passed away in 2021 at the age of 50, leaving behind a legacy of classic albums and songs, including ‘X Gon’ Give It to Ya’, ‘Party Up’, and ‘Where the Hood At’, to name a few. Hip-hop music from the ’90s often comes with wild stories from studio sessions, and Dark Man X was a figure with heaps of them.

‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’ is one of the biggest songs of X’s career, but it was almost never released at all. The track, which came out in 1998, appeared on his chart-topping It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot album and captures DMX at his rawest. The chorus, “Stop, drop, shut ’em down, open up shop/ Oh, no, that’s how Ruff Ryders roll,” remains iconic almost 30 years later.

However, X wasn’t convinced by ‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’. It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot was largely produced by Dame Grease and PK, but Swizz Beatz was trying his best to get the song on the project. Ultimately, the track only ended up on the project because X lost a bet to Swizz’s uncle, Darrin ‘Dee’ Dean, who co-founded Ruff Ryders Entertainment.

“So I was in Atlanta in school, and then they got the project to where it was at, and then I came in last minute with ‘Stop Drop,’” Swizz told SiriusXM. “X lost a bet or I wouldn’t even been on that album, you know what I’m saying? But he didn’t lose the bet because that song ended up changing all of our lives. So he technically won the bet for my Uncle Dee, and you know, that just changed all of our lives. So it was just enough to do what it needed to do.”

Thanks to the success of ‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’, Swizz formed a significant partnership with DMX. The producer was behind 10 tracks on his second album, Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, also released in 1998, just seven months after It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot. Still, Grease and PK had an important part to play with their work.

“You know, that song commercially went bigger than everything at the time,” Swizz said. “And then we came immediately with our sound next after that, and Dame Grease and PK was a part of that as well. I wanna get [them] they props ’cause people feel that they don’t get they props. I’m in a comfortable space to give people they props. At those particular times, we was definitely bumping the little heads and things like that, but we all was a part of making history at the end of the day.”

‘Ruff Ryders Anthem‘ initially peaked at number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100, but surged to number 16 four years ago following DMX’s death. But the chart placement never really mattered in the song’s legacy; it was a certified anthem regardless. If you were to create a time capsule of hip-hop in the late ’90s, the track would appear in it.