"Earl Simmons, better known as the rapper DMX, has died. According to a statement from his family, he died today at White Plains Hospital after being on life support for the past few days." https://www.npr.org/2021/04/09/984274079/rapper-and-actor-dmx-dead-at-50

"DMX had a signature rasp to his voice. He delivered his lines with a desperate aggression that propelled his debut album It's Dark and Hell Is Hot to multi-platinum level sales. He followed that up with a string of chart-topping albums..."

"In his 2003 autobiography, E.A.R.L: The Autobiography of DMX, he wrote that he was abused and neglected by his young mother. He ended up living in a children's home. When he was 14, he told Kweli a mentor of his tricked him into smoking crack..."

Listen fam,

When it comes to people who perpetuate or participate in bigoted paradigms, I think we should allow room for those who might have a critical view of those people and need to express the negative ways in which their lives were impacted by said people.

Even if it stings.

Even if we think "it's not the time."

Especially if it's the truth.

I'm leaving room for any LGBTQIA+ people/women to have anger, apathy, or antipathy surrounding this situation.

If you cannot bear having someone you care about critiqued, irrespective of how valid the critique, then you can always choose to remove yourself from a place where you're experiencing discomfort.

For the record, my feelings around DMX's death are complicated.

As a Black queer man:

I mourn the little Black boy who was relentlessly abused, neglected, and deceived, and could not find healing even when he tried.

I'm angry with the Black man who betrayed, berated, and threatened me every time he had the chance; inspiring people to treat me as subhuman in real life using his influence as justification.

I recognize that he was the man his boyhood made him, and that implicates quite a few people who would like to believe themselves innocent; people who are raising boys in this exact same way, then feigning surprise at the dangerous and deadly outcome.

I wonder what he would have been like had the adults in his life loved him, if patriarchy didn't mold him, if he wasn't expected to be exactly what he became: aggressive, violent, destructive, self-destructive, and useful.

I mourn the boy; I'm angry with the man. And no, those things cannot be reconciled. It is dissonance and will not be resolved.

And I'm okay with that.

All of that said, I think white people should tread very carefully. Especially since the white LGBTQIA+ community is one of the most racist communities in the U.S. If you don't call out anti-Black people when they die, then your smoke for DMX should be none.