Best National Rap/Hip-hop Act

DMX

Physically imposing, tattoo-laden DMX is the antithesis of the Puff Daddy-led "jiggy" hip-hop set. On his two full-length, multi-Platinum releases so far (It's Dark and Hell is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of my Blood, both within the last year), DMX eschews the shiny-suit-wearing, Remy Martin-swilling, wholly superficial thievery that P.D. and friends somehow manage to pass off as legitimate music. Instead, DMX has traversed a more enlightened and infinitely more vital path -- the one set down by veritable urban poets KRS-One and the late Tupac Shakur.

DMX says exactly what he feels, without compromise, but not at the expense of thought and reason. For every simple, rowdy singalong like "Ruff Ryders Anthem," there are one or two cuts like "Coming From," a coming-of-age monologue from Flesh that achieves a startling balance of ennui, hopelessness, resolution, and, ultimately, a singular sort of enlightenment.

The likely reason for the explosive popularity of DMX's music is that very complexity. He has filled a void in hip-hop, left vacant after the deaths of stylistic neighbors Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. DMX is leader, standard-bearer, and, yes, role model for black youth.

For solutions, or at least investigations, of all the mysteries of black culture that white society either blindly condemns or utterly fails to understand are contained in the work of artists like DMX -- the ones who know, the ones who say it best.

-- Chris Kanaracus