Flesh Of My Flesh Blood Of My Blood

Anointed the next Tupac Shakur by the hip-hop press, the performer DMX has one of the better voices in rap: low, raw, charismatic. In fact, one could say he sounds like a cross between Barry White and McGruff the Crime Dog. However, DMX doesn’t share McGruff’s anticrime leanings: his new album, like his last, which went double platinum, is seething with viciousness and violence. His lyrics–often simple and clumsy–attack other black people, homosexuals and women. DMX is at his best when he becomes more contemplative, as he does in Coming From, a moving ballad he performs with singer Mary J. Blige. Attacking minorities isn’t the most original notion, and it’s also rather cowardly. Why not have the guts to challenge the powerful?

–By Christopher John Farley