DMX ...And Then There Was X Review

The sound of the album is largely the sound of two producer camps. Swizz Beatz handles several of the heaviest cuts, including "One More Road to Cross," "Party Up (Up in Here)," "Don't You Ever" and "Comin' for Ya," and his approach is almost architectural: bare, loud, rhythmic, with synth stabs and drum hits left deliberately wide open so a voice can fill them. That suits DMX perfectly. The gaps in those beats are where his ad-libs, growls and breaths live, and on the best of them the arrangement and the performance feel like one instrument. P. Killer Trackz supplies a leaner, more traditional boom-bap-adjacent bed for tracks like "The Professional" and "Make a Move," and Dame Grease gives "Fame" and "D-X-L (Hard White)" a gritty, crowded energy that keeps the posse cut from going slack.

The softer palette comes from Irv Gotti, whose work on "What's My Name?" and "Angel" is the album's other half. These are the songs that make the case that DMX can carry melody and vulnerability without losing his weight, and "Angel" in particular lets Regina Belle sing the hook while he spends the verses weighing his conscience. It is the best illustration of the record's real subject, which is a man who cannot decide whether he is the aggressor or the one being hunted.

The writing is where the album stratifies. At his best DMX is a specific, harsh narrator whose rhymes carry weight because he frames rage as an argument with himself. On "Fame" and parts of "Angel," that tension produces real images and a moral through-line. On the middle stretch, though, he leans on cadence over content. A song like "Make a Move" has momentum and swagger and almost no new idea, and "More 2 a Song" gestures at depth without delivering much beyond the title's promise. The craft of the rhyming is rarely sloppy; the problem is that too many verses run on shouted attitude when a sharper detail was needed.

His delivery is the constant, and it is formidable. The rasp, the sudden drop into a whisper, the way a line will break into a bark mid-bar: no one else in rap used that physical range as grammar. It lets him sell weaker material, which is both a strength and a trap. When the voice can rescue anything, the album stops asking whether the material deserves rescuing. The guest list is also mixed. The pop turn with Sisqó on "What These Bitches Want" is a clever commercial hedge that borders on novelty next to the grim songs around it, while the LOX and Drag-On on "D-X-L (Hard White)" fit the label's family dynamic and keep the energy up.

The upshot is a well-built record with a dependable engine and a few sections where the engine is running without a destination.

As a sequence, the album front-loads its strength. The first stretch moves from the short skit into three hard-edged songs in a row, and that run has urgency, variety and a clear sense of who DMX is going to be for the next hour. After that, the pacing sags. The middle of the tracklist settles into a series of mid-tempo hard-edged songs that are individually competent and collectively samey. Three skits and a single-minded tempo make the record feel longer than it is, and the point where it should be gathering force is where it most plainly coasts.

The recovery comes late. The album tightens again from the Swizz Beatz cuts into a closing stretch built around a short prayer and a real emotional peak, and that structure is the most deliberate sequencing decision on the record. Placing the prayer before the ballad-leaning finish turns the last third into a confession rather than another round of threats, which matches the way the artist always worked: violence first, reckoning second. It is a smart shape, and it gives the album a reason to end where it does.

Whether the length is earned is a harder question. Eighteen entries, including skits and a bonus track, is a lot of runtime for a formula this consistent, and the album would land harder at around twelve strong songs. The hits are not the issue; they are spread across the running order well enough that the listener always has a reason to keep going. The issue is the quiet stretches between them, where the record asks for loyalty rather than rewarding attention. Compared with the focused menace of the debut-era records, this is a more crowded and more commercial sequence, built to deliver singles with enough supporting material to keep the shelf life of a blockbuster. As a streaming-era playlist it works better than as a front-to-back listen, which is the clearest sign of where its sequencing stands.

In the catalog, ...And Then There Was X sits below It's Dark and Hell Is Hot, which is rated 7.9 on this site, and the gap is deliberate. The earlier album has the stronger writing and the more unsettling atmosphere; this one has the bigger songs and the weaker filler. It is a very good commercial record that earned a Best Rap Album nomination at the Grammys, but a nomination is not the same as the best work, and the best work is elsewhere.

Who should start here? Anyone who knows DMX only through radio and wants more of that exact feeling. The singles are the hook, and the best album cuts reward the curious. Anyone who wants the version of DMX that wrestles with God and himself at length should start with the earlier record and come back. Casual rap listeners who find shouting wearing should skip the middle stretch and treat the album as a playlist.

It has aged unevenly but kindly. "Party Up (Up in Here)" remains a stadium-sized chant and the best argument for the album's existence. The pop-tinged cuts feel more of their moment, and the filler sounds like filler more clearly now than it did on release. Still, the best material has the staying power that mass-market records seldom keep, and the production by Swizz Beatz holds up as a template for stripped-down, hard-hitting rap.

The three tracks to play first are "Party Up (Up in Here)," "Fame" and "Angel," which together cover the party, the argument and the confession. After that, go back to the earlier record for the fuller version of the artist's conflict, and then move to Grand Champ if you want to see what the formula sounds like once the sales and the novelty fade. The strongest thing this album proves is that DMX's voice could carry a blockbuster; the weakest is that it was never required to carry anything more.