DMX

DMX and Rakim recorded together in 2013 but didn't meet face to face until two years later, when a camera crew caught the encounter for Street Heat Films. On tape, DMX settled a rivalry that had followed him since childhood: 'Growing up, there was always a conflict on who was the best rapper, it was between Big Daddy Kane and Rakim. I always went with Rakim, always.' What won him over, he explained, was Rakim's refusal to curse or pad a verse — proof a rapper could stay hard without raising his voice.

listen: upstream & heresource: VIBE — DMX meets Rakim for the first time (Rakim influence testimony) ↗share

1987

Paid in FullRakim

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1998

Get At Me DogDMX

listen forBoth tracks strip the beat to a hard, repeating loop and dare the MC to fill it alone — no hook, no chorus to hide behind. Rakim's breakout, 'Paid in Full,' rides that space with a laid-back, internally rhymed flow that never raises its voice. DMX's own breakout, 'Get At Me Dog,' takes the same bare architecture and detonates it — matching Rakim's command of the track but rerouting it through a barked, guttural cadence. Listen for how both open by staking a claim to the mic before the beat even settles.

By 2003 DMX had built an empire on his own bark, but for 'Where the Hood At?' he reached back fifteen years. The song loops the same Albert King guitar line — 'I'll Play the Blues for You' — that Big Daddy Kane had already flipped for 1989's 'Young, Gifted and Black,' and DMX later said the borrowed groove was no coincidence: he was 'in love with that beat when Kane did it.' It's the one entry here where a childhood favorite shows up as literal, audible material rather than attitude alone.

listen: upstream & heresource: Wikipedia — "Where the Hood At?" (Big Daddy Kane sample connection) ↗share

1989

Young, Gifted and BlackBig Daddy Kane

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2003

Where the Hood At?DMX

listen forBoth tracks are built on the same Albert King horn-and-guitar loop from 'I'll Play the Blues for You,' but each MC repurposes it differently. Kane rides it smooth, dropping unhurried boasts between the horn stabs. DMX drags the same loop into something grimier — his verses bark over it in short, clipped bursts, and the hook turns the sample's laid-back groove into a taunt. Same sample, opposite temperature.

Asked by GQ in 2019 to name his five most influential rappers, DMX didn't hesitate: 'I don't know that they're in the order that they are influential to me. Jimmy Spicer, a.k.a. Super Rhyme. Big Daddy Kane, Rakim…Slick Rick and Kool G Rap.' He offered no further explanation for the Queens MC's place on that list, but the catalogs supply the connective tissue: Kool G Rap essentially invented the cinematic, first-person crime narrative, records that play like short films with a body count — the mode DMX's own tales of temptation, guilt, and violence never strayed far from.

listen: upstream & hereshare

1989

Road to the RichesKool G Rap

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1998

Ready to Meet HimDMX

listen for'Road to the Riches' set the template Kool G Rap spent his career refining: a rapper narrating his own criminal rise in vivid, novelistic detail, then facing the reckoning. DMX's 'Ready to Meet Him' keeps that first-person, cinematic frame but pushes the reckoning to its extreme — a street narrative that ends in a literal conversation with God. Listen for how both MCs slow the pace at the moment of consequence, letting the story's violence finally catch up with its narrator.