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10/27/02 Ja Rule may think DMX is a "jealous crack addict," but Tom Morello and Audioslave were pretty blown away by the rap kingpin when he recorded rhymes for two of their songs, at least one of which will surface on a future soundtrack. "He's awesome," raved Morello. "He's one of my favorite rappers of all time. It was such a thrill to find out he wanted to work with us." Audioslave recorded "Here I Come," the first of two songs earlier this year while working on their debut album, which comes out November 19. Then they sent the track to DMX, who put vocals on top. Initially, the song was intended for the "Jackass" soundtrack (see "DMX Teams Up With Rage Against The Machine"). "DMX liked it so much, he wanted it for his album," Morello said. "So we decided to write another song for the soundtrack and came up with a pretty dynamic jam called 'Wrecking Ball.' " After X put his stamp on the second cut, the song was slated for the soundtrack, but Audioslave decided to back out because the soundtrack was scheduled for release almost the same time as their album and they were afraid of cannibalizing sales. "It's pretty rocking and it will come out somewhere, sometime in the future," Morello said. A spokesperson for DMX said "Here I Come" will be on the soundtrack for the DMX and Jet Li film "Cradle 2 the Grave," which should be out early next year ...:::...:::...:::...:::...:::... 10/09/02 DMX is gearing up for a jam-packed few months. On November 5, the rapper will see the release of his autobiography, followed by his album, "It's Not A Game," hitting the streets later that month. And that's not all. DMX will have his own fragrance, Xcaliber, in stores in December, just in time for X-Mas. The DMX fest continues in March, where he'll be on the silver screen, with co-star Jet Li, in "Cradle 2 The Grave." Couldn't happen for a nicer guy, it seems. According to Launch, he has recently started up the Mary Ella Foundation, named for his grandmother, Mary Ella Holloway. The organization has been founded to help underprivileged children in DMX's hometown of Yonkers. That's not the only good deed on this man's list, either. Launch reports that DMX is converting a church into a housing facility for single mothers on the road to completing their education. The facility is scheduled to open in March. ...:::...:::...:::...:::...:::... 10/01/02 50 Cent brought his hype machine to Puerto Rico over the weekend for the Mix Show Power Summit, where MCs like Lil' Kim, Busta Rhymes and Cam'ron mingled with DJs. 50, whose underground smash "Wanksta" is spinning out of control in his hometown of New York, will soon get his chance to graduate from being king of the street tapes to Billboard chart topper when his Shady/Aftermath Records debut drops on December 3, according to an Interscope spokesperson (see "50 Cent Worth A Million To Dr. Dre And Eminem"). Although it's still up in the air whether the Queens native will keep "Wanksta" as the first official single (50 has a track called "1st Single" he's thinking about unveiling) or if the album title will remain Get Rich or Die Trying, he will definitely use tracks provided by Dr. Dre, Eminem, Rockwilder and Sha Money XL, the producer behind most of his underground cuts. Em has produced four songs for 50 Cent, including a posse cut featuring 50, Em and Obie Trice called "Love Me" for the "8 Mile" soundtrack. Two others, "Patiently Waiting" and "Don't Push Me," have been allotted for the 50 Cent solo project. While in Puerto Rico, the chiseled, unabashed word flipper, who just wrapped production on a video for the remix of Missy Elliott's "Work It," revealed that Trina gets down and dirty on the sex-themed ditty "The Magic Stick" on his album. DMX may also pop up on the opus, as there's heavy talk of a posse cut featuring DMX, 50 and Marshall Mathers. ...:::...:::...:::...:::...:::... 07/13/02 DMX said he took a different approach while filming his latest movie, "Cradle 2 the Grave" � he didn't let anybody whip his butt. In last year's "Exit Wounds," Steven Seagal "was kind of finishing me," X said, "but it's not even like that [this time]. I be f---ing n---as up and everything in this movie. Everybody else gets their ass kicked." Everybody except for his co-star Jet Li. The two briefly face-off onscreen before teaming up in the picture, which hits theaters in March. "Quick fight," X nonchalantly explained of their fight sequence. "He hit me a couple, I hit him a couple of times. You ain't gonna be whoopin' my ass now. It ain't that serious." Despite X's growls, the Yonkers bone crusher said he's becoming more serious about honing his thespian and choreographed pugilist skills. "I'm the jewel thief," X said of his character in "Cradle 2 the Grave." "I steal something that's not quite jewelry. It looks like diamonds, but it turns out to be plutonium. So it's like a lot of international smuggling sh--. They kidnap my daughter. "I personally think I did a lot better in the fight scenes. I got more into it. When sh-- is given to you mad easily, you're like, 'F--- it, I got it easy. I'm'a just do whatever these n---as see me doing.' I realized the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. If I can look good half-ass trying, imagine what it would look like if I put my all into it. If I do this sh-- for real. "Ain't no more half-stepping with it," he continued. "No more bullsh--in' with it. Everything depends on how we look at it. [I] look at it like, 'This is a job, and the better I perform, the more work I get, the more money I get." The dog is steadily climbing up to that A-list $20 million price range. He's almost halfway there, thanks to the lucrative world of motion pictures. "I can sell 5 million albums and only get a half a million dollars. One movie, I'm up to like $8 million. It's less headaches, and they actually treat you with respect in the film industry. In the music industry, you're just another n---a who can rap or just another n---a who can sing. That's how they treat you, that's how they dispose of you. 'Oh, we got another one here. Forget about him, we got another one just like him.' They always got another one just like you." Much to his chagrin, X said the producers of the long-talked-about "Lazarus," which was supposed to be the latest installment on the "Crow" franchise, echoed those sentiments. But when they tried to pair him with another multiplatinum hip-hop star turned actor, he backed out of the part. "You know what it was? They wanted to do it where there's two Crows," he said. "They wanted Eminen to be the other Crow. I'm like, 'C'mon, man. You're not breaking this guy off my back. [Let Em] get his own movie first.' It's bad enough I'm a rap artist getting into acting � you gonna make it worse? It was his first joint. Don't do me like that. Then, [what if we find out] he can't act and I'm all f---ed up on some B-movie sh--?" So if you don't see eye-to-eye with people producing your films, what do you do? Produce your own films. The $8 million man said he's developing a script through his own Bloodline Films. "Under my film company, we got a joint called '12 Minutes,' " he revealed. "I'm a father, I have a son, but I never met him. I'm on death row, and the last day before they execute you, you get a visit by the pastor and you get a little time with your wife and your mom. On this last day I get to meet my son. We get an hour or so to say hello and goodbye. It's gonna be some deep sh--, a lot of flashbacks of what it took to get me in this position." ...:::...:::...:::...:::...:::... 08/07/02 Celebs such as DMX, Lil' Kim, Queen Latifah, members of the Wu-Tang Clan, Foxy Brown, Cam'ron and the Diplomats and the aforementioned ballin' blabbermouths all gathered at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park to either compete or just see who had the flossiest vehicles on display. "This is crazy," Jadakiss said early in the day after admiring Busta's arsenal of steel on wheels, which included a silver 2003 Mercedes Benz G-Wagon, a yellow Hummer H2, a red Ford F150 Harley Davidson truck and two Lamborghini Murcielagos � one lime green, the other bright orange, and each with a toy replica of itself inside. "This makes me want to go to the studio [and] go up to Interscope and open up about three or four more budgets," Jada continued, marveling. "I see how it's going down. There's some beautiful machines out here. Busta looks like he's holding it down, too. It's real close between Baby, Busta and 'Clef. That's about it right now. I think the trophy's going to float around between any of them three right now." Soon after Jada, his Ruff Ryder family member DMX made his way in to sniff out what he was up against. X had Chevrolet Impalas from 1963 and 1964, and one had a picture of Aaliyah spraypainted on the hood. "I ain't seen nothing yet," DMX said of the cars being shown off. "I'm going to check out my joints. My mans and them are already here, and they already told me the competition is none. You can eat off the bottom of my car, dog. You could flip my car upside down and eat off chrome. "I'm a connoisseur, man," X continued. "I've got a few joints, man, from like 1930 to like 1970. [My favorite one] is not finished all the way, but it's my '57 Cadillac Fleetwood. From the back door to the tail is chrome." While X loves the vintage rides, 'Clef decided to make his car show appearance a mixture of old-school faves like a pink Cadillac Eldorado, modern-day staples like his Bentley and Ferrari F350, and futuristic-looking hot wheels like a motorcycle wrapped in Spider-Man colors and the McLaren F1, which has a steering wheel and driver's seat placed in the middle and passenger seats on the left and right. When the car show closed out, Wyclef lived up to his prophecies and new champ was crowned. "Baby is a veteran when it comes to this, but once in a while a young kid got to come along and knock him out," 'Clef continued with his jaw-jacking. "Flex, give me my trophy. [The] F1 McLaren's doors do not go up like a Lamborghini. The car opens like the Birdman's wings." Unfortunately for Baby, the Birdman's wings were clipped this year. ...:::...:::...:::...:::...:::... 08/05/02 DMX and members of Rage Against the Machine recently collaborated together, and no, the result is not called "Communist Party up in Here." "I got a rock joint," X bragged recently. "I did two songs with Rage Against the Machine. One song is 'We Gonna Get It Right,' and the other one is 'Here I Come.' I only met one of [the group members]. I pretty much got a CD and did the damn thing." A management spokesperson in Rage's camp confirmed the collaboration, and DMX's spokesperson said the plan is to have "Here I Come" appear on the soundtrack to "Cradle 2 the Grave," which stars DMX and Jet Li, while "We Gonna Get It Right" will be featured as the lead cut from the soundtrack to MTV's "Jackass: The Movie." It has not yet been determined which of the two songs will also appear on the jagged-voiced MC's next LP, which he is now recording in Chicago. Another rocker on the Yonkers-born line hurler's radar is Fred Durst. The pair originally worked on the remix of Limp Bizkit's "Rollin'" with Redman and Method Man. The two were supposed to link up again a few months ago on a DJ Premier-produced song for a compilation disc of artists signed to DMX's Bloodline Records label, but it still hasn't happened. It's a smooth songstress, though, who DMX said might provide for the sweetest collaboration. "I wanna work with Sade," X lightly growled. "I'd love to work with her. We'll reach out." And it'll probably happen, since X is tight with Sade's little sister, who he's been hanging out with in Chi-Town. After finishing up the few songs he started on there, the Dark Man will head back to New York to complete the bulk of his upcoming album, his spokesperson said. ...:::...:::...:::...:::...:::... 27/07/02 You can officially take Ja Rule off DMX's list of "mans and them" - the dog says he's going to be sinking his teeth into his onetime buddy and rhyme running mate. "I got some sh--, man," X said Friday from a Chicago studio about what he plans to put on his upcoming album. "They trying to stop me from doing this song called 'Ruled Out.' Everybody in here don't want me to do it - they whining - but I'm gonna do it." X and Ja's kinship goes back way before they morphed into superstars, or even before they both became a part of the Island/Def Jam family tree. Murder Inc. CEO Irv Gotti, who produced many of their early underground recordings while they were struggling artists, ties them both together. "You know what happened," X barked of what has caused the friction between the two, taking for granted that it's common knowledge. Seems like X has the same criticism that some hip-hop fans had of Rule early in his career: Ja sounds too much like the Yonkers flamethrower. In DMX's "Do You," which was a single off of Funkmaster Flex's 2000 release, Vol. 4 - 60 Minutes of Funk, he blasted those trying to imitate him, rhyming, "You don't even know what you got inside/ How the f--- you gon' find out, you keep wanting to ride ... Can't do you, then what you flow for?/ You ain't gon' get there tryin' to be me, dog." Although he never mentioned Ja's name, many felt it was an indirect dis. X didn't say if "Do You" was meant for Rule, but he did admit to dropping subliminal lines at Ja even earlier than that with "We Don't Give a F---" ("Well you might as well forget me, 'cause from this point on it's war/ It won't stop until one of us is gone ... Somebody should have told me, I was f---in' with a clown"). "It's not like I'm the only [one] that thinks about this," X lamented. "N---as ask me about this sh-- every day. So what I'm gonna do, sit here and do nothing about this sh--? That ain't right. I could see if the n---a talked like that regularly. How I talk is how I rap. "I been thinking about it for a minute," he continued to bark. "I bit him lightly, on the second album [Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood]. 'Use to be my dog, you were in my left t--ty.' The funny sh-- is that Gotti did the beat. But I see he didn't get the point. I'm like, 'Come on dog, what are you doing?' " As for Ja's take, in 1999, before dropping his superstar-turning Rule 3:36, he told MTV News it "was a challenge to make everybody believe Ja Rule's not f---ing trying to be like DMX ... I'm my own man." Rhyme styles aside, X said he still considered Ja a friend until Rule recently started letting the fame get to him. "A little?" X, words drenched in sarcasm, responded when asked if he felt Rule was getting a little too Hollywood. "One thing I can't really f--- with is how a n---a change up. If I could stay the same, why can't you? Even if you do change up, don't change up to your n---as before all this. We was broke together, man." X cited a recent incident on the West Coast to back his claims. "We in the club in L.A. one night, he got his people, I got my people," he said. "We at two different sides of the club. Me, out of respect - that's my n---a - I take two people with me to get through the crowd. I take a bottle of liquor over there, have a couple of drinks with my n---a, 'cause that's how I am. "Two weeks later we happened to be in the same club," X continued. "Same circumstances. Some kid walks over to me and says, 'Ja says he's over there.' I'm like, 'Alright, is he gonna come over?' 'Nah, he said come over there.' Get the f--- out of here, man. I already extended my hand once. Give me the same courtesy. You can't do the same as me? I sent him right back over there. You think [Ja] would come over there after all of that. Nothin'! I'm like, 'F--- you!' " X promised nothing short of his relentless brand of gutter-embedded rhymes and sounds throughout the rest of his album, which he's just started in the Windy City. "It's all over the place," he revealed. Despite doing his thing for years, including being the only artist in the SoundScan era (which dates back to May 1991) to have his first four LPs debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, X feels he has a lot to prove on his still-untitled new project. "Yeah," he explained, " 'Cause I don't feel my last album was promoted as good as it could have been. Every day, if I have the channel on a video station, I'm seein' nothing but bullsh--. I'm like, 'These n---as is getting away with this.' N---as know, when they listen to my [music], it's like, 'Listen to what he's saying.' To have all that sh-- knocked down with [rappers] talking blah, blah, blah and 'I think my butt getting big,' all this that don't make no sense. What are you giving my peoples? You're killing us, dog!" "The hood is here," X explained of his decision to record in Chicago. "Everywhere I go, I gotta f--- with the 'hood. I want the 'hood close by. I ride through and get a vibe."
