Earl Simmons, better known as the rapper DMX, died last week. I didn’t know much about him or his raps; the only music of his that was even slightly familiar to me was “Party Up (Up in Here)." But the more I read about him on Twitter and heard about him on The Breakfast Club and other news reports, the more I wanted to learn about him. People called him a poet and a preacher. In an MTV interview, DMX said he thought of his lyrics as poetry. He appeared on Def Poetry with a … [Read more...]