Welcome to another installment of Musical Talmud, where we search for the hidden nooks and crannies of pop music lyrics for delicious pockets of melted butter.  (And by melted butter I mean “hermeneutic significance.”  Thinking of nooks and crannies just got me hungry for an English Muffin, and my mind wandered.)

I don’t really want to talk about DMX on this website. Our mission statement involves giving popular culture a level of attention that “it probably doesn’t deserve,” and while this particular post might be overcompensating a little, I think that DMX actually gets way less serious attention than he ought to.  (Although I am proud to note that what serious attention he does receive tends to stem from these very pages.)  I will grant that DMX doesn’t have the same kind of millennial trans-hipsterish caché as a Kanye West or a Will.I.Am.  I will also grant that he’s not always what you’d call a lyrical technician. No one will be buying the DMX poetry book the way that they’ve been buying the Tupac and Jewel poetry books. But man does not rap by lyrics alone.