DMX

Although DMX has long been one of hip-hop’s best-selling artists — see: his five consecutive No. 1 album debuts on the Billboard 200 and the near-ubiquity of singles like “Party Up” and “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” — many of his most recognizable singles were only certified gold or platinum by the RIAA this week, nearly two months after his death in early April.

The certified songs include “How It’s Goin’ Down” (gold), the aforementioned “Party Up” (platinum), “Ruff Ryders Anthem” (platinum), “What These B*tches Want” featuring Sisqo (gold), “What’s My Name” (gold), “Where The Hood At” (platinum), and “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” (platinum).

For those wondering why these seven songs were only recently certified when some — like “X Gon’ Give It To Ya,” which shipped and/or sold over a million copies in 2017 — surpassed their respective certification thresholds years ago. Fortunately, DJ Booth’s Brian Zisook explained the phenomenon, which he called the result of “a combination of laziness and cost.”

“Labels often will wait until there is a ton of eligible records and they apply for certifications in bulk and then use the number as fodder for coverage,” he explained. “These 7 records didn’t all just become eligible at once.” In a separate tweet, he elaborated that, “Artists will often ask or remind their labels to apply for them on their behalf” sometime after their eligibility — which, in X’s case, couldn’t have been the highest priority (in 2017, he was on trial for tax fraud, spending nearly a year in prison as a result and spending time in and out of rehab).

However, with X’s posthumous album, Exodus, dropping this Friday, there was perhaps no more opportune time for Def Jam to file for certifications — even if it is in semi-bad taste. You can check out one of the first songs released from the album, the Griselda-featuring “Hood Blues,” now.

Before his death last month, DMX gave his final interview for the TV One special Uncensored: DMX, the first part of which aired last night. Within the episode, he covered stories we know, such as how he was tricked into smoking crack at just 14 years old, and ones that he hasn’t shared as often, like the time he says he met an angel when he was hit by a car as a child. He also discussed his love for dogs, comparing them to God, and how he used perspective shifting to handle some of his deepest woes.

DMX’s angel encounter, which happened when he was four years old, was the result of typical childhood inattention. While visiting a friend of his mother’s, young DMX was told to watch his sister outside but was distracted when he found a dime and went to buy candy. “As soon as I stepped off the curb coming down from the store, a car hit me (and) knocked me way over on the other side of the street up under another car,” he remembers. When he tried to get up, he says a white woman with a clipboard told him to lie back down.

“You’d think that she would’ve stuck around because she saw the whole thing,” he reasons. “I don’t know, I felt like it was an angel. She got no business being in the ‘hood with a f*cking clipboard.” The woman disappeared once his mom and emergency services arrived.

Elsewhere in the episode, DMX calls his dog Boomer one of his closest friends, saying, “Two things capable of unconditional love: a dog [and] God. Same word spelled backward. I really feel like dogs are close to God.”

The second and final part of Uncensored: DMX airs tonight at 7 pm PT/10 pm ET on TV One.