"One of the great parts was he did embrace his age at 50. I thought this project was brilliant and masterful because it allowed him to be him. You see a lot of these legends, they come out with something and it’s just not them. They’re trying to be too cool and too down instead of just being themselves. But music is timeless; music doesn’t have an age limit on it. I think you age yourself when you try to not be yourself. And X just went at it. He said, 'Yo, I’m going to just do me, and that’s it'” - producer Swizz Beatz says in a Complex interview about DMX's final album 'Exodus'. It's the rapper's first new album in nine years, started after DMX’s epic Verzuz battle with Snoop Dogg in July 2020, and done in the course of two months. It has the most features the rapper has ever had on a project in his career - Griselda crew is there, Usher, Alicia Keys, Bono, Jay-Z and Nas.

Streams of DMX’s catalog of songs increased 928% in the United States in the days following his death - his tracks garnered 75.7 million on-demand streams (audio and video combined) on April 9 and 10, a nine-fold increase compared to the 7.36 million they earned on April 7 and 8. In terms of music sales, DMX’s collected songs and albums sold 101,000 copies on April 9-11 – up 1,036% compared to the 9,000 they sold on April 6-8.

"The premature loss of Earl 'DMX' Simmons labors as a frightening reminder that we, Black men, do not grow old, at least not nearly enough of us. Chadwick Boseman, Charlie Murphy, Bernie Mac, Nipsey Hussle, Prince, Heavy D, George Floyd, Gerald LeVert, Tupac Shakur, Notorious BIG, Prodigy (of Mobb Deep), J Dilla, Bernard Tyson, Fred the Godson. MF DOOM" - Consequence's Kahron Spearman writes on the sensitive issue, going into the wider societal and private contexts of the problem.

A commanding presence on the mic... effortlessly balancing raw charisma with hit-making savvy, DMX had a major impact on the sound and direction of an era in hip-hop - Rolling Stone writes presenting their selection on 16 essential DMX songs. The iconic hip-hop artist has died at the age of 50 after suffering “catastrophic cardiac arrest”. Rolling Stone expands the story on DMX with revisited articles about his debut and his identity.

Snoop Dogg and DMX received 1.75 billion impressions across the internet on the latest Verzuz battle, while breaking Apple Music's all-time livestream record with more than 600,000 concurrent viewers and a total of more than 1.4 million fans tuning in, Billboard reports. On Twitter, #Verzuz became the No. 1 trending topic with 29 other trends growing from that evening. It received 168% more tweets than the previous biggest battle.