Grammy-nominated rapper and producer went through addiction but had the strength to pull himself back – through reflection, therapy, support and a lot of hard work. Not everybody won that battle and Royce is worried that the vicious circle of deaths and addictions in hip hop takes more and more lives.
The tragic loss of DMX has been mourned across cultures and generations. Black Rob’s death followed, echoing all the tragic circumstances of many losses that hit hip hop over years.
It made Royce thinking about similarities of their lives and deaths, and many other lives and deaths in the rap culture.
Royce left a video message on his Instagram, where he talks about substance abuse and about the culture that perpetuates it:
I took my first drink at 21 years old with Dr. Dre. He asked me if I wanted a drink so I just said “yeah”, but prior to that drinking wouldn’t my thing. That later became an addiction. And then, when we become artists, hip hop artists, I’m talking about black culture, make rappers, say other rappers names in a competitive spirit, we used to be worried about beef on track spilling over off to the streets. Now we are worried about street beef spilling over to tracks because that escalates everything. So I came to the conclusion that we’ve been hired to kill ourselves. We’ve come from all these different places of judgement, we eat all the wrong food, we go to the funerals of people who died a little bit sooner than us. We pass judgement. We say, “Yo, y’all weren’t there. Y’all weren’t there for him. So he made a choice. He had to choose to become an addict”. Everybody talking like that about DMX, you don’t know shit about addiction. “Where the fuck is Puff? Why he hadn’t help Black Rob? Wassup with Jay-Z? Did he buy the masters?”
Y’all don’t know shit about Puff, you don’t know shit about Jay-Z, you don’t know shit about the record business. Me, Charlemagne, all of us tell you, you need therapy. You don’t want therapy because you don’t know shit about therapy. One thing for sure, two things for certain: it’s like we’ve been hired to fucking kill ourselves. We go to the funeral, we eat the same food as we eat in the past and put the motherfucker in the casket. To grieve, to process, and to get ourselves to that process we do the same drugs, we drink the same liquor, the same syrup, we pop the same pills. All the same shit that we do in the studio because we told ourselves that’s what we need to create. And we wanna make it so bad that we’re willing to leave it all in the ring. We’re willing to leave it all on the floor, put it all on the line. So everybody who’s been worried about me my whole career – I’m sorry, for everything I put you through. All strong black women behind me, my wife, my mother — I love y’all, I appreciate y’all.
Stop talking shit. ‘Cause you don’t know shit. Let Black Rob rest. Let DMX rest. Think of something positive to say. Stop saying, “How come we’re waiting for people to die? Start giving them their flowers!” Niggas got their flowers. Placing DMX on a higher pedestal that he’s already on… If you think that it would somehow heal him, or if you think that he chose addiction, or you think that somebody could’ve somehow fixed him — you don’t know shit about addiction.
But the younglings looking at this, look at it and learn something from it. You’re looking at your future. If you’re doing all the same — illicit drugs and drinking, and all of that shit, — you’re looking at your future. If you’re online talking about what you gonna do to a nigga when you see him — you’re looking at your future. That’s imminent death, my nigga. We ain’t here for nothing but make music, we are not here for all this extra shit. So get off Clubhouse for a minute and just do some reflecting. And think about people that you love. I know that shit makes me wanna be super intentional about the way I do everything, everything that is Royce. Super intentional about being a father, super intentional about being somebody’s friend, super intentional about the way I love somebody. When my love is not reciprocated, I’m a Cancer, I’m super intentional about how fucked up and hurt I am about it.
Rest in peace to Black Rob and DMX. My prayers and condolences go out to the families.
