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Try not to get in trouble

DMX is, famously, a man in pain. Whatever stories you've heard -- that he's manic depressive, asthmatic, traumatized by childhood experiences, troubled by the world around him -- they all coincide with the public image of Dark Man X. If he is, as Blender recently declared, "the hardest man in hiphop," it's because he has survived all of these adversities and more. His new video, for "Who We Be," the first single off The Great Depression, emerges directly from this personal history. But now, it also speaks to broader concerns -- penal and legal systems, communities and identities -- in ways that no one could have imagined when the video was made.

Premiering on various programs on various channels a short time after 11 September, "Who We Be" meant differently for its many viewers. Tigger was down with it on Rap City, Free and AJ were suitably impressed over on 106th & Park, and if the kids on TRL weren't precisely or diehard DMX fans, they knew enough to be awed by the video, especially after Carson praised it enthusiastically. Full of dire, dark, and disturbing images, the video offers a kind of mini-history lesson, a montage of anguish and anger, where the hook -- sung as a chorus that is both melancholy and chilling -- makes a seemingly simple declaration: "They don't know who we be." The charge (read: accusation and excitement) comes in the connections between visuals and vocals: this is that rare music video where the music and the video are equally crucial and compelling.

DMX's work is always passionate, but it's not always been so focused. He is a superstar. The Great Depression, which he says is named not for his own emotional state, but for the way it will make his competitors feel, is his fourth album, and the fourth to open at number one on the Soundscan charts. In the notoriously fickle world of pop music, such consistency is no small thing. DMX's fans are loyal as well as legion. On one level, this popularity is a function of his "everyman" appeal. Like a pissed off punk or metal rocker, he puts his pain out there, he can hardly contain his frustration and fury. While many attest to the man's reserve and self-seclusion offstage (see, for example, the documentary, Backstage, which underscores his contrast with the gregarious Jay-Z), he ignites on stage, at once earnest and energetic. This performance style has led some critics to herald DMX as one of prime forces behind mainstream hiphop's return to street realism during the late '90s. (And for this, we are all grateful to whomever: though the bling-blingers still loom large, the shiny suits are pretty well put to rest.)

Indeed, DMX and his Ruff Ryders label mates bring all kinds of street noise. Even if you don't identify with his dismal Yonkers projects memories, his teenaged mother and early illness, his sense of abandonment and his love for his dogs, his experiences jacking all kinds of smalltime shit and his subsequent prison time (reportedly nearly a quarter of his 30 years on the planet), it's strangely easy to sympathize with him. His raspy vocals intimate fury but also vulnerability. His video images typically throb with energy, as well as fear and despair, from the raw black-and-white live show captured by Hype Williams in "Get At Me Dog," to horror movie pit full of bloody, clawing hands in "Slippin," to the edgy-sweet, Timbaland-plunked duet with Aaliyah, "Come Back in One Piece."

"Who We Be" is something else. In fact, it's brilliantly and frantically made up of lots of pieces, displaying an ugly history, individual and collective, with striking determination and elegant choreography. Dedicated to X's late homeboy "Q," the video opens by making DMX into an image, a rough set of black and white pointillistic dots, like a newspaper photo magnified to the umpteenth degree: DMX up way too close.

The horns and chorus begin, accompanied by the driving beat, by newcomer producer Black Key, that doesn't let up for the rest of the track. The video's "narrative" here kicks in as well, or rather, its montagey pile-on of portraits of a national legacy. He spits: "The city, the farmers, the babies, the mama. / The projects, the drugs, the children, the thugs. / The tears, the hugs, the love, the slugs. / The funerals, the wakes, the churches, the coffins. / The heartbroken mothers: it happens, too often." And you see: footage of Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights demonstrations, riot scenes with buildings burning, anti-Civil Rights protestors (who carry signs reading, "Keep Alabama White"), uniformed cops with batons, kids on the street, and again and again, kids who mouth the chorus, "They don't knooow, who we beee." These are little girls and boys, set against backdrops of heartbreaking film and tv footage, apart from but also integral to the flow of what passes for history, what has been recorded, even if forgotten on occasion.

Always, "we be," in a present that demands attention but eludes definition. Always, the beat. And always, the harshness.

All these images -- rowdy and insistent -- are punctuated with shots of prisons, cells, yards, dining rooms, and long, grim corridors, and X himself in a cell, pounding his head, pacing, raging against the machine. And while the history of racism in the U.S. certainly provides a potent background, the video's most acute shots target the penal and legal system. "The options," X announces, "Get shot, go to jail, or getcha ass kicked. / The lawyers, the part, they are, of the puzzle. / The release, the warning, 'Try not, to get in trouble.' / The snitches, the odds, probation, parole. / The new charge, the bail, the warrant, the hole." This section closes with the effects of all of the above: "The fightin, the stabbin, the pullin, the grabbin." No one gets out in one piece, and those who aren't literally in jail -- children, spouses, and parents -- pay dearly as well. Everyone suffers, though none so incessantly as those caught up in what Angela Davis calls the "prison-industrial complex."