Since DMX passed away, many have shared interviews and anecdotes about their favorite memories of the rapper. Whether public or private, the stories sparked an increased interest in the emcee’s life story, resulting in sales of his memoir, E.A.R.L.: The Autobiography of DMX.
The book has sold out on sites like Target and is on the verge of doing the same at Barnes & Noble. The surge in sales has even landed the book back on bestsellers charts. According to reports, the autobiography is currently number five on the Amazon Arts & Literature Biographies charts and number 35 on the Biographies chart.
DMX’s autobiography — written by DMX and Smokey D. Fontaine, a former music editor at The Source, dropped in the 2003 amid his active music career. The book — labeled after the acronym “Ever Always Real Life” and the rapper’s birth name, Earl Simmons — takes readers through “the dark journey of a boy who became a man, the man who became an artist and the artist who became an icon.” It specifically touches on X’s troubled childhood, his stints in prison and his gradual journey from selling mixtapes on a street corner to mainstream success, which saved him but couldn’t prevent “the demons and sins” that continued to haunt him in the wake of his rise to fame.
Unfortunately, those “demons” resulted in X’s untimely demise. The rapper passed away on Friday (April 9) after a week-long fight to recover from a drug overdose and a heart attack. His death has been met with beautiful tributes and an huge increase of his music streams.
As previously reported by REVOLT, X’s streams jumped over 900 percent in the wake of his passing. The increase helped him find his way back onto the music charts. The Best Of DMX compilation album is now on the Billboard 200 at No. 73.