DMX's Tragic Final Days Revealed: Ex-Wife Tashera Simmons Says, 'You Can't Play With the Devil'

DMX's ex-wife Tashera Simmons says he "got his soul back" before he died in 2021, claiming a "spiritual battle" that she thinks in the end defeated the larger-than-life rapper.

During an appearance on the Hardly Initiated podcast, captured by The Art of Dialogue, Simmons opened up about her ex's demons and the spiritual war she claims he was experiencing in his final years.

"He definitely lost his soul. He knew it. He clearly knew," Simmons insisted during that interview. "X was such a brilliant man, and he was so connected with God, but you can't have one foot here and one foot over here. Not with the calling on his life that he did."

She continued, "We all have a calling, we all chose it, we all called, but a few of us are chosen for certain things that God is gonna put on us to fulfill. And X was one. He knew his calling. Not all of us know our calling. If we don't dig deep enough, we could live this whole life and not know our calling."

The couple, who met as children, married in 1999 and have four children together.

They divorced in 2010, and ended things for good four years later, but they remained friends until DMX died at age 50 of a heart attack caused by a drug overdose.

Simmons said she frequently grappled with how a man who seemed to love the Lord could have crawled so low.

"He chose to be over here and over here, with the devil and in heaven. I saw that you cannot play with the devil," she said. "He's not powerful. He's only what you give him. And that's what I said. He stepped out. I used to try to figure this out. How would such a strong man in God who knew who he was, who knew who God was, fall short like that?"

Simmons also offered up intimate details of their relationship, including claims she said she made after their marriage ended.

"I found out he had a writer. I always traveled with him, and he always asked for two rooms. One for me and him and one for his jump-offs," she said. "I didn't find that out 'til after."

Despite the hurdles, she said, DMX had started to face the weight of his actions.

"I'm only saying this, and it's not in a negative way," she explained. "I'm saying this because, in our last conversations, X knew that he wasn't doing right. But it was beyond his control."
DMX, whose given name was Earl Simmons, became famous in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a purveyor of hardcore, spiritually inflected hip-hop, including hits like "Ruff Ryders' Anthem" and "Slippin'."

He had grappled with substance abuse for large parts of his adult life, but was widely seen as an intensely spiritual and introspective artist.

Simmons' comments come as DMX's legacy and the hurdles that plagued his career and personal life have come back to the forefront of public conversation.

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