Flesh Of My Flesh Blood Of My Blood

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Anointed the next Tupac Shakur by the hip-hop press, the performer DMX has one of the better voices in rap: low, raw, charismatic. In fact, one could say he sounds like a cross between Barry White and McGruff the Crime Dog. However, DMX doesn't share McGruff's anticrime leanings: his new album, like his last, which went double platinum, is seething with viciousness and violence. His lyrics--often simple and clumsy--attack other black people, homosexuals and women. DMX is at his best when he becomes more contemplative, as he does in Coming From, a moving ballad he performs with singer Mary J. Blige. Attacking minorities isn't the most original notion, and it's also rather cowardly. Why not have the guts to challenge the powerful?

--By Christopher John Farley