JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: We recorded up in Yonkers, at Powerhouse. We recorded at the Hit Factory. We hit Sony, we hit Quad. We locked down all the studios in the city. We had our own studio, too. All at once we had New York, L.A., and Miami studios on lock, mixing that album.
DMX: We did [pieces of the album] out in Cali. That was different for me. Being out there for an extended period of time like that. I bought my first lowrider. We was just in the studio a lot. We had fun with it.
DAME GREASE: I used to sleep at Powerhouse. I’d be in there eating turkey sandwiches, Chinese, and sleeping on the boards. Just cranking, cranking, cranking around the clock. The energy was crazy. All of us was, like, right off the street. Right off the corners and shit. We just put all that energy from the street — the bad shit, the love, the good shit, the hate, all that shit. We just put it inside the album.
KEVIN LILES: Rap wasn’t a hobby to him, it was his life. X would do four to five songs a day because he was just writing about what was going on around him.
DMX: I record because it’s a dope beat or I have something on my mind; that’s why I write. I just always wanted it to come from the heart.
KEVIN LILES: With X, we never chased radio. We chased to make sure we knew where he was. What were we chasing when he said, “I’m slipping, I’m falling, I can’t get up?” That’s just where he was in his life.
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: X was writing “Slippin’” for a while — six months, a year. He wanted this song to be impacting people’s lives.
DARRIN “DEE” DEAN: There was a million people out here that was going through what he’s going through. He could relate to them and they could relate to him.
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: He made the people feel his pain and he let them know, “Rappers can talk about fluff, and yeah I’m nice and I can do a hot song,” but X on this second album made the people understand that he was them. And he was going through what they was going through.
KAREN R. GOOD: When people are like that, when they lay themselves bare — to an extent, you know, he wasn’t telling everything. He was telling a lot. He had real issues. He was dealing with serious addiction issues and had a lot of pain. X couldn’t really be fake. I don’t think he knew how, really. There was no artifice. People were like, “He’s the next Pac!” He would throw biblical references around and just be talking really frankly about his demons, which is what made him endearing. He could do both.
Working alongside producers like Dame Grease and P. Killer Trackz on Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, the album also marked the emergence of Swizz Beatz as a bonafide hitmaker.
SWIZZ BEATZ: I was still in school when they were doing It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot and I was pissed. Like, “Y’all went and did this without me?” My uncles made it pretty hard. They were like, “If you’re messing up in school, you can’t be around this.” So I just focused on school and getting my grades right. Songs started popping off, and it got real, so I moved to New York. I was around after that. With Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, me and X got the formula going and there wasn’t any stopping us.
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: They had worked together since Swizz was 12 years old. That’s what made Swizz and X be able to gel, because they were so in tune with each other, with doing damn near everything together. Going out, partying together, jumping cabs together, hanging out with the same girls, and just having fun together.
DARRIN “DEE” DEAN: It was easy for me to be like, “Yo Swizz, give me a beat. I need a beat for tomorrow.” He’d go in there, come back out, and he’d have another beat.
SWIZZ BEATZ: On “My Niggas,” X was just vibing. The track made him want to talk like that in the beginning. It had that little spaced-out chorus I was putting in there. I was making it a little bit dramatic. We were about anthems. When you look at most anthems, they’re very repetitive, they keep coming back around. “My niggas” was just the anchor, and it was like filling in the blanks. Everybody kept saying it over and over in the studio, and it was easy for him to record. That’s the thing — the reason why I got so many tracks on X’s album was because I had a formula that was different. I would come up with the choruses, I would come up with the concepts, and then the artist just had to fill in the blanks.
KAREN R. GOOD: Swizz was traveling in two worlds. On the one end you are dealing with some gritty dudes, and on the other end, you’re making these anthems. And the thing about anthems is, you can have a “Ruff Ryders Anthem” and that’s not tested out, but then by the second album, you’re kind of known for that first anthem so you kind of gotta do another anthem. Then it becomes something else. X and Swizz had a hardness to them, but they were also pop. They knew how to create anthems, and it was still good in the club.
SWIZZ BEATZ: “It’s All Good” was a requested sample [from Taana Gardner’s 1981 single “Heartbeat”]. X always loved it. He used to freestyle to a lot of old school beats on his early demos, so we was very comfortable with old school breaks and beats. When we were recording, he was like, “Just slip that one to me please.” I remember having a debate with him. I was like, “We should just take the sample out.” But he was like, “Nah, I just wanna hear it like how I remember it.”
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: This album was real horn-driven. Swizz brought a mixture of the East Coast and the South. He’s from the Bronx, but then he went down to Atlanta to finish high school, and he brought back a lot of original music. When he mixed those two regions together, and then he put the Dog on it, you got Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. The heat is on. Matter of fact, X wrote “Heat” in Atlanta.
DAME GREASE: The original version of “Heat,” that shit was crazy. The version on Flesh of My Flesh that Swizz did is hot, too. This older dude that we rented the space from in Georgia — a couple rooms to just work — always had this old dog that was in the house. We opened the back patio for one second, and the dog darted out. Hours later, somebody called the guy and said, “Yo, your dog is dead on the highway.” The dude was so mad, and he pulled out a gun on us like, “You killed my dog.” X was just like, “Fuck you.”
STYLES P: It was a team, a brotherhood, an army. We were trying to make our mark on the land, leave our footprints behind so muhfuckas remembered we was here, and what we gave, and what we did. X brought upper-echelon grit to the game. Shit was epic. High energy, dogs, motorcycles, lotta homies, lotta hunger, rough days. It was a crazy lifestyle.
DMX: The album is a journey. With “Ready to Meet Him,” I wanted to end on a prayer because that’s what we started with, and I wanted the last thing you hear to be a conversation with the Lord.
DMX: We did [pieces of the album] out in Cali. That was different for me. Being out there for an extended period of time like that. I bought my first lowrider. We was just in the studio a lot. We had fun with it.
DAME GREASE: I used to sleep at Powerhouse. I’d be in there eating turkey sandwiches, Chinese, and sleeping on the boards. Just cranking, cranking, cranking around the clock. The energy was crazy. All of us was, like, right off the street. Right off the corners and shit. We just put all that energy from the street — the bad shit, the love, the good shit, the hate, all that shit. We just put it inside the album.
KEVIN LILES: Rap wasn’t a hobby to him, it was his life. X would do four to five songs a day because he was just writing about what was going on around him.
DMX: I record because it’s a dope beat or I have something on my mind; that’s why I write. I just always wanted it to come from the heart.
KEVIN LILES: With X, we never chased radio. We chased to make sure we knew where he was. What were we chasing when he said, “I’m slipping, I’m falling, I can’t get up?” That’s just where he was in his life.
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: X was writing “Slippin’” for a while — six months, a year. He wanted this song to be impacting people’s lives.
DARRIN “DEE” DEAN: There was a million people out here that was going through what he’s going through. He could relate to them and they could relate to him.
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: He made the people feel his pain and he let them know, “Rappers can talk about fluff, and yeah I’m nice and I can do a hot song,” but X on this second album made the people understand that he was them. And he was going through what they was going through.
KAREN R. GOOD: When people are like that, when they lay themselves bare — to an extent, you know, he wasn’t telling everything. He was telling a lot. He had real issues. He was dealing with serious addiction issues and had a lot of pain. X couldn’t really be fake. I don’t think he knew how, really. There was no artifice. People were like, “He’s the next Pac!” He would throw biblical references around and just be talking really frankly about his demons, which is what made him endearing. He could do both.
Working alongside producers like Dame Grease and P. Killer Trackz on Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, the album also marked the emergence of Swizz Beatz as a bonafide hitmaker.
SWIZZ BEATZ: I was still in school when they were doing It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot and I was pissed. Like, “Y’all went and did this without me?” My uncles made it pretty hard. They were like, “If you’re messing up in school, you can’t be around this.” So I just focused on school and getting my grades right. Songs started popping off, and it got real, so I moved to New York. I was around after that. With Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood, me and X got the formula going and there wasn’t any stopping us.
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: They had worked together since Swizz was 12 years old. That’s what made Swizz and X be able to gel, because they were so in tune with each other, with doing damn near everything together. Going out, partying together, jumping cabs together, hanging out with the same girls, and just having fun together.
DARRIN “DEE” DEAN: It was easy for me to be like, “Yo Swizz, give me a beat. I need a beat for tomorrow.” He’d go in there, come back out, and he’d have another beat.
SWIZZ BEATZ: On “My Niggas,” X was just vibing. The track made him want to talk like that in the beginning. It had that little spaced-out chorus I was putting in there. I was making it a little bit dramatic. We were about anthems. When you look at most anthems, they’re very repetitive, they keep coming back around. “My niggas” was just the anchor, and it was like filling in the blanks. Everybody kept saying it over and over in the studio, and it was easy for him to record. That’s the thing — the reason why I got so many tracks on X’s album was because I had a formula that was different. I would come up with the choruses, I would come up with the concepts, and then the artist just had to fill in the blanks.
KAREN R. GOOD: Swizz was traveling in two worlds. On the one end you are dealing with some gritty dudes, and on the other end, you’re making these anthems. And the thing about anthems is, you can have a “Ruff Ryders Anthem” and that’s not tested out, but then by the second album, you’re kind of known for that first anthem so you kind of gotta do another anthem. Then it becomes something else. X and Swizz had a hardness to them, but they were also pop. They knew how to create anthems, and it was still good in the club.
SWIZZ BEATZ: “It’s All Good” was a requested sample [from Taana Gardner’s 1981 single “Heartbeat”]. X always loved it. He used to freestyle to a lot of old school beats on his early demos, so we was very comfortable with old school breaks and beats. When we were recording, he was like, “Just slip that one to me please.” I remember having a debate with him. I was like, “We should just take the sample out.” But he was like, “Nah, I just wanna hear it like how I remember it.”
JOAQUIN “WAAH” DEAN: This album was real horn-driven. Swizz brought a mixture of the East Coast and the South. He’s from the Bronx, but then he went down to Atlanta to finish high school, and he brought back a lot of original music. When he mixed those two regions together, and then he put the Dog on it, you got Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood. The heat is on. Matter of fact, X wrote “Heat” in Atlanta.
DAME GREASE: The original version of “Heat,” that shit was crazy. The version on Flesh of My Flesh that Swizz did is hot, too. This older dude that we rented the space from in Georgia — a couple rooms to just work — always had this old dog that was in the house. We opened the back patio for one second, and the dog darted out. Hours later, somebody called the guy and said, “Yo, your dog is dead on the highway.” The dude was so mad, and he pulled out a gun on us like, “You killed my dog.” X was just like, “Fuck you.”
STYLES P: It was a team, a brotherhood, an army. We were trying to make our mark on the land, leave our footprints behind so muhfuckas remembered we was here, and what we gave, and what we did. X brought upper-echelon grit to the game. Shit was epic. High energy, dogs, motorcycles, lotta homies, lotta hunger, rough days. It was a crazy lifestyle.
DMX: The album is a journey. With “Ready to Meet Him,” I wanted to end on a prayer because that’s what we started with, and I wanted the last thing you hear to be a conversation with the Lord.
