According to a source that spoke with Vulture, DMX passed away as a result of a cocaine-induced heart attack that caused a lack of blood circulation to his brain.
“It was cardiac arrest for a period of time, so there was no circulation to the brain,” the source from the Westchester County Medical Examiner’s office told Vulture on Thursday.
DMX, born Earl Simmons, passed away on April 9, 2021 at age 50. He had been rushed to the White Plains Hospital roughly a week earlier and needed to be put on life support. At the time, it was believed that he had suffered a heart attack, and while he was in the hospital he suffered cerebral hypoxia (oxygen deprivation to his brain). By the morning of his passing, he had reportedly lost functionality in multiple essential organs including his liver, kidneys and lungs.
DMX’s eighth and first posthumous studio album Exodus was released through Def Jam on May 28, 2021. It was the Yonker’s rapper’s first studio album since 2012’s Undisputed, and was generally well received by critics. It debuted at number eight on the US Billboard 200 with 32,000 album-equivalent units, making for his eighth top 10 album to hit the chart. The most popular song on the album seems to be the Jay-Z and Nas-assisted, “Bath Salts,” which has over 3.43 million streams on Spotify.
