Swizz Beatz Reveals DMX’s Gambling Habit Led to Release of ‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’

Swizz Beatz recently revealed an interesting anecdote about how DMX‘s gambling habit inadvertently led to the creation of one of his biggest hits, “Ruff Ryders Anthem.”

In an interview on SiriusXM’s Hip-Hop Nation, Swizz Beatz explained that DMX only agreed to hop on the track because he lost a bet.

“X lost a bet or I wouldn’t even been on that album, you know what I’m saying? But he didn’t lose the bet because that song ended up changing all of our lives. So he technically won the bet for my Uncle D and you know that just changed all of our lives. So it was just enough to do what it needed to do,” Swizz told host Gray Rizzy.

“You know, like that song commercially went bigger than everything at the time. And then we came immediately, uh, with our sound next after that and Dame Grease and PK was a part of that as well,” He continued. “I wanna get [them] they props cuz they, people they feel that they don’t get they props. I’m in a comfortable space to give people they props. At those particular times we was definitely bumping the little heads and things like that, but we all was a part of making history at the end of the day.

It was all musical stuff. Wasn’t no street vibes like that, you know what I’m saying? And so I was young and hungry. They was young and hungry. They had to get it. I had to get it. So that’s like when you look at the whole thing, it was just really based on that, you know what I’m saying?”

‘Ruff Ryders Anthem’ was released in 1998 as the third single from DMX’s debut studio album, “It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot.” The song produced by PK went on to become one of DMX’s most popular tracks. Swizz Beatz previously told Complex that DMX didn’t want to record the song because it had a rock ‘n’ roll feel to it.

“DMX didn’t want to do it,” Swizz said at the time. “He was like, ‘Man, that sounds like some rock ‘n’ roll track, I need some hip-hop shit. I’m not doing that. It’s not hood enough.’ I told him, ‘Yo, we can make it hood!’ And then my uncles [Darrin “Dee” Dean and Joaquin “Waah” Dean who ran Ruff Ryders] said, ‘Yo, we should step out the box a little bit.’ We bugged him and bugged him to do this shit.”