In early April, DMX was taken to White Plains Hospital following a suspected drug overdose and subsequent heart attack. Despite efforts by medical specialists to preserve his life, the Ruff Ryders icon died on April 9 at the age of 50. There is now a formal cause of death.
DMX died of a cocaine-induced heart attack, which caused a lack of blood circulation to the brain, according to Vulture.
“It was cardiac arrest for a period of time, so there was no circulation to the brain,” a source at the Westchester County medical examiner office said. “[The acute cocaine intoxication] caused this chain of events.”
The presence of cocaine was discovered in DMX’s urine, but an autopsy was not performed by the medical examiner’s office. Instead, they relied on past medical and police reports to identify the cause of death.
According to the source, someone dialed 9-1-1 at 10:03 p.m. local time on April 2, and paramedics arrived one minute later. At 10:09 p.m., they got on the site and attempted CPR at 10:10 p.m. He arrived at the hospital via ambulance thirty to forty minutes later. His heart ultimately came back to life, but his brain had already died.
“His death literally happened immediately because the brain was dead,” the source added. “So obviously, there were a number of days where he was on ventilatory support and so forth in the hospital. However, he was diagnosed brain-dead early on … He never woke up from [a] coma.”
The news of DMX’s untimely death sent shockwaves across the Hip Hop scene, and there was limitless conjecture as to how he died. The drug overdose theory appeared reasonable given his longtime problems with substance misuse. Irv Gotti, on the other hand, disclosed too soon about DMX’s cause of death, enraging fans.
“They said it was a bad dose of crack and they said some drug Fentanyl was mixed in with the crack and that’s what made him overdose,” he told 107.5 WGCI in Chicago. “When when he got to the hospital, he got diagnosed with COVID and he couldn’t breathe — you know that COVID messes with your respiratory system — so that’s why he had to get hooked up to the ventilator. But they said before he did, ‘His brain died.’”
Despite the fact that part of what he claimed was true, Gotti finally recognized it wasn’t his place. After receiving a lot of reaction, he eventually apologized for the interview.
“I spoke with @tasherasimmons Who I love also,” he wrote on Instagram. “And I apologized as soon as I seen it went left. I explained to her I was only saying things that I heard reported already. To which she said they don’t know if it’s real yet. They are waiting for the doctors to come back and tell them. Then which I apologized even more … I apologize for talking out of turn.”
