Tashera Simmons’ up-and-down life with troubled hip-hop star DMX has been well documented, and Simmons exposed a lot about their volatile life together in her book You Think You Know, But You Have No Idea, which was released last year. During a recent appearance on “Forbez DVD Live,” Simmons shared more of her personal feelings regarding the man she was married to and loved.
“In my opinion, he is a success story that turned into a horror story,” Simmons said. “Seriously…You know, with that drug comes a whole lot of manipulation. He hasn’t been doing what he’s supposed to do with his children in years. And he heard about the book coming out. And he called me. And he said ‘Oh, I heard you’re coming out with a book. Congratulations. I hope you’re not putting nothing out there.’ And I just listened to be honest with you. Because I knew that he was only calling me cause he was concerned about what I was gonna say … He is not broke and I need to put that out there because some people say ‘Well, he’s not making any money.’ DMX gets $20,000 every show still to this day. He does it twice, three times a month.”
Simmons also revealed that DMX’s former label, Ruff Ryders, did everything they could to help the rapper with his addiction—despite the fact that they initially had no idea about the extent of his substance abuse issues.
“The Ruff Ryders; they came in and they really helped,” she said. “They didn’t have a clue because X, you can’t really tell. I mean, you can’t tell. Like even now, I don’t think people can actually—maybe more now. But you could never really tell. In the beginning, they couldn’t find him. They had important things that they set up for him and they couldn’t understand why they couldn’t find him. So, I had to finally—’cause I used to go in buildings, go in crack houses. I mean, I totally was out of my zone to get him out so that way they wouldn’t find out his secret. Because they weren’t from Yonkers. And it got to a point where I had to tell ‘em because they thought he wasn’t serious. And when they came on board they did everything they could to help him.”
