The quality of a singer can be discerned from how they approach radio edits of their music. Mediocre artists will bleep words that aren’t family friendly but true experts of their crafts will find new appropriate lyrics that convey similar points that the original song lines portrayed. Renaissance men, the elite, will provide new family friendly lyrics that transcend to a whole new level. Such is the case with Dark Man X (DMX to his friends) and his song What’s My Name.

In What’s My Name, in the unedited version, there is a line that goes:

Runnin around here like some brand-new (another word for a cat) that’s about to get (autocorrect would change this word to ducked)

The radio edit goes:

Runnin around here like some brand-new chicken that’s about to get boom!

It doesn’t say “boom” it literally has the sound of an explosion. In the radio edit DMX went from having sex with a woman he barely knows to blowing up a chicken. Incredible.

In 1999 when DMX released What’s My Name he must have known how controversial it would be to rap about having sex with someone before you’re even married. So in a genius eureka moment he capitalized on one of the world’s favorite past times. Blowing up chicken.

Bruce Springsteen also references this hobby at the beginning of his 1982 song Atlantic City. Well, they blew up the chicken man last night in Philly. While man believe he is saying “chicken man” a reference to mobster Phillip Testa, I’d like to believe he’s saying “chicken, man” as if he’s talking directly to me about blowing up a chicken.

1986, just four years after blowing up the chicken, man, Sheridan Oregon had the biggest chicken explosion on record. 26,000 dead chickens exploded after the buildup of gas in their bodies. The local rep is quoted as saying, “We had a miniature St Helens”. Referencing the local volcano. Blowing up chickens though is not all fun in games. There was hours of chicken clean up as they had to pick up all the pieces.

DMX discusses this with the line:

The game don’t stop, I’m still gettin down for whatever

But to continue and evolve his social commentary later on in the song we see DMX thinking upon the ethical side of the situation. Should we be blowing up chickens? The line:

No more death

Sadly it seems DMX’s words fall on deaf ears. In April 2020 the purchasing of chickens has skyrocketed. Hatcheries are swamped with orders.

By the end of the song we see a man questioning the moral nature of blowing up chickens and more importantly beginning an outreach program to stop everyone else from blowing up chickens. But alas, at this point his mind is already shattered. In a single song DMX discusses the rise and fall of the recreationally blowing up chickens and the affect it has had on the American people. And so we leave you destitute and broken like the end of What’s My Name:

I’ve lost my mind

And I’m about to make you lose yours too from far away one time