The late DMX had an onstage technique that "scared" Juvenile.
The New Orleans rapper sat with Ja Rule for Hip-Hop Wired's "I Got Questions," and around the 8:45-mark of the video above, Juvie discussed being on the Cash Money/Ruff Ryders Tour. The 40-city tour lasted from 1999 to 2000.
"Nobody scared me on tour, on stage, more than DMX," Juvie admitted. "We both drinking, he come give me a bottle of Hennessy and tell me, 'Man, you going on?'"
The Hot Boys member continued in DMX's gruff tone: "I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm going on before you, bro, I'm not going on after you.'"
Juvie then explained that DMX would kneel in a corner, pray "and then climb the speakers and cut up."
"I never seen nothing like that in my life," he said. "I always look at myself as being one of them hell of a performer—I'm scared to death of that dude. But man, rest in peace."
Ja also described an "epic battle" between DMZ and Jay-Z on the Hard Knock Life Tour in 1999.
"The dog energy, it was so electric," Ja explained. "He'd be on the stage and he got the crowd going crazy, and then, 10 minutes later, he got them crying, he's saying a prayer.
"The dog had a different emotional connection to his audience, and Jay realized that first night of the tour," Ja continued. "Like, 'OK, that's that raw energy. ... I can't beat that connection that he has. But he can't rap better than me.'"
But the former Murder Inc. artist expressed that Hov learned how to "command" the audience.
In 2021, Juvenile appeared on DJ Vlad and joked that he "wasn't shit onstage" compared to DMX.
"This dude gonna crawl, bark, cry pray," he said at the time. "By the time he get to his fifth song, he got the crowd, shit, they be drinking, they be throwing all this money and shit onstage to him. I think in the music industry, in the rap industry, I think he's the greatest fuckin' performer and I don't think he's even fuckin' close."
