DMX: "I'm Hungry, I'm Grounded"

DMX says he's ready to begin a comeback, following a year of arrests, imprisonment and a spiritual awakening.

DMX (real name Earl Simmons) spent more than 90 days in jail earlier this year for drug possession, animal cruelty and identity theft, and while he was in prison he said he wanted to become a preacher. He was released in May.

"I'm hungry, I'm grounded," DMX told MTV News on the red carpet for this year's VH1 Hip Hop Honors. "I've always been grounded. But I'm hungrier. There's so much bullshit out there. I'm not gonna get into names. You know who you were. There's so much bullshit out there. The streets won't let me forget that they need me and I need them."

Uh, "always been grounded"? We don't think so... unless he's talking about the kind of grounding where you get sent to your room by a parent. Except in his case, that "parent" would be the state, of course.

Producer Swizz Beatz, with whom DMX has worked extensively in the past, told Mixtape Daily he wants to produce DMX's upcoming new album, but he wants to make sure DMX can be the only rapper to release two #1 albums in one year.

"I wanna have the proper setup where he's getting a fair chance and the most attention and most respect right now," Beatz said. "I'm not putting nothing out until we have the lineup together, which we're close to having, and the streets are going to witness that raw uncut street element.

"X was doing $16 million movies and sleeping outside, just because that's where he felt comfortable. He's the realest in the game. He never was on no jewelry, no cars. X, he's one artist that I truly know is a real artist. It don't get no more real than X."

Never on cars? Really?