The 2000s File Feature
What You Want
"What You Want" by DMX Featuring Sisqo: Hard Rap Meets Peak R&B in the Summer of 2000 DMX at His Commercial Apex The summer of 2000 found DMX, born Earl Simm…
01 The Story
"What You Want" by DMX Featuring Sisqo: Hard Rap Meets Peak R&B in the Summer of 2000
DMX at His Commercial Apex
The summer of 2000 found DMX, born Earl Simmons in Yonkers, New York, at a position in the rap hierarchy that very few artists ever reach: the undisputed commercial and critical king of the genre. He had released It's Dark and Hell Is Hot and Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood in 1998, two albums that debuted at number one within months of each other, a feat unprecedented in rap history. His 1999 follow-up ...And Then There Was X had continued the commercial dominance, spawning Party Up (Up in Here) and establishing him as the kind of figure who could carry an entire record label's fortunes on the strength of his presence alone. When What You Want arrived in the summer of 2000, it came packaged with one of the season's most distinctive sonic signatures.
Sisqo and the Collaboration
The choice of Sisqo as the featured artist on What You Want reflects the cultural moment precisely. Sisqo, the Baltimore-born R&B singer and member of Dru Hill, was in 2000 at the peak of his own commercial profile, riding the extraordinary success of Thong Song and its parent album Unleash the Dragon to a level of pop saturation that made him one of the most recognized voices on radio. His pairing with DMX was a collision of two of the summer's most visible commercial forces, each bringing his distinct audience to the collaboration. The combination of DMX's raw energy and Sisqo's melodic fluency created an interesting tension that the production managed with reasonable skill.
The Chart Journey Through Late Summer
What You Want debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 1, 2000, entering at number 98. The track moved gradually up the chart through July and into August, building on radio airplay in both rap and R&B formats. By September 23, 2000, it had reached its peak position of 49, placing it comfortably inside the chart's upper half and confirming it as a genuine crossover record with multi-format appeal. The song spent twenty weeks on the Hot 100, which is a remarkable tenure for a rap track in this period and reflects the dual-format radio support it received from both urban hip-hop and R&B programmers.
DMX's Dark Energy and Pop Radio
One of the more interesting aspects of DMX's commercial success across this period was the question of how his particular artistic sensibility, darker, more theologically tortured, more viscerally aggressive than almost any of his peers, managed to translate into pop crossover success. The answer lies partly in the contrast principle: against the glossier, more polished R&B and pop that dominated the Hot 100, DMX's rawness registered as a genuine change of texture. His Def Jam recordings from this era functioned as counterpoint to the smoother dominant sounds, providing a jolt of something more dangerous and unpredictable that listeners clearly found appealing in measured doses alongside their primary radio diet.
Two Stars at Their Commercial Height
Viewed from a distance, What You Want is one of those collaborative singles that work precisely because both artists are fully themselves rather than attempting to meet in some neutral commercial middle ground. DMX raps like DMX, and Sisqo sings like Sisqo, and the combination works through contrast rather than blend. The summer of 2000 was one of the last moments before the commercial pop landscape shifted significantly in the early months of 2001, and this record is a crystallized version of what that moment sounded like at its most commercially confident. Put it on and you will hear two artists at the peak of their respective powers, sharing a track without either one blinking first.
"What You Want" — DMX Featuring Sisqo's commanding arrival on the 2000s charts.
02 Song Meaning
"What You Want" by DMX Featuring Sisqo: Desire, Demand, and the Hip-Hop Negotiation
The Central Question and Its Implications
The title is simultaneously a question and a challenge. "What you want?" in DMX's vocal register is not simply an inquiry; it carries the weight of a demand for clarity, an insistence that vague desire be made specific and accountable. The phrase in African American vernacular English operates at multiple registers: it can be invitation, confrontation, or simple curiosity depending on context and delivery. DMX deploys it with the full force of his persona, giving the track an immediate energy that frames everything that follows within a framework of direct, unmediated engagement.
Two Emotional Registers on One Track
The collaboration between DMX and Sisqo creates an interesting emotional dynamic on the track: the rapper brings confrontation and raw urgency while the singer provides the melodic warmth that contextualizes that energy within something recognizable as romantic. This division of emotional labor was a common and effective device in late-nineties and early-2000s hip-hop R&B crossover tracks. The rapper establishes the stakes while the singer provides the emotional resolution or counterpoint. On "What You Want," that dynamic is particularly pronounced because both artists operate so far into their respective modes: DMX's intensity is extreme even by his own standards, and Sisqo's melodic fluency is fully deployed.
Desire and Authenticity in Hip-Hop
One of the recurring concerns in hip-hop lyrical content across the genre's history has been the question of authenticity in romantic relationships. The question of whether a partner wants you for who you actually are or for what you represent commercially, the money, the status, the cultural cachet, runs through a significant strand of hip-hop love-song writing. The "what you want?" interrogative addresses this directly, asking the potential partner to declare whether their interest is genuine or transactional. In the context of two artists at the commercial peak of their careers, the question carries particular weight.
The Cross-Format Appeal of the Collaboration
The song's twenty-week run on the Hot 100, reaching number 49 on September 23, 2000, reflects the way it operated across formats. Hip-hop radio played DMX; R&B radio played Sisqo; and the record's construction gave both formats enough of what they wanted to keep it in rotation simultaneously. That kind of cross-format durability is harder to engineer than it looks, and it requires both artists to be working at the peak of their commercial powers. In the summer of 2000, both DMX and Sisqo unquestionably were, and the record benefited from the combined gravitational pull of two careers at maximum velocity.
A Snapshot of 2000's Rap-R&B Relationship
The rap-R&B crossover had been one of the defining commercial strategies of the late 1990s, producing some of the decade's biggest records through pairings of hard-edged rappers and melodic R&B vocalists. By 2000, the formula was well established, but the best executions of it still carried real energy because they paired genuine artistic forces rather than simply calculated commercial elements. "What You Want" is a solid entry in that tradition, a track that documents where these two genres met at the turn of the millennium and what happened when two of their biggest commercial practitioners shared a track without either one holding back.
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