Rapper DMX sentenced to serve 1 year in prison for tax evasion

Earl Simmons, the rap star known as DMX, was sentenced to one year in prison for tax evasion Wednesday in Manhattan federal court after the judge watched a music video of “Slippin’,” one of the rapper’s biggest hits.

“In the court’s view Mr. Simmons is a good man, but very far from a perfect man,” said U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff. “As is said in the cliché, he is his own worst enemy.”

Simmons pleaded guilty last December to evading $1.7 million in taxes, marking the 30th in a long string of arrests for drugs, weapons and driving violations that have marred his music career. Prosecutors asked for five years in prison to reflect the “brazen” nature of the crime.

But Simmons’ lawyers asked for probation with a trustee named to make sure his earnings were used to pay off his tax debt and support his 15 children. They played a 4-minute clip from the autobiographical “Slippin’” to illustrate his childhood of poverty, abuse and abandonment and the struggles he had been through.

“To live is to suffer/But to survive . . . /Well, that’s to find meaning in the suffering,” Simmons rapped in one verse of the song.

Afterward, Simmons — who has been jailed since January after violating drug treatment conditions of his bail — made a plea to the judge, telling Rakoff he had been careless but hadn’t set out like a villain “in a comic book” to evade taxes, and hadn’t taken it seriously till his bail was pulled.

“It woke me up,” he said. “Made me think I’m getting too old for the things I’m doing.”

Simmons choked up twice during the hearing — when his lawyers talked about abuse he had suffered at the hands of his mother, including an incident when his teeth were knocked out, and when he talked about one of his own children being sick.

“I’m not getting any younger,” he said. “I’m 47 years old. If I want to retire before I’m 90 I need to get this thing together.”

Rakoff said Simmons’ tax avoidance went on too long to go unpunished, but said a “modest” prison term was justified by his life story.

“We have an example of how the sins of the parents are visited on their child, how people raised in the circumstances of this defendant are provided models of irresponsibility,” the judge said. He also ordered $2.2 million in restitution.

Afterward, defense lawyer Stacey Richman said she thought the unusual tactic of playing a rap song had helped avert a longer sentence.

“Sentencing is about humanity,” she said. “How better to show his humanity than in his own words?”