Super Producer Warryn Campbell Brings DMX’s Prayers to Life with Let Us Pray: Chapter X

It’s hard to believe that we are approaching the fourth anniversary of the untimely death of DMX in April 2025. But was X’s death untimely or did he prophetically tell us all along through song that we wouldn’t be here long? 

Super producer Warryn Campbell was tapped to produce an entire project of DMX prayers, however, the five time Grammy® winning songwriter/producer brought some friends along that rounded out this project perfectly. 

And when we say friends, we mean super friends like: Killer Mike, MC Lyte, Mary Mary, Lena Byrd Miles, Lecrae, Terrace Martin, RoyzNoyz Orchestra and Snoop Dogg!

Root Magazine got a chance to talk to Warryn about the process of making this album, the first time he saw DMX, Tupac Shakur, his favorite DMX song and much more. Let Us Pray. 

As told to Hasan James for Root Magazine 

Root Magazine: First I want to ask you, have you ever worked with DMX in any capacity before his passing? 

Warryn Campbell: No. We never worked together before. We met a few times, you know, on some, what’s up type stuff. In fact, the first time I saw DMX, he was battling on the street in Miami Beach at an the Impact convention.

Root Magazine: Wow. That’s taking it back to the nineties.

Warryn Campbell: That was late, late 96, 97, or something like that and me and my boys were riding around on scooters, you know messing with the girls, doing all the stuff we used to do back in the day, and I saw this crowd and X was out there battling. The crowd was huge and he was killing it! That was the first time I actually saw him, you know what I mean?  I met him a few times after that but we never got to work together while he was alive. 

Root Magazine: How difficult was it to create music for an artist who is no longer with us? As a producer, was that hard to do? 

Warryn Campbell: It wasn’t difficult for me because of the spirit that his prayers carried. I was really surprised when I heard the raw prayers during the recording process. I was really thinking that it was gonna be prayers from a guy who didn’t know Jesus like that. Growing  up in church, you know there’s this kind of thing that we do as prayer becomes an essential part of our liturgical worship. So what we do is we now have to choose somebody who knows how to pray and knows how to present prayer with eloquent soliloquies and poetic prowess, and then we become entertained by their prayer. So when we sit back and evaluate the singing, the preaching and the praying when technically we should not be trying to impress anyone with our prayers, we should be trying to move heaven. So when I heard his prayers, I was blown away because he was not praying to some universe or to some guy, he’s praying to Jesus! He was quoting scripture and it came easy to him. I was immediately transported to being that 12 years old on the organ as my father prayed and I took that mentality and scored the project around that. 

Root Magazine:  I recently saw a video of like Jay-Z and a bunch of other artists talking about being on tour with DMX and how much of a super star he was and ho hard it was going on stage behind him. Just one year after his debut album, he performed in front of a crowd of 250,000 fans at Woodstock 99’. X had such a huge fanbase. Do you think this new album Let Us Pray: Chapter X will resonate with his fanbase? 

Warryn Campbell: I believe it will reach every last one of his fans because when you are a fan of somebody like a DMX, you’re a fan of everything they do. I’m a Mary J. Blige fan and no matter what she does, I’m gonna buy her music. If I’m a fan, I’m a fan forever! I think he has such a strong fan base and people that love DMX, they just want to hear his voice, they want to hear anything that he ever did. Even if it’s posthumously, it’s something that they hadn’t heard before. True fans just want to be able to experience him as much as they can and I believe Def Jam and Universal are doing a great job of informing his fans and the people that follow him that there’s something new for them to consume.

Root Magazine: Was it always the plan to have features on the album?

Warryn Campbell: No, I didn’t have features initially. I came up with the idea to have a few singers on there but one of my artists, Lena Boyd Miles lives like five hours away from me and she just so happened to be in town and she came up to the house and I asked her to sing on one of the tracks and she did. That’s when I came up with the idea to add other rappers on there but I was strategic in adding rappers who I knew had a prayer life.

Root Magazine: I was just gonna ask how did you choose the artists to work on this project? Considering it was DMX, you could’ve gotten anybody, one would think. 

Warryn Campbell: I went for the people who I knew specifically that I’ve heard with my own ears, pray before.

Root Magazine: That makes perfect sense. 

Warryn Campbell: I heard Snoop Dogg pray when I was probably 20 years old when he was on trial for his life.

Root Magazine: Murder was the case that they gave him…

Warryn Campbell: Yup! After he would leave the courthouse, sometimes he would come up to the studio and I remember one time, it wasn’t me, it was a guy up there and he prayed and then Snoop prayed after that and it really changed the way I viewed rappers because I was surprised he could pray like that. The same goes for Killer Mike. I had the privilege of being on the road with Killer Mike and Dave Chapelle. I actually wrote and produced about 16 songs on his last two projects and some days I would go sit down and play organ while he prayed and it was something special! This is Killer Mike!! MC Lyte is a member of my church and I’ve heard her pray several times. The fans don’t get to see this side of their favorite artists, but I know firsthand that they have a prayer life and that is why it made sense for them to be apart of this project. 

Root Magazine: I listened to a track from the album entitled “Until I’m Gone” and there is a line in the song where DMX says “I don’t expect to be here long,” and it gave me chills. Do you think DMX was a prophet in a sense? 

Warryn Campbell: You know, that could very well be. I think some people just know when their time is near. Being around Tupac when I was younger, he would express things like that sometimes even in the songs that he was doing. As a matter of fact, I felt that he knew that he wouldn’t be here long by how he worked, because no matter where we were in the world, he went to the studio and recorded three songs everyday! He was so relentless and if there was a situation where they couldn’t find a studio he would figure out how to record every single day. It’s like he had a sense of urgency, as if he knew that something was gonna happen. I feel the same thing when I hear DMX. He and Tupac both lived their lives in an urgent way as if they knew they wasn’t gonna be on earth too long. Let me live big. Let me live fast. Let me live hard! 

Root Magazine: I was a huge fan of DMX. I remember when he hit the scene in 1998 and was the first artist to drop two #1 albums in a calendar year with “It’s Dark and Hell is Hot” and “Flesh of my Flesh, Blood of my Blood.” Some big songs were produced from both of those albums. What are some of your favorite DMX songs? 

Warryn Campbell: Of course Ruff Ryders Anthem. 

Root Magazine: Yeah, that song shut the club down!

Warryn Campbell:  Then the song he did with Aaliyah from the Romeo Must Die Soundtrack. 

Root Magazine: “Come Back In One Piece.”

Warryn Campbell: Yes! I love that song and music video because it showed the lighter and more fun side of DMX.

Root Magazine: DMX was a larger than life artist in my opinion. Who do you think would be a good person to play him in a biopic about his life?

Warryn Campbell: I mean, not for nothing, I think Ja Rule would be perfect. 

Root Magazine: WOW! I wasn’t expecting that.

Warryn Campbell: Ja Rule can act, he has the voice and he’s from that tree with Irv Gotti and those guys. Ja and X were contemporaries. He saw him moving around and they even toured together. They actually did a lot of things together where he was able to witness and see him in moments that we wouldn’t see him in.  One thing, about it is when you are portraying somebody like that, it’s one thing to portray the public moments, but it’s another thing to portray the private moments that we didn’t see. I’m sure Ja Rule has a plethora of information and memories of him being with DMX in a private setting, outside of just music. 

Root Magazine:  Lastly, if you could recreate a DMX song and put that “My Block” sauce on it, what song would you choose?

Warryn Campbell: Man that’s definitely a curve ball! 

Root Magazine: X has songs with Faith Evans, Ma$e, Aaliyah and so many others. 

Warryn Campbell: There’s a song on his very first album called “Look Through My Eyes.” It wasn’t a normal Swizz Beatz production, it was produced by a guy named Dame Grease, and the song was so dope to me. I didn’t know any of those dudes, but I used to read the credits and back at that time I was producing a lot of R&B records, specifically Dru Hill, and because they were signed to Def Jam along with DMX, I would see X in the studio doing his thing.

Root Magazine: Warryn, you have touched every facet and genre in this industry and I don’t think you get the flowers that you deserve. You are actually the perfect producer for this project in my opinion. 

Warryn Campbell: Thanks man. I’m not saying I am the only producer that could have done it, but I feel like this project was tailor made for me and what I do. Shout out to UMG and my guy Chris Ayears for bringing me this project. Long Live DMX….

Let Us Pray: Chapter X will be available on all streaming platforms on Friday, December 13th, just five days before DMX’s 54th Birthday. 

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