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If you’ve watched “Iyanla Fix My Life,” you know that she has some contentious guests. In fact, she claims she’s ready to leave the show now for all the ways in which she’s been disrespected by the very people who reach out to her for help.
In the history of the show, no one was more disrespectful to her than the late rapper DMX. Their episode was so bad that Iyanla had to come to the conclusion that she could not help DMX because he didn’t know how to speak to her. So naturally, now that he’s passed, people wanted to know what Iyanla, his one-time adversary, felt about his untimely and tragic death.
Well, someone asked her the question. During a recent interview on the Karen Hunter show, Vanzant responded. See what she had to say below.
“He’s free. He is free. The end of this physical existence and experience takes us into a whole ‘nother experience. And the thing that I’ve always said about him is that he was anointed but he was never consecrated. This was a young man who grew up in the streets from the age of 7. 8. 9. Never really had a father. His mother wasn’t really in his life. The soft spot in his life was really his grandmother.
I was with him for three days, y’all saw 90 minutes. I remember those soft spots where he talked about his grandmother. And I said to him, ‘Why isn’t her love enough to sustain you?’ And part of it Karen, is because he comes from a time and an age when our young men were paid to be dysfunctional. Everybody knew the whole culture and environment with the guns, the sex and the drugs. That’s how we lost Biggie, Tupac, so many others. That’s the culture he came from. So he was paid to remain in his dysfunction. But he’s free now.
My heart goes out to all of his children, particularly Xavier because I worked with him and Xavier. My prayer is his anointing now becomes full so we can honor and venerate him as an ancestor. But he’s free so praise God…He’s a cautionary tale and my hope is that the young people coming up who grow from his music, who look to his music will take precautions so they don’t make the same mistakes he did and so they don’t allow the entertainment industry to squeeze their life out of them as they’re being celebrated for levels of dysfunction.
He was anointed Karen. I spent time with this man. I heard him pray. don’t know that part. But I also drew a clear boundary with him. Because even though I know that he had a substance issue, I wasn’t going to allow that to excuse some of the behavior. And I think as women that’s what we do sometimes. We know people’s story, their issue or their challenge and then we accommodate bad behavior. And I wasn’t going to accommodate bad behavior. And I told him, ‘I love you enough to tell you the truth.’ He’s free now and there are no grievances. There’s nothing to forgive. He’s got 11 children that now don’t have a father. So let’s just lift him. Let’s go back to our culture. Let’s beat a drum for him, say a prayer for him, light a candle for him. Let’s lift up, not DMX and the dysfunction that he did, let’s lift up Earl Simmons. Let’s lift him. Because I don’t think the creator is going to say, ‘Welcome to this side DMX.’”
You can hear Iyanla’s full comments in the video below.
