Another BET reality show, ``Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is," debuts tonight, as well, back to back with ``DMX." Here, the defining image is of the young R&B singer cruising her former 'hood in Oakland, Calif., in a gleaming black SUV. Puffy's on the cell. Tonight's concert is sold-out. Next stop: a block party where Cole makes a whirlwind appearance, ostensibly to reconnect with her onetime neighbors, the kindly folks who saw her through tough times when she was bouncing among foster homes.
But Cole winds up signing autographs, and the episode ends up looking less like a window on her world than a marketing tool for her record company.
Still, in a reality-show world littered with contestant-crammed Hollywood Hills hideaways and amped-up dating coaches, both shows rank as real-feeling documentaries. When DMX's wife, Tashera, describes her marriage as a ``challenge," we're inclined to believe her. DMX's legal troubles are no fabrication; his gangster reputation is well founded in offenses ranging from reckless assaults and road rage to weapons charges and animal cruelty.
But he's also a family man and a spiritual seeker, eager to boost his ratings in the eyes of his kids and his God. In the effort to exorcise his demons, ``X," as he's known to his posse, retreats to Carefree, Ariz., where they call him by his real name, Earl Simmons. This dusty outpost is the last place on earth one imagines DMX hanging out, and it's the setting for the show's best moments.
While viewers will hardly reel to learn that DMX runs late for sessions at a New York recording studio, causing his manager to stress out, his so-called ``normal life" in Carefree is a surreal delight. An exchange with a pair of local girls on horseback (``Goodbye, Ja Rule!" says one as she trots away) and surprisingly tender moments with Buddy, a 53-year-old neighbor who's become an unlikely father figure to the rapper (who was abandoned by his own), are the authentic snapshots reality programming promises but rarely delivers.
Cole's story is ripe, as well -- inner-city girl triumphs over adversity to achieve multiplatinum sales -- but it's far less dynamic. First of all, she's a new arrival, and too much time, at least in the first episode, is devoted to persuading us that Cole is, in fact, a star. Recitation of her bio and a visit to a radio station for a fawning interview don't qualify as compelling viewing. But there's an absence of glitz and a surplus of clarity to the songstress that come through in a scene with her sister, from whom she was separated as a child after both were taken from their drug-addicted mother. Such complicated circumstances can't be scripted, nor the attendant tears faked.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
