I was perusing through my all my old hiphop cds that I’ve now archived on my iTunes. One thing I noticed was that I don’t really have a whole lot of hiphop on my list anymore and in terms of albums I barely have any, like under 5. But one of those is a favorite of mine that I haven’t stop listening to even 14 years after it originally was released. Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version is one of those few albums I still listen to from beginning to end. Now I know a lot of folks felt this album was over rated and such, but this has always been a personal favorite of mine. Ol’ Dirty Bastard, aka ODB aka Big Baby Jesus aka Dirt McGirt aka Osirus aka Russell Jones (Government name) aka Dirt Dog aka…fuck it you get the idea, the man had a billion aliases but he’ll always be remembered as one of the original members of the Wu-Tang Clan, who’s style and flow was none like any others.
During his solo career he released two albums while he was alive, the aforementioned Return to the 36 Chambers and Ni**a Please, after that was a bunch of stuff that were in the vault so to speak, as Dame Dash signed ODB to Roc-a-fella records once he was released from prison and he was recording some material.
On November 13th ODB collapsed at Wu-Tang’s recording studio and was pronounced dead within the hour. There has always been speculation as to what happened, but none of that really matters. What does matter is that we lost another talented MC.
Here are some of my favorite jams.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”
Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Brooklyn Zoo”
Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Hippa to da Hoppa”
Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Raw Hide”
Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Got Your Money”
