Not long ago, everyone would have said it was inevitable. Living as fast as he did, it is surprising Ol’ Dirty Bastard lasted so long. He died Saturday, Nov. 13 in his recording studio, days shy of his 36th birthday.
Shot in the stomach and the back on two separate occasions during the rapper wars of the late 1990s, generally so high he was incoherent, arrested for traffic violations and late welfare payments for his numerous progeny, ODB had quite the torrid love affair with the United States justice system. Yet, these days, he was revolutionizing his life. Roc-A-Fella’s Damon Dash said, “I’m very disappointed because I know what was about to happen for him. He wasn’t getting his life together; his life was together.”
Call him Big Baby Jesus, Osirus, Dirt McGirt, his list of aliases is likely as long as his rap sheet. His mother named him Russell Tyrone Jones when he was born in 1968 and affectionately called him Rusty. And he was recently out of jail, his veins pumping only natural energy and adrenaline and laying down new tracks with Pharrell Williams. The Wu-Tang Clan’s most outlandish member was ready to assault the hip-hop culture in a way only he knew how. He just put his mouth to the mic and tore it up like he was reveling in the glory of the old school.
Though the welfare childhood and inner city environment can take some responsibility, Dirty was a product of his own madness. Stunts like his 1998 Grammy rush on stage — interrupting Shawn Colvin’s acceptance speech to, many would say justly, refute the Clan’s loss to P. Diddy — contrasted with the brilliance of his 1999 solo disc Nigga Please, showed him to be as conventionally ill as he was creative. No one knew what would come next with him. MTV news reports Dirty’s cousin Charisma Young remembering, “He would know at your door at like three o’clock in the morning like ‘Yeah, we having a party.’ The music would start poppin’, everybody gets up out of their sleep.”
His sound was just as erratic. With rhymes that were honest truths of his environment, his experience and if nothing else, his anatomy, Dirty’s influence is undeniable. Kayne West, Twista, Big Boi, the list of those indebted is inexhaustible. Anyone successfully spitting today has a bit of Ol’ Dirty’s spontaneity, a touch of his unpredictability in their sounds. He did his own thing, and that demanded respect. The throngs of mourners, laymen and hip-hop icons alike at his Thursday funeral in Brooklyn reinforced that.
While friends and family continue to cope with the loss, the events surrounding his death are still sketchy. Reports claim he experienced chest pains on the day of his death. Friends say he knew he was dying.
A week later, autopsy reports remain inconclusive.
Dirty’s death, particularly the uncertainty surrounding its cause, began a week reminiscent of rap tragedy the music world has not seen for quite some time. Last Monday night, Dr. Dre was attacked at the second annual Vibe Awards. Young Buck stood up to face charges of attempted homicide on Friday. A warrant went out for his arrest after his stabbing of Jimmy James Johnson, who began the tussle at the Vibe Awards.
Quite naturally, ODB’s end brings up memories of a culture that once epitomized a vibrantly scandalous lifestyle. Questionable theories provided anything but answers regarding the source of the four gunshot wounds that killed Tupac Shakur. The possible police involvement in Notorious B.I.G.’s death remains an unsolved mystery. Record label wars, the New York Bad Boy Entertainment and Los Angeles’ Death Row, were overt and as brutal as the mafia culture of “The Godfather.” Stabbings, beatings, arrests were no strangers to the daily headlines. They are in stark contrast with the state of affairs in today’s hip-hop culture.
These days, Sean Combs works his way into the papers for his advocating youth voting rather than possession of concealed weapons. Suge Knight finds himself too busy promoting and producing albums for his Tha Records to participate in drive-bys or street fights. The hip-hop culture has certainly grown up in the past few years. No, the rhythms are not any tighter, and the drum lines are as fat at ever. And thank heavens the essential lyrical subjects objectifying women and glorifying the intoxicated lifestyle remained safely intact.
Yet the violent antics of that earlier hip-hop culture are more infrequent. So much of the sound has left the streets, and so too has that persona. Rappers now walk around with diamond-encrusted goblets filled to the brim with the finest Mo?t. They actually know what Mo?t is. This is a new, mature style, where one can party past dawn in an Armani suit, sleep a few daylight hours on Versace sheets and hop in the Mercedes to start all over again. Rivalry now emerges from competition of who can party harder, rather than who can kick whose ass.
Rhyming, after all, is a way for many to get out of the cyclical violence and hostility of an inner-city childhood. Hip-hop has almost become a 21st-century after-school movie, fostering the pursuits of a better life, even if by better they mean no more than higher-quality liquor and ladies.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard was working on that better living for himself. He had done the violence and experienced prison. His readiness for the change of hip-hop life in 2004 makes his death all the more distressing. The public will likely remember his run-ins with the law, the industry will memorialize his contributions to music and those closest to him will honor his unwillingness to be suppressed. Life brought its challenges and Dirty set out to defy them until his very last day.
