The story of the Wu-Tang Clan is one of escape. How a gang of friends used a love of hip-hop and martial arts movies to leave the dirt and the dealing of their project homes to find fame, fortune and freedom. Only, like all great escape stories, there’s always one who doesn’t make it.
Here lies the final vocal remains of Russell Jones aka Big Baby Jesus aka Dirt McGirt aka Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Ironically, it was Dirt’s love of the Shaolin legends that inspired his cousin Robert ‘RZA’ Diggs’ escape plan. But while Diggs led his Wu-soldiers to become the most important hip hop act since Public Enemy, the Bastard languished in poverty, drug abuse, jail and more illegitimate babies than he had fingers to count them on.
“Osirus” is the first posthumous release compiled at the instigation of his mother (Mrs Dirty Bastard) from fragments mostly recorded in prison, like some latter-day Leadbelly. It could so easily have been a shabby and tawdry affair but producers DJ Premier, Mark Ronson, et al have created a fairly respectable tribute to one of the most unique voices in rap.
“Pop Shots” and “Dirty Dirty” have that bouncy charm first witnessed on Kelis’ “Got Your Money” that suggested, of all the Wus, Dirty had the most commercial cross-over potential. He’d even claimed it himself when, during Shawn Colvin’s 1998 Grammy acceptance speech, he stormed the stage to protest P Diddy winning an award announcing “Wu-Tang are for the children!” Just what the children might make of lines like “F*ck her fast like a rabbit/I’m a sex fiend addict” that he slurs on “Pussy Keep Coming” is anyone’s guess.
What did the “pussy” see in him, exactly? Certainly not child support payments, that’s for sure. It’s important not to glorify a life lived so callously as Mr Jones’. Funny as his loon-eyed, Baptist preacher croaking, scatological scats were, he was still a gun-toting, wife-beating, drug dealer. Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s life was an un-glorious failure but, like the blues singers of old, there’s an authenticity to his tales that captivate and the rap outlaw remains ever fascinating to both those living the life and those on the outside looking in.
Like Tupac (the world’s most prolific corpse), the albums will keep coming. The ‘official’ release for Roc-A-Fella will feature Russell reunited with The Neptunes, Busta Rhymes and Mariah Carey and will, no doubt, add to the legend that was Unique Ason aka Joe Bannanas [sic] aka “The Osirus of this sh*t” aka another man done gone too soon. RIP ODB.
