by Steve Huey
One of the founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan, who recorded some of the most influential hip-hop of the 90s, Ol Dirty Bastard was the loose cannon of the group, both on record and off. Delivering his outrageously profane, free-associative rhymes in a distinctive half-rapped, half-sung style, ODB came across as a mix of gonzo comic relief and not-quite-stable menace. Unfortunately, after launching a successful solo career, his personal life began to exhibit those same qualities. ODB spent much of 1998 and 1999 getting arrested with ridiculous, comical frequency, building up a rap sheet that now reads not so much like a soap opera as an epic Russian novel. At first, his difficulties with the law made him a larger-than-life figure, the ringmaster of raps most cartoonish sideshow. Sadly, his life inevitably slipped out of control, and the possibility that his continued antics were at least partly the result of conscious image-making disappeared as time wore on. It was difficult for observers to tell whether ODBs wildly erratic behavior was the result of serious drug problems or genuine mental instability; bad luck certainly played a role in his downfall, but so did his own undeniably poor judgment. Despite being sentenced to prison on drug charges in 2001, its worth noting that while he was running amuck Ol Dirtys offenses were largely nonviolent; the saddest part of his story is that, in the end, the only person he truly harmed was himself.

Ol Dirty Bastard was born Russell Tyrone Jones in Brooklyn in 1969, and grew up in the neighborhood of Fort Green as a welfare child. As he got older, he started hanging out more and more with his cousins Robert Diggs and Gary Grice; they all shared a taste for rap music and kung-fu movies. The trio parlayed their obsessions into founding the Wu-Tang Clan, renaming themselves Ol Dirty Bastard (since there was no father to his style), the RZA, and the Genius, respectively. The Wu grew into an innovatively structured hip-hop collective designed to hit big and then spin off as many solo careers for its members as possible. Buoyed by the RZAs production genius and a number of strong personalities, the Wu-Tang Clans first album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), was released at the end of 1993 and became one of the most influential rap albums of the decade. Earlier in the year, Ol Dirty had been convicted of second-degree assault in New York, the only violent offense ever proven against him; trouble continued to stalk him in 1994, when he was shot in the stomach by another rapper in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn following a street argument.

Luckily, the injuries werent serious, and Dirty became the second Wu-Tang member to launch a solo career (after Method Man) when he signed with Elektra and released the RZA-produced Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version in early 1995. The stellar singles Brooklyn Zoo and Shimmy Shimmy Ya both became hits, making the album a gold-selling success. Additionally, his guest spot on a remix of Mariah Careys Fantasy produced one of the years unlikeliest hitmaking teams. With the concurrent success of the other Wu solo projects, anticipation for the groups second album ran high, and when the double-disc Wu-Tang Forever came out in the summer of 1997, it sold over 600,000 copies in its first week of release. Included on the second disc was Dog Shit, two and a half minutes of perhaps the most bizarre, scatological ODB ranting that had yet appeared on record. And then, the saga began.