Thursday Review: Ol’ Dirty Bastard — N**** Please
CBG has been firmly believing since 1993 that the Wu-Tang Clan play a critical role in raising your children.
Perhaps no other rapper had the year that the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard had in 1999. This might have been true every year the mercurial talent born Russell Tyrone Jones was alive but even by his wild standards, 1999 stands out.
Fresh off a star-turn appearance on Mya’s world-conquering Ghetto Supastar in October of the previous year (with a verse that, FYI, ODB recorded adlibs for first before freestyling the rest of the thing, per Pras), ODB went completely berserk. There was a Jan. 14, 1999, shootout with two officers from the NYPD Street Crimes Unit where, in what’s sadly always been an evergreen backdrop, the policemen fired eight shots toward ODB when they confused his cellphone for a firearm…or something? (ODB would later be cleared by a grand jury). Next came an arrest in February for driving without a license (and wearing a bulletproof vest, a no-no as a convicted felon). Followed other arrests, including one where cops found cocaine in his car and another for yet again driving without a license, as well as mercifully the good news in April 1999 that the terrorist charges he faced involving his ex-girlfriend (long story) were dismissed.
Exhausted yet? ODB was jailed in July 1999 for a few days because he hadn’t posted his bail fully after a 1998 incident before being released when he did. He was then, you guessed it, was arrested for running a red light, driving on a suspended license and possessing marijuana and crack cocaine. ODB was released after posting bail again, but in August he checked himself into a rehab facility. (For what it’s worth: despite all that precedes, ODB’s 1998 might have been even crazier. Just check it out on Google.)
Somehow, this all led to the release of N**** Please, his sophomore album released on Elektra Records on Sept 14, 1999, an album that somehow sold 93,000 copies in the first week after debuting at №10 on the Billboard charts and which produced the hit single Got Your Money on its way to being certified gold.
N**** Please starts with Chris Rock telling the listener that ODB “ain’t on no commercial shit.” And, well, sure that’s true to some extent. After all, it’s Method Man who starred in the How High movie as well as HBO’s The Wire. Beyond Mef, it’s Ghostface Killah and Raekwon The Chef who attained the biggest commercial and critical breakthroughs. And yet? And yet, 50 Cent might have name-dropped RZA, Ghost and Raekwon in his scorching hot first single How To Rob but he did so only to mention their “funny ass rings.” What he says about ODB in the same song is indicative of what a big deal the man was at the time. “I’d rob ODB, but that’d be a waste of time,” 50 says. “Probably have to clap him, run and toss the nine.” At the time, you mentioned ODB to set up your punchline.
I guess what we’re trying to ask is, who from the Wu but ODB could have ever crashed the Grammy Awards?
The first sign that what Chris Rock says is a lie starts with the album tracklist. This album was intended as a commercial release, that’s what the tracklist tells you. If you look at the tracklist, you see a litany of names who would soon become central to rap music and who would soon shape it in their own fundamental ways, if they weren’t already there and doing as much: RZA, of course, but also Kelis, The Neptunes, Irv Gotti, Chris Rock. If you look at the tracklist, you also see a list of rappers or guests who outrap ODB on his own shit but please believe that no one, not a single soul, would ever ever ever outshine the man — and no one does on this album. RZA doesn’t call ODB the freelance rhyme terrorist for no reason: just when you think he’s done for and out of tricks on N**** Please, here he is literally burping on You Don’t Want to Fuck With Me if for no other reason than because he’s ODB and because he can.
But we’ll get to the album and its particulars in a bit.
ODB was an unforgettable talent in a genre full of them, pure id, charisma, instant gratification and free association at a time when those traits were frowned upon in hip-hop circles. He was imperfect at a time when hip-hop wanted perfection. ODB took the bow you wanted to put on your finished album and threw it back in your face. ODB proved that oftentimes, winging it could work just as well as the most perfectly crafted routine. While history would prove ODB right, he would first release a sophomore album that was at once an occasionally brilliant LP as well as such an erratic affair, and complete a solo discography that, with only two official releases, somehow stands out among other members of the Wu.
N***** Please was doomed from the start — you read the beginning, how could it have been anything but the messy, messy run to the deepest depths of ODB’s psyche over the course of 47 minutes and 48 seconds? Calling Dirt McGirt ahead of his time has become a truism but there’s more than a kernel of truth behind it — and this album showcases just how much versatility and talent he possessed at a time when rappers did one thing and one thing only (i.e. rapping). After the opener with Chris Rock, Irv Gotti laces a beat that samples prominently the theme song to TJ Hooker and, well, let’s just cut to the chase because the song is pleasant enough and functions well as an “out-of-body rant” but it’s all about the outro here: after three somewhat disparate verses, Baby Jesus (the moniker under which he raps on this track) goes on an epic rant to shoutout any- and everybody, from OutKast, Dr. Dre and Snoop Doog to the army, air force and navy marines for “playing my music in the submarines and the boats.” From Luke Campbell and Suge Knight to all the women and the babies and the school teachers. (And here you were thinking how silly ODB was for saying Wu-Tang was for the kids: he was right all along.) The through line is obvious between this song and one like Lupe Fiasco’s Outro from the excellent Food & Liquor or even Lil Wayne’s DontGetIt.
In a recent episode of the Broken Record podcast, Rick Rubin spoke with RZA, who described ODB as a “beautiful, funny, crazy” kid who possessed “cat agility.” He goes on to explain that when they were young, ODB was always too willing to move and do whatever new thing that was deemed too audacious for other kids their age; he would “run up a wall,” says RZA, “and do a flip” just because someone had mentioned it. (What RZA is saying is that yes, ODB would have slayed it at parkour. A shame.)
If nothing else, this tendency to follow every thread to its logical end is one that ODB followed when he recorded N**** Please. The single Got Your Money (produced by The Neptunes and featuring Kelis as you no doubt know) came with what is still now a fairly bonkers, unique and daring official video, one which includes actual official clips from the blaxploitation film Dolemite. (It’s embedded above.) Cold Blooded is a cover of the Rick James song of the same name, which ODB acknowledges at the very top of the song and which somehow works with another beat from Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. From there, we have another epic rant at the top of Rollin’ Wit You where Baby Jesus calls out white executives trying to cannibalize the culture (and deeply needs some beer). Gettin’ High is perhaps the only “classic rap” song on the album, how fitting is it that ODB has no attributed verse on it. From there, we jump to You Don’t Want to Fuck With Me, a song that wouldn’t have been out of place as part of the Diplomats mixtapes or albums in the next coming years, what with its call and response and the triumphant horns on the DL instrumental. N**** Please (the song) is a classic late-90s RZA instrumental, a gritty one with a looped sample that’s part funk and another part that’s almost country, and a breakdown during the verses, while ODB simply lets his subconscious take over for the appropriately titled Dirt Dog. Damn near every single thing about I Want Pussy is unique, from the RZA melody that rocks you back and forth and the chorus from ODB that you can still recite the day after every time you listen to the album. (It’s a song Wayne would make different versions of through his career.)
Next, here is ODB singing his soul and heart out on Good Morning Heartache, an honest-to-god blues song on a Wu-Tang rap album and probably the single greatest thing about this entire LP (and also a Billie Holliday cover lol). You hear this one and can’t help but think of the Boosie, Young Thug, Future, Keef, Wayne or numerous others who would believe in pushing the boundaries of a genre that might have started to have grown stale already way back in 1999. If you don’t hear ODB yelling “WHITE WHITE WHITE” twice in two bars on All In Together Now and don’t think of Lil Uzi Vert belting out “BALENCI’” 18 times on Pop, we can’t be friends. There might be no real point to Cracker Jack other than showcasing an unreal RZA instrumental and that’s fine — sometimes, that’s all there is to rap music.
Ultimately, N**** Please works as a master class study in free association, keeping listeners on the edge as Dirt McGirt works through the paranoia, frustrations and anger of daily life in the shoes of a rap superstar. It’s disjointed at times but always arresting and engaging, because that’s how the mind of ODB works. It’s an influential and versatile body of work that we’ve come to love and that would show all the ways rap music would evolve over the next 20+ years following its release.
It would be the last official album that ODB released before his untimely death on Nov. 13, 2004 at the age of 35; the official cause of death was an accidental drug overdose. Suddenly, the joke just couldn’t be on ODB anymore as the man who had battled substance abuse issues all his (adult) life had succumbed to it. There was more too: in 2008, Jaime Lowe published Digging For Dirt, an ODB biography where the author reveals that the man might have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. All of a sudden, the numerous arrests detailed at the opening of this review aren’t as funny anymore and you think that maybe the last thing ODB needed was to be arrested over and over and over and… again — or for the FBI to compile a file on him. Suddenly, you realize that ODB’s life, career, persona and rapping style is a true and clear indictment on the evils of classicism. It’s like what Donald Glover would eventually tell The New Yorker in 2018: “Rap is ‘I don’t care what you think in society, wagging your finger at me for calling women “bitches” — when, for you to have two cars, I have to live in the projects.’ ”
The irony of N**** Please lies in the fact that while he was definitely particular, very few in the Wu managed to accomplish all that ODB did as a solo act: a platinum debut solo album and a sophomore album certified gold, not to mention three singles that peaked at №62 or better on the charts and the greatest meme of all memes that Wu-Tang is for the children. To accomplish all this with a rapping name like Ol’ Dirty Bastard and a whole stable of ridiculous alter egos like Dirt McGirt, Baby Jesus, Joe Bananas? A goddang miracle.
As with most things that the man did in his short time on this earth, Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s sophomore album was a deeply entertaining, messy and somehow successful album that seemed to work despite itself.
Despite everything else.
