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Odb - Old Dead Bastard?
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» BA_Baracus a répondu le Tue 16 Nov, 2004 @ 5:14pm |
 Coolness: 121135 | very sad
isnt kelis his sister or somethin? |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» PoiSoNeD_CaNdY a répondu le Wed 17 Nov, 2004 @ 4:54am |
 Coolness: 91790 | For O.D.B., Fun Was Too Much or Not at All
By KELEFA SANNEH Published: November 17, 2004 Ol' Dirty Bastard first roared into view 12 years ago, howling a wild threat: "Bite my style, I'll bite your ..." - well, never mind the rest. The track was called "Protect Ya Neck," and it was the epochal first single from his group, the Wu-Tang Clan, which swiftly became one of the most important hip-hop acts of the 1990's and certainly one of the strangest. Somehow an entropic octet obsessed with obscure kung fu movies and even more obscure neo-Gnostic theology became one of the decade's most visible pop-culture brand names. Even within this oddball crew, O.D.B. was a misfit. On the group's classic 1993 debut, "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)," his was often the first voice listeners noticed. While his cousin RZA unspooled dense, sometimes acronymic rhymes ("Ruler Zig-zag-zig Allah jam is fatal/Quick to stick my Wu-Tang sword right through your navel"), O.D.B. was content to be merely and spectacularly funky - or as he put it, "fzzza-funky." He had a hilarious, wobbly howl and an earthy wit; one of his rare squeaky-clean boasts went, "I come with that ol' loco/Style from my vocal/Couldn't peep it with a pair of bi-focals." In a skit between tracks, another Clan member, Method Man, paused to explain how O.D.B. got his name: "'Cause there ain't no father to his style." O.D.B., who was born Russell Jones, died on Saturday afternoon after collapsing in a recording studio two days before his 36th birthday. No cause of death has been determined, but already, as often happens, wild anecdotes and bits of speculative biography are threatening to obscure the exhilarating music that won him so many fans. The Wu-Tang Clan cultivated a carefully enigmatic image - on the first album cover the members' faces were obscured. But O.D.B. emerged as one of the group's first breakout stars, in part because of his knack for pulling memorable stunts on camera. In 1994 MTV cameras followed him as he rode in a limousine to collect food stamps. The next year he released his solo debut, a wildly entertaining collection of low-down jokes and memorable rhymes called "Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version." With its scratchy piano loops and howl-along choruses, the debut O.D.B. album sounded like a party spinning out of control. One surreal sex song, "Don't U Know," portrayed a hallucinatory classroom encounter: "Teacher says 'Open up your texts/You! Read the first paragraph on oral sex!' " And "Drunk Game (Sweet Sugar Pie)" had the rapper moonlighting as the world's groggiest R&B singer. His pitch was less than perfect, but his charm never failed. By 1997, when the Wu-Tang Clan reunited for a sprawling double-album, "Wu-Tang Forever," O.D.B.'s vibrato-enhanced hollering and down-and-dirty jokes seemed slightly out of place with the group's rhyme style, which was darker and more intricate than ever, the beats slower and more cinematic. For the next few years O.D.B. made headlines: he always seemed to be having either too much fun (as when he crashed the stage at the 1998 Grammy Awards to protest the Clan's loss) or not enough (as when he was shot during what he said was a robbery at his house). Even so, he found time to record "N***a Please," his 1999 album. Or sort of record it: the CD sounded suspiciously like something that had been stitched together at an editing desk, as if someone had recorded a bunch of the rapper's rhymes and outbursts then found a way to assemble them into songs. Still, the album included a left-field hit, "Got Your Money," a prescient collaboration with Kelis and the Neptunes, recorded before either the singer or the production duo were established stars. There was also an absurd version of the jazz ballad "Good Morning Heartache," which should have sounded like a joke but somehow didn't. You could hear the sorrow that lurked beneath the surface of so many other O.D.B. songs and stunts. More recently, after a series of arrests (including one for possession of crack cocaine), O.D.B. was sentenced to two years in prison; no doubt some people who read about it imagined him as just another rapper in trouble with the law. But in life, as on record, O.D.B. was a hip-hop anomaly. For hip-hop stars, unlike rock 'n' roll stars, there is nothing glamorous about being out of control. O.D.B. burned hot in a world where stars are supposed to stay cool. After his release from prison O.D.B. filmed an hourlong VH1 special that was hard to watch even before his death. It was depressing to see a formerly irrepressible man looking so fragile. He also signed a deal with Roc-A-Fella Records, Jay-Z's label, and appeared on a few songs: "When You Hear That" with Beanie Sigel and "Keep the Receipt" with Kanye West. Now that he's gone, some people are wondering whether O.D.B.'s tenure in the treacherous hip-hop industry did him more harm than good. But it seems more likely that hip-hop merely gave him a way to capitalize on the things he did so well and so strangely: his infectious love of wordplay, his sly (and often filthy) sense of humor, his huge, bellowing voice. Without hip-hop O.D.B. might have been a neighborhood star, beloved by a small circle of acquaintances who told tall tales about him. But thanks to hip-hop, that circle stretched around the world. |
Odb - Old Dead Bastard?
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