God Made Dirt

I miss this dude. The genre is a less dangerous and more subdued place without him here. That isn't a good thing.

No, this isn't some tired post about how Hip-Hop, as an art form, has lost its relevance or energy. You can have that argument. Actually, all you have to do is turn on your radio. The music now? It's more marketing than machismo. It favors ringtones over renaissance. It's not so much dead...it's just safe. Credible art cannot function without some element of danger. At some point your creative heroes have to be ass-kickers. Your creative heroes need to be above the law. Your creative hereos need to live by an esoteric set of rules that only they fully understand. The presence of Ol' Dirty, in the music, gave us that. He was a hero.

He was reckless. Loud. Aloof. He liked women. Women liked him. He was funny. He renamed himself "Big Baby Jesus". He didn't care. That's what made him great. No matter how on-the-edge his antics appeared, there always seemed to be some methodical underpinnings that were more cerebral than we actually gave him credit for.

Like any good hero, he didn't feign humanity. His family said he was generous. His mother raved about his good character and how she loved her "Rusty". He helped lift a car to free a little girl, trapped underneath. His crew, the Brooklyn Zoo, was his Wu-Tang Clan inside Wu-Tang Clan. He was "out there", but--by many accounts--he was loved.

His music was a mash of god-speak, misogyny, sex, and comedy. The album skits were a mix of out-loud conversations and childhood musings. The songs could go from punching you in your mouth to professing his love, R&B style. He once proclaimed in a song: "Bitches, we love you!" No matter how twisted or humorous, you never mistook Dirty for the guy you could snuff. Yeah, he might have been singing The Love Boat theme (loudly and in public) going up an escalator, but you would probably think twice before you stepped to him. He was that dude, but he wasn't that dude either.

I don't know if Dirty was truly "crazy". Maybe. Or maybe his plan was to make you think he was crazy. The famous MTV limo ride. The infamous Grammy Awards speech crashing. The women. The 13 children. The album cover with the Jheri Curl wig and jumpsuit. Some may say foolishness or buffoonery. Some may say genius or brilliance. Whatever the case, it was him. He owned that. There were Wu-Tang interviews where it was apparent that even his fellow group members didn't quite understand him. You could say it was drugs. Maybe. But to totally encapsulate the Ol' Dirty Bastard character, as a result of drug use, is dismissive and surface. Somehow, you got the feeling that even if it was the drugs, the ODB persona was purposely crafted as the hero alternative to the mild-mannered Russell Jones. Whereas Russell Jones is the Clark Kent, ODB is the Superman. They function as two symbiotic entities within the same person.

Music, especially the music of young people, at some point has to be dangerous. It has to invoke some sense of rebellion. It has to be a statement against assimilation. In some ways it has to be a manifesto to not giving a f*ck. Listening to his albums (more so his debut) gave me that. In one listen, the music could be wild and sometimes unfocused. On another listen, it was calculated and dense. Some of the subject matter is off-the-wall; somehow it's also empowering.

[Current] Hip-Hop isn't dead. It's safe, subdued...and less dangerous.

I miss you, Dirty. Things, here on Earth, are not the same without you.

In Big Baby Jesus name, Amen.