I'm back, baby! I hope you all had as much fun as I did while I was away. If you're anything like me, you probably spent your time playing checkers with George Clooney and his nephews. But of course you're obviously nothing like me, because if you were the world would be a perfect place! No, just kidding...the world could never be perfect with you still in it.
But now I must turn to serious matters, reader. My latest article for RR was hastily changed when news of the greatest tragedy since the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire reached my ears. With no offense intended to Marlon Brando, Christopher Reeve and Yasser Arafat, I think it's safe to say that their deaths seem entirely inconsequential in comparison to what will certainly go down as the world's biggest loss of this year. Yes, it's sad but true - Ol' Dirty Bastard is dead.
Ol' Dirty Bastard (or ODB, as some of his close personal friends (myself included) called him), was a founding member of the iconic hip hop group The Wu-Tang Clan. As I'm sure you remember, the Wu-Tangs began in Staten Island in the early 90s when ODB teamed up with some of his fellow hip hop rappers: Woody Allen, Harvey Keitel, and Joe Pesci, among others. These black Americans expressed their Chinese heritage by referring to their home as Shaolin and peppering their songs with dialouge discussing the various merits of "Shaolin shadowboxing" and "The Wu-Tang Swordstyle". The ninesome released their first full album, Enter The Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers in 1993, a mere 2 years before the music world would once again be shaken up by 20 Fingers' contagious hit Short Dick Man.
While the other members of the Clan immediately began working on successful solo albums, ODB entered what he only-slightly-sardonically referred to as his "Year of the Many Drugs to End All Drugs: The Drugs Years". This period was marked by, as to be expected, many, many drugs. During this time, he somehow managed to produce his first solo album, Return to the 36 Chambers: I Made This Album While On Many, Many Drugs in 1995. The album was an instant hit, featuring the singles Brooklyn Zoo, Shimmy Shimmy Ya, and Oh My God, I'm Being Eaten By Robotic Disco Monkeys.
But it was one fateful night in February 1998 that would allow ODB's true spirit to shine through.* While in his recording studio in Brooklyn, he witnessed a horrific car crash down the street. Racing to the scene, he (along with a few others) lifted the destroyed car and pulled out a trapped 4 year old girl. When interviewed shortly afterwards, Dirty had this to say:
Yeah man, this be one serious accident. It's a good thing I was doing all that coke and acid a few minutes ago, or else I wouldn'ta had the super-human strength to lift a car, or the ability to summon those Norwegian-speaking flamingoes that stopped to help. The giant hammers only wanted to eat my appendix. Squirrels! Squirrels!
However, any street cred that act of heroism may have gained ODB in the ER was quickly dissolved by his actions the following night at the Grammy Awards. After losing the award for Best Rap Album to Puff Daddy, he ascended the stage during Shawn Colvin's acceptance speech and fired off a passionate rebuke to the masses. Due to the high content of adult language, all expletives will be replaced by the phrase [monkey doodle]:
All you [monkey doodle]s can [monkey doodle] my [monkey doodle]. If any of you [monkey doodle]s even knew what a [monkey doodle] song was, you'd all be [monkey doodle]ing my [monkey doodle]. If there were any [monkey doodle] justice in the [monkey doodle] world, Puff [monkey doodle] would be [monkey doodle]ing my [monkey doodle] right now. Oh God, these [monkey doodle]ing robot monkeys are [monkey doodle]ing my [monkey doodle]!!
Not even changing his name to Big Baby Jesus could help ODB escape controversy. It was around this time that he switched from spending the majority of his time in prison to spending the entirety of his time in prison. His 1999 album, N*gga Please, was recorded in a variety of rooms around the prison, including his cell, the shower room, and the yoga studio. Later that year during one of his brief visits to the outside world, he was arrested when a search of his car revealed the trunk to contain 300 pounds of cocaine, 100 pounds of marijuana, and the Lindbergh baby, now an old man.
But none of his previous legal woes would compare to the events of October 2000, when he pulled a daring, Steve McQueen-esque escape and fled from court-mandated drug rehab, spending the rest of the month as a wanted fugitive. Not even repeated pleas from John Walsh and Robert Stack were able to bring him in. He was finally arrested in a McDonald's parking lot after the insane craving for a Big Mac that had been grawing out the back of his eyeballs for 9 days became too much to handle. He was once again sent to prison, where he remained until 2003. He had been recording a new album up until the time of his death, though it's unclear whether the tentative title of Man, Oh Man, Have I Ever Done A Lot Of Drugs: The Even More Drug Years will remain unchanged.
Yes, it was a long road for the man who had been shot no fewer than 3 times, arrested no fewer than 33 times, and whose eventual demise was brought about by demented disco monkeys eating his appendix. As a fellow world-famous celebrity, I can relate to the hardships that Dirty faced throughout his tumultuous career, as well as the difficulty in understanding Norwegian, especially as spoken by acid-enduced flamingo hallucinations. Ol' Dirty Bastard - you shall be dearly missed.
Also, Puffy Daddy is a [monkey doodle]. He totally stole that [monkey doodle]ing Grammy.
* The events in this paragraph are all true, save approximately 25% of the quote.
