Happy 25th Anniversary to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s debut album Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, originally released March 28, 1995.
There is no reason for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version to work as well as it does. Trying to explain or wrap your head around the album, released 25 years ago, at times seems like an exercise in futility. And yet it stands, a quarter century later, as one of the most successful and popular of the Wu-Tang Clan solo albums, and a testament to Ol’ Dirty’s demented genius.
There’s never been another emcee like Russell “Ol’ Dirty Bastard” Jones a.k.a. ODB a.k.a. Dirt McGirt. He was a charging tornado of energy and chaos, who made his name and his fame running roughshod over every track he graced.
Early in his career, he combined with cousins Robert “RZA” Diggs and Gary “GZA” Grice as The Force of the Imperial Masters Crew a.k.a. The FOI MCs. They soon changed their name to the All N Together Now crew and began recording tracks together. ODB, as Ason Unique, also served as a dancer and hype-man for GZA, then known as The Genius, while the latter was recording Words From a Genius (1991), his first album for Cold Chillin’ Records.
ODB was one of the first of Wu-Tang’s core members to sign a solo album deal. He was scooped up by Elektra Records’ Dante Ross after he heard the Clan rapping on Stretch and Bobbito’s legendary WKCR radio show and he was the second member to release a solo album, following the success of Method Man’s Tical (1994). Return to the 36 Chambers is everything you could possibly expect from someone who specializes in doing the unexpected.
ODB was never known for his sharp pen game. Truthfully, ODB didn’t even write a good portion of the album. Many of the verses ODB kicks were written by the GZA. GZA either wrote them expressly for the album or ODB incorporates old lines that GZA used before (including lines from the aforementioned Words From a Genius).
The lion’s share of the appeal of Return… centers on ODB’s out-sized personality. ODB’s biggest strength was as a showman, and he blazes with vigor whenever he touches the microphone. He oozes charisma and becomes the focal point of every track he appeared on and every stage where he set foot. With this magnetic energy, he lends his unique personality to verses written by others, making them his own.
Ol’ Dirty is a consummate entertainer, and nothing on Return to the 36 Chambers is ever boring. Shoot, the album’s nearly five-minute spoken intro is more interesting than most rappers’ entire discographies. Fueled by alcohol, weed, and who knows what other illicit substances, ODB barrels through the album like the proverbial bull in a China shop.
I don’t want to imply that Ol’ Dirty didn’t possess any writing talent. He apparently did write “Brooklyn Zoo,” the long player’s immortal first single, all on his own. It’s a bombastic, raucous, adrenaline-soaked recording that’s also one of the best singles of the mid-’90s era. Produced by True Master and ODB himself, the One Man Army Ason pounds a nameless adversary into submission, wreaking havoc on all of his enemies who ever underestimated him. “N***a wanna get too close to the utmost,” he brays. “But I got stacks that’ll attack any wack host.”
“Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” the album’s second single, was an even bigger commercial hit. The song is strikingly simple in its execution, with ODB delivering the same 14-bar verse twice over an expertly chopped piano sample. The song is possibly Ol’ Dirty’s most beloved song.
“Shimmy Shimmy Ya” was also the source of some controversy, as it was released during the height of AIDS awareness efforts, and some groups objected that the song chorus of “Ooh, baby I like it raw!” was an endorsement of unprotected sex. ODB went as far as to record a PSA for New York radio clarifying that the only thing that he liked “raw” was his hip-hop. This may have been a stretch of the truth, because like the biblical Abraham, John Smith, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Ol’ Dirty was especially prolific with his seed.
Other times, Ol Dirty drops straight lyrical heat, while mixing in touches of his unhinged flair. Tracks like “Baby C’Mon” and “Hippa to the Hoppa” are entertaining displays of emceeing skills, filled with stylistic flourishes and infectious grooves. “The Stomp” is one of Return’s best entries, a pounding, harsh track where ODB moves with soldier-like precision. “If you wanna jump up and get fucked up?” he proclaims. “Last n***a got up and got shot up.”
Though it is enjoyable to watch ODB get on some emcee shit, the drunken, rambling exhibitions that fill the middle of the album really reveal his character as an emcee and an artist. “Don’t’ U Know” is one of these tracks, where Ol’ Dirty continues to channel his inner Redd Foxx. The raunchfest would sound right at home on Blowfly’s Rappin', Dancin', And Laughin' (1980) or Dolemite’s Eat Out More Often (1970).
“Don’t U Know” is another case of Ol’ Dirty dumping in mountains of wild ideas, and each one makes the song more entertaining. There’s the intro, which features two women arguing over his attractiveness (“Yo, look at his disposition! Shorty got a stride!” one crows). Later there’s an interlude where ODB announces his disdain for “fancy bitches” and confesses to a complete lack of sexual scruples. On the final verse where he receives oral sex from a high school teacher in front of his entire class. It’s a master-class creating barely-contained pandemonium.
Other entries on Return… are bizarrely random in the most dope and endearing way possible. “Goin’ Down” almost defies description, beginning with ODB making weird throat noises for close to a minute. He later breaks into a serviceable rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while his wife loudly berates him for his infidelities. Somewhere in between he delivers a verse or two.
“Drunken Game (Sweet Sugar Pie)” is another, well, unique entry, as ODB casts himself somewhere between lounge singer and soused barfly, regaling a female patron with a song he learned from his momma in attempts to take her home. He partly croons, partly howls a love song, adding inebriated ad-libs (mostly him yelling names of various R&B artists) and then mimics a lengthy, full-throated, and damn near violent orgasm. He ends the endeavor by bellowing, “NO!... I’M THE BADDEST!!!… HIP-HOP MAN!!!… ACROSS THE WORLD!!!!”
Though Return… would be singularly entertaining enough if it only included ODB’s solo endeavors, the numerous guest appearances mostly make the album even more enjoyable. In early 1995, listeners had yet to hear very much material featuring other emcees in the Clan, and the album features a laundry list of core members and other Wu-affiliates. Nearly all use their opportunity to shine on their guest appearances.
“Raw Hide,” featuring verses from Method Man and Raekwon, is a rough and gritty mixtape banger, with the three emcees kicking “bulletproof fly shit” over a dirge-like track. Ol’ Dirty vacillates between laconic detachment and drunken mania throughout his verses, at one point pondering, “Who the fuck wanna be an emcee if you can’t get paid to be a fucking emcee?” Method Man reinterprets the theme of the Western TV show of the same name for the hook, while also spinning warnings of “wicked women putting period blood in stew.”
GZA joins ODB on the hectic, break-neck “Damage,” featuring the two virtually passing the mic back and forth through one marathon verse. It certainly sounds like each of them recorded the same verse separately, with RZA working his post-production magic to make it sound like a tag team affair. He does an excellent job weaving together their performances, as their flows blend together seamlessly. “Crush the personal vendetta, well you just better,” they rap. “Start stepping to your raggedy ass Jetta / Put the pedal to the metal / You and your DJ change your name to Ma and Pa Kettle.”
“Brooklyn Zoo II” is another interesting inclusion. It’s a messy endeavor carried by ODB’s panache and the talents of other members of the Clan. ODB drunkenly repeats the first half of the “Damage” verse over a grim and muddy track, slurring lyrics he kicked meticulously earlier on the album.
The real highlight of the song is a guest verse by Ghostface Killah. Ghostface had been a serviceable emcee on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993), but was often outshined by the other core members. However, his verse on “Brooklyn Zoo II” was the first glimpse into what he would become in the decades that followed. He attacks the track with ferocious energy, proclaiming that he’s “convincing, labeled one-man rap convention / The n***a that’ll gun down 80 Frenchmen / Lead vocalist, music specialist, rap arsonist / I deal with sharpness plus spark the hardest individual.”
One of the best songs on Return... is “Snakes,” a rugged posse cut featuring the likes of Killah Priest, The RZA, Masta Killa, and Buddha Monk. Each emcee paints a picture of various characters trying to navigate life in the ghetto and all the perils that come with living through illicit means. RZA has the song’s best verse, describing a stone cold street denizen in vivid detail. “A fierce lion who never leave the crib without the iron,” he raps. “And on the block he be slinging rocks and ducking from the sirens / Greeting n***s he loved with a pound, and a bear hug / Those who wanted life, they catch a slug from the snub.”
The tape version of Return… comes to a close with an oddly placed throwback track. “Cuttin’ Headz” is a remnant from Wu-Tang’s early ’90s demo, with ODB teaming up with RZA, trading verses and lines, often rhyming in tandem, like the early All N Together Now days. The beat appears to be an early version of “Clan N Da Front” from Wu-Tang’s first album, using the “Substitution” drums and a slightly different section of the piano intro from Thelonious Monk’s “Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are.”
CD versions of Return… contained two bonus tracks, which I was unaware of until months after I first bought the album. “Dirty Dancing,” is the better of the pair. Previously released on the Jerky Boys soundtrack as a Wu-Tang Clan track, it’s a murky and strange team up between ODB and Method Man. The song sounds like it was recorded in a haunted sewer in a dungeon, as the two trade verses over a muted bassline and disembodied yelps and howls. Throughout the song, ODB continually recites lines from Martin Lawrence’s You So Crazy on one of the vocal tracks. It goes without saying that only Dirt McGirt could pull it off.
Though Wu-Tang’s legend was just getting started, the crew would never release anything like Return to the 36 Chambers ever again. While N***a Please (1999), ODB’s sophomore album, is similarly messy, it’s still a bit more polished, lacking Return’s roughest edges and often complete disregard for song structure.
Dirt McGirt tragically died in 2004, another of hip-hop’s all-time great characters who moved on much too soon. Along with his many, many children, Ol’ Dirty left behind an indelible musical legacy anchored by Return to the 36 Chambers. Never has hip-hop greatness sounded so hectic.
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