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♪ "Aw, I don't want to...you, you can't even sing!" ♪
ODB: This Ol' Dirty Bastard, man, you know what I'm saying?
I ain't doin' no... You know what I'm saying?
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
Everything that I just spoke on this is some real...
He said, "I'm Ol' Dirty Bastard." He's telling you
who the...he is from the door.
♪ I'm the one-man army, Ason
♪ I never been tooken out, I keep MC's looking out ♪
♪ I'll drop signs like Cosby dropping babies ♪
He is in the great tradition of Black entertainers
like Rudy Ray Moore, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor,
and rappers like Biz Markie, Flava Flav,
Fernando Jr.: ODB is a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan.
The rest of the clan kind of looked at him
in a way for leadership.
Ghostface: Out of the whole group, he was the soul.
And when he left, it was a big loss for us.
Big, big, big, big, big, big, big.
[ Shouting ]
Dirty was the energy to everything we got started.
♪ Me and Mariah go back like babies with pacifiers ♪
♪ Old Dirt Dog's no liar
Carey: Hearing him, it was a griminess.
And the fact that he was singing the way he was singing,
ODB was the natural person -- the best person.
It's a fun record.
Him being a part of my life changed my life.
He was festive. He was fun.
Dash: He was the crazy one. He was the wild card,
but with a lot of swag.
He was the one that gave no...
We would sit down and we'd be like,
"Yo, you changed." He'd be like, "You...right."
He would admit it. He'd go, "Yeah,
you...right I'm changing."
Suddenly he had all this newfound money, fame, attention,
and the media doesn't give you time to adjust.
Reporter: Rapper ODB is in the news again,
this time facing shoplifting charges.
Russell Jones, known to rap fans as ODB,
was arraigned today in Los Angeles.
Ross: We get to live vicariously
by watching these celebrities behave badly.
Slowly but surely, he became somebody else,
and he started living
out Ol' Dirty Bastard more than Unique Ason.
If y'all see Dirty on stage too long, that...drunk.
We all watch a car crash, right? I don't think
you can blame society.
You can blame the media,
I think, for perpetually promoting these images.
Funeral services are planned for Thursday
for Russell Jones, the hip-hop artist known as ODB.
ODB: Ol' Dirty Bastard, that's just, like, a job.
You know what I mean?
My children, they know me as "Dad."
Fernando Jr: Russell Jones, the man,
was someone who really loved his kids and his wife.
Icelene: "Daddy, Daddy." That's it.
That's all we called him. I didn't call him Unique.
I didn't call him Ason. I didn't call him Russell.
I didn't call him ODB, Ol' Dirty Bastard.
It was just "daddy" to me.
Icelene: What's up?
Icelene: My husband, Unique, he gave me a camcorder.
Once I got it in my hands, it was a wrap.
You can't see anything?
Icelene: Yeah, I can see you now.
I was everywhere with that camcorder, recording everything.
[ Children cheering, laughing ]
Every day is ODB, ODB, ODB, Russell Jones,
Ol' Dirty Bastard, is reliving his life
and his death over and over and over again.
♪
[ Crowd shouting ]
♪♪
♪
Man: I wanna know where you from, you know what I'm saying?
Are you from New York? Are you from...?
ODB: I'm from Brooklyn, man.
The only way you can flex in Brooklyn
is going to the zoo,
because you can't make no money without going to Brooklyn Zoo.
You can't sell no drugs without going to Brooklyn Zoo.
You can't do nothin'. You can't nothin'...
Nothin'!
[ Siren wailing ]
Fernando Jr.: In the late '60s, when Russell Jones was born,
it was a tough time for Black America then.
At the same time that blacks were fighting for
and somewhat securing rights, they were being killed.
Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers --
all three of those men were assassinated.
It was just a very messy, chaotic time.
Ramsey: We were living in the Brownsville projects.
A lot of gangs infiltrated different blocks.
You were always faced with getting mugged,
coming from school, you know, getting your pockets picked.
It got so bad that there was a murder in our building.
After that had happened, my father said,
"You know, we're going to move to a better place."
And we ended up moving to Linden Plaza.
♪
Moving to Linden Plaza had a whole different energy.
It was like a fantasy for us.
It was idyllic, very quiet, beautiful.
It was like heaven.
We got to bicycle and go to the pools
that were in different parts of the complex.
Icelene: Linden Plaza is a little bit more uppity-up
than the surrounding projects around us.
We lived up on a mountain is --
that's what they called Plaza, a mountain.
[ Laughs ]
Haskins: Their mom wore wigs back then,
so we used to dress up in her wigs and her clothes.
She always had beautiful, beautiful clothes.
Jenkins: Everybody was at the Jones' house.
That was the spot.
I'd be there more than I'd be at my house.
RZA: You know, we grew up together
from the age of six, you know what I mean?
Running around. He's my blood cousin.
His house was the house I would go and hear music at
you know what I mean? His family had the biggest
record collection, you know what I mean?
So I would go over to his house, and hear all these different
musics, and I think those -- that that influenced me,
you know what I mean?
Ramsey: My cousin, RZA, would come over to our house,
stay over there for like a couple of days.
It was -- It was a place of solace.
♪♪
ODB: My cousin and GZA comes and brings me outside
to a block party.
And when I get to the block party,
the DJ throws on a couple of break beats.
You know what I mean? He started rapping
like a ♪ dip-dip-dah, so-socialize ♪
And, yo, I was blown out my mind.
Hip-hop was so new and fresh for us.
We got into the artists like Fat Boys and Kurtis Blow.
Jimmy Spicer lived in Linden Plaza in Building Five.
We started making our own tapes. I had my father buy me a mixer
and my two turntables and Casio keyboard, drum machine.
I remember we were all in the room -- it was RZA,
GZA, my brother, Russell, and I.
My brother was watching on the sidelines
and seeing how exciting it was.
Russell wanted to rap, and RZA influenced Russell.
RZA: He was my student, first of all, you know what I mean?
but he was one of the most powerful students that I've had.
The first time I met ODB was, you know,
back in my neighborhood, Park Hill projects.
I had to be about 12 years old.
He was just a hip-hop head.
You know, I seen it in him.
Rap helped him, like, open up, and his personality
started to come out more. He was becoming more outgoing.
He was always seemingly getting into trouble.
♪
Raekwon: Dirty was a professional thief,
him and me.
He would go to Macy's and he would boost clothes.
Raekwon: He always would get in the...and it was like
we was doing it for fun because we knew how to do it.
Ramsey: He would get caught. The security would call
our house and says, "Uh, can we speak to Mr. Jones?"
And they would tell him, "Hey, we got your son down here.
He's been caught shoplifting." My father says, "Keep him,"
and hang up the phone. [ Laughs ]
There was discipline. My father just got tired of it.
I mean, he would -- he would actually confront my brother,
and he was tired of going down to those department stores
and getting my brother out.
To me, you know what I'm saying, I deal with the science
of the Black man is God, you know what I'm saying?
So -- So it goes even deeper now.
Oh, man, I can't really get deep into that right now.
Reporter: I understand, though. You have your religion and...
No, it's not a religion. It's a way of life.
It's my culture.
Ramsey: My cousin, Popa Wu,
he was the one that indoctrinated Russell
into the 5% Nation.
Popa Wu was the one that instilled it and enforced it
in all of them.
It helped to instill discipline, confidence in themselves,
because at that time, Black men needed that.
The 5% Nation, the Nation of Gods and Earth, started in 1963
when Clarence 13X actually left Mosque Number Seven in Harlem,
when Malcolm X was the minister.
Fernando Jr.: One of the main tenants of the Five Percenters,
was that the original man who was the Black man
was God in the flesh.
That was a pretty radical thought at the time --
to believe the Black man is God.
Everlasting: Of course, there's mysteries and things
that might be great that we don't know about,
but as far as things that can be seen,
heard, and explained, it's me.
Life: Basically what it is is self-empowerment.
We don't believe in anything up above, anything down below.
Everything that we have we got to do for ourself.
Russell changed his name to Ason Unique.
Fernando Jr.: Ason Unique --
that was his righteous name. It was his Five Percenter name.
You don't just take a Five Percenter name.
You got to earn it.
You have to memorize these word for word --
So there's a lot of discipline involved.
Ramsey: He was mischievous, but when he was Unique,
he was much more scholarly.
He was all about learning the lessons, the mathematics.
So it was like two different personalities.
♪
Icelene: He was an exciting person to know.
He was lots of fun, lots of love.
I know I seen it all. And that was a blessing,
to experience all of him.
Elnora: We gave her a big 16th birthday party.
I guess he met him there --
skinny guy with a broken tooth.
And I'm looking at him. I'm like, "Oh, my God, trouble."
[ Laughs ] Yeah, yeah.
I closed the door in his face because he says that,
you know, I invited him there, and I know I didn't.
Two weeks later, my friend had a birthday party,
another Sweet 16, and he came in there
and I was hiding from him, because I'm like,
"Oh, my gosh, that's the guy
that I slammed the door in his face."
But then he came and found me,
and we started dancing and stuff like that.
He just told me his name, Unique.
He kept coming around and wanting to see me
and nobody never showed interest like that.
♪
Me and your father used to come here all the time.
This was like the times when we were falling in love.
What was the breakdance? They was doing "Ason,"
like this, going all down to the ground.
That's the Ason? Yeah.
He used to be dancing. I ain't doing it right,
but he used to be getting down.
And everybody would just be trying to do the Ason.
Icelene: He started talking to me about the sun, moon,
and stars, and he told me I was going to have a different name.
He said, "Your name can't be Tracy anymore.
Your name is gonna be Shaquita... in the name of Allah."
And I'm like, "Um... [ Laughs ]
What are you talking about?"
Her name was Icelene Pernell.
To me, I didn't really care for him, but she loved him, so.
I'm not going to say too much about him, eh.
♪♪
One dream we always spoke about is me and him making it big.
And we always knew, after we moved from Linden Plaza,
never to move into a project.
You sort of get stuck into the projects
and within a square, you got your shopping center,
you got your check-cashing place,
you got your liquor store.
You don't need to go outside.
We wanted to get out of that.
And he was always talking about his music career
and what he wanted to do.
I believed that he was going to make it one day
because I know he had something special.
♪
A little. Come on, baby. Pump it up.
'Cause we got something live for you now.
Come on! Yo, yo, I got it.
Give it to me! Give it to me!
♪ This is a lesson that makes you feel fine ♪
♪ Kinda ease your nerves and relax your mind ♪
♪ I said don't try to use no hypnotic spell, she said ♪
♪ "Be my assistant, I'd show rather tell" ♪
Icelene: He was battling from when I first met him.
He would go and battle people, and he would always win.
The GZA taught the RZA. The RZA taught me.
And, you know, we've been doing this for years.
Woman: Okay.
Around 1981, RZA, GZA, and my brother
put together a crew called the All In Together Now crew.
GZA: All In Together Now crew. What? What? Who?
Used to run around, battle, do rap things up, represent.
And it all started from there.
He used to go out all the time and rap
and used to be around each other all the time
and back and forth each of their houses.
And he has to pushing real, real hard.
One, two, three. Huh. [ Beatboxing ]
That's when ODB used to call himself "The Rap Professor."
He was a scientifical, hip-hop, junkie rhymer.
And they were doing they thing.
And, you know, you could tell
that them three was on a mission to make a mark in the game.
One, two, one, two.
This how we do it from Brooklyn.
[ Beatboxing ]
Aw, yeah, that sounds kind of funky.
♪ Ow
We was actually doing every mother...thing
which way but loose go get a deal.
Man: Yeah.You know what I'm sayin'?
Man: Ghostface Killah. Take one.
[ Clears throat ] The way me and ODB met
was through RZA.
I'm up at RZA house.
I'm eating a pastrami and cheese sandwich.
And he come to me on the terrace...
He just asked me like, "Yo. Let me get a piece of that."
Dirt was -- He was like one of them guys that'd be like,
"Yo, that's -- Yo, God. That was the best...sandwich
I ever had in my life. ...than my babies."
And this, that, and the third.
From there, it just opened up a door.
It was like, "Yo, I like this dude."
Ramsey: After being in it for almost like 15 years,
my mother got evicted with my brothers and sisters.
It felt like the world was coming apart at the time.
Aisha: My stepmother moved in to the house
that her mom had on Putnam Avenue.
When Icelene got pregnant with Taniqua,
my brother was kind of like, "Alright. Now I'm a father."
Icelene: His mother had a room in the house.
He asked his mom, "Please, can I have his room?"
She says, "I don't know, Unique, 'cause there's a lot of other people."
So he had to show her that he really wanted the room.
Aisha: He made a nice, clean space for him and Shaquita.
He was very, very protective.
He had Taniqua and Bar-Sun.
Icelene: That's all he cared about, was us.
We was his purpose on being righteous, being a rapper,
doing everything, was to make sure he have us.
Fernando: Ol' Dirty Bastard, to me, was a character.
That was a name that came to him from RZA.
RZA: In all history of rap, man,
ain't nobody got my style.
I keep it real. I keep it live.
That's ol', dirty, and he's a bastard.
Fernando: Ol' Dirty got his name from a movie
called "Ol' Dirty and the Bastard,"
in which there's this drunken monk.
It's like almost comic kung fu, like Jackie Chan,
where this guy's tipsy,
but he's, like, messing up his opponent with the kung fu.
♪♪
All your rap dudes on Saturdays
was in the house, waiting for 3:00 to come.
[ Men grunting ]
[ Imitating grunting ]
Fighting each other.
It was just illmatic.
Certain flicks would just be like,
"Yo, that's amazing!"
♪♪
When I had brought that flick to RZA,
"Shaolin Vs. Wu Tang"...
Shaolin shadowboxing. And a Wu-tang sword style.
...it just opened up a door in his mind.
He said, "Yo, I want to make a group called the Wu-Tang,"
off of that flick.
We never knew that RZA was so passionate about it.
Just the way they was moving,
you would have thought they was Chinese...
You know what I mean?
I remember one day RZA just giving me a call
and saying, "Yo, we want to start a group."
So I'm like, "Perfect!"
But when RZA incorporated "ting-ting"
all inside the...
And..."Bring Da Ruckus." Is the Wu-Tang.
You know what I mean? All that talking karate...
Yo, it just went with it.
Man: If what you say is true,
the Shaolin and the Wu-Tang could be dangerous.
Do you think your Wu-Tang sword can defeat me?
Fernando: I first heard Wu-Tang in October of '92,
and the song was "Protect Ya Neck."
♪ Wu-Tang Clan comin' at ya, watch your step, kid ♪
♪ Watch your step, kid, watch your step, kid ♪
♪ Watch your step, kid ♪ So set it off
♪ Watch your step, kid, watch your step, kid ♪
♪ I smoke on the mic like Smokin' Joe Frazier ♪
♪ The hell raiser, raisin' hell with the flavor ♪
"Protect Ya Neck" was the first record ever assembled.
So when that record hit, it was like, "Oh..."
We all looked at each other and we like,
"Yo, ain't no stopping now."
I knew -- Like, "Yo, it's about to be on.
And we takin' -- Whoever got that belt,
we comin' for it and we gonna hold that.
You feel me? ...that. We want that belt.
We want everybody belt.
Single-handedly and group-wise." So that was the mission.
We knew the record was different and it was dope,
but it just was something enough
to get people to take a look at us.
I think what was extraordinary about Wu-Tang Clan
that was so striking for all of us
was that they were a group and they were cohesive.
Raekwon: At that time, they wasn't making groups like this.
They wasn't putting 10-man groups together.
A lot of hip-hop is kind of
this beautiful Italian sports car,
and it's been buffed and it's been polished
and it's candy-apple red and it's shiny.
RZA's music?
Pop the hood.
What drives that car?
What drives that performance machine?
Ghostface: The reaction to "Protect Ya Neck" --
it was madness.
Riding past cars hearing it.
People calling up, "Yo, could you play that Wu joint again?
Yo, we need that."
One thing just led to the next.
The buzz around the Wu-Tang Clan before they got signed --
it just kept growing and growing and growing.
It's on the radio. It's everywhere.
And everyone's trying to get a piece of this Wu-Tang Clan.
Steve Rifkind. I was the founder and CEO of Loud Records.
I'm pretty competitive,
so I wanted it to be the biggest
and best label that it could possibly be.
Wu-Tang brought the New York rap scene back.
When they played that record the first time,
you know, when the guys left, I said,
"I got to have this. What is it gonna take?"
Before we even got it going, we did have conversations
about each one of us have their own style
that they're gonna bring to the table.
And the first one that was gonna be off the roster
that was gonna go first was Ol' Dirty Bastard.
His delivery was different.
There's no father to it.
He's gonna say whatever he want to say
and make it sound crazy.
It's like he already knew
what he was getting ready to give the world.
♪ Ya best protect ya neck, ya best protect ya neck ♪
The Wu brought a lot of... to the game, man.
I mean, the Wu brought intelligence.
The Wu brought, you know, charisma
on that microphone.
We brought slang.
I brought a dress code. You see me, man.
I brought Wonder Woman bracelets and robes and clocks.
You know what I mean?
Dirt was doing what the... he was doing.
We brought science.
We was young. 25. You feel me?
Doing what 25-year-olds do. That's getting money.
You know what I mean?
Carey: I was a very big fan
of Wu-Tang Clan "36 Chambers."
I loved "C.R.E.A.M."
♪
Rifkind: In its heyday, I think we did two main units
without really a radio record.
We had the record "Shame,"
which it was really featuring Dirty,
and that record was just a smash.
I first heard Ol' Dirty Bastard
on the record "Protect Ya neck."
The next time I heard him outside of that context
was on the "Stretch & Bobbito" show.
Ason was a listener of our show starting in '90,
and he would call up and he would get through a lot,
and he became, like, this character
that we knew who was out there.
And then he came in -- came to the station with RZA.
Ross: Now Stretch and Bob had a very, very popular
underground show during the '90s.
If you came through the "Stretch & Bobbito" show,
that was almost as good as getting a deal.
Stretch: One of our dear friends in the industry was Dante Ross.
Dante was an A&R executive at Elektra,
and one night he was listening
and he heard Ol' Dirty just smash it.
Dante offered him a deal on site that night.
Raekwon: He was one of the first ones
that we knew out the crew that was definitely going solo.
Ross: I signed ODB to Elektra Records
and executive-produced his first record.
He had six songs on the demo. They all were on the album.
His demo was one of the greatest demos
I've ever had in my entire life.
It was a no-brainer.
When I heard those records,
I knew that he was going to be a star.
Oh, one more -- one more thing before you cut it off.
I'd like to congratulate my physical cousin Ason
for his newborn baby daughter today.
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
[ Cheers and applause ]Congratulations.
Icelene: Unique and the Clan were out grinding.
I was at home with two children and pregnant with my third.
At this time, I'm staying with my parents.
After I had my third child, which was Shaquita,
my parents were like, "You got to go into a shelter."
So me and Unique and the children moved into a shelter.
Then one day out of nowhere -- we were in the shelter --
he just came home and says, "We're gonna go get married."
That was the proposal. [ Laughs ]
We stayed in the shelter for about six months.
And then we found the place.
So we ended up choosing Harlem.
We only lived there for maybe six months,
and around the same time Wu-Tang had made it
at that point when it got noticed.
You heard their music on the radio,
and he was going through a lot to make it happen.
Chang: I saw his hair first.
I probably just went up and introduced myself.
I don't even think that I needed to ask if it was him.
And, you know, in clubs, it's so loud,
so he had to be really close to me
and kind of, you know, almost yelling in my ear.
And I just remember laughing really loud.
And then there was gunfire.[ Gunfire ]
And he immediately pushed me down.
Like, "Get on the floor."
I had never heard gunfire in my life.
He pushed me down immediately. He's like, "Get down, Sophie!"
And then he just stayed down with me.
And when everything started to clear,
I just remember he was laughing really hard.
He just thought it was so funny. He wasn't shook at all.
I was shook for sure.
I eventually made my way home in a cab.
And he called me.
And he said, "Hey, Sophie. It's Dirty. Are you okay?"
All of that is --
was so telling about the man.
You know, when I think about Ason,
I don't think about his music, I don't think about his rhymes.
I think about his heart.
Dirty said, "Sophie, I love the...out of you."
He said, "You know, when I'm with you,
I don't have to be Ol' Dirty Bastard.
I can be Ason Unique."
[ Click ]
ODB: You know?
You know what I'm saying?
[ Tape whirring ]
♪
Ross: In shaping his public persona,
I would say that Dirty was 100% responsible for all of it.
He was very self-aware
of the character he was portraying.
He had a warm spirit and soul.
He was someone who I genuinely cared for as a person.
And Ol' Dirty Bastard was the -- [ Chuckles ]
the yin-yang version of that.
He was a performer, an entertainer,
a troublemaker, half a derelict,
someone who had to live up to his name.
He demanded to be the center of attention.
There was no way you were not going to notice him.
Woman: Tell us some more about the album.
The album is called "Return to the 36 Chambers."
You know, the reason why we said --
we call it the "Return to the 36 Chambers"
'cause, see, the Ol' Dirty Bastard
is like the representer of the Wu.
You know? They gave me that title.
They gave me, you know -- They'll throw me out first.
Ross: He designed the record cover. That was his idea.
And that embodies how aware he was
of the Ol' Dirty Bastard character
and how we wanted it to be positioned.
He literally came to my office with his welfare card.
I think it might've been Icelene's welfare card actually.
And said, "I want this to be my album cover."
You know, the way he talked -- He's like,
"I got crazy thoughts. I got thoughts, God."
Like, "Here's the thought."
Clinch: There was not a lot of hip-hop
in Rolling Stonemagazine, if any.
The big name-photographers, the veterans,
they weren't shooting hip-hop.
It wasn't of interest to them. They thought it was a fad.
So it opened the door
for a lot of young photographers like myself.
Jacobson: Right away, I could tell that he had a really strong
and definite idea of his image,
and how he wanted to portray himself for the album cover art.
Clinch: There was certainly a buzz about ODB.
The idea was to create an identity there for him,
cultivate this character.
Danny, being the coolest cat in the world,
asked Dirty what he wanted to do.
And Dirty was like, "Yo, we should go to my cousin's.
My cousin's rest in Brooklyn is mad...up."
Dirty art-directed the shoot.
He said, "The room, it's not...up enough."
And he sent his assistant to get like 10 blunts
and a bunch of forties.
And he poured most of the forties out
and he put them around the room, and he took all the blunt guts
and he put them on the floor all over the place.
And he took the TV and the stereo
and stacked them on each other,
took his shirt off, and was like, "Let's go."
Dirty was the antithesis of what rap was.
He was not upwardly mobile.
He might have been downwardly mobile.
He kind of celebrated what some would call the struggle
in a gregarious fashion.
He was wrapping up his album,
and I saw him, and he was like,
"Yo, God, I need something for the album."
I was like, "I'd love to be on it."
He was like, "You got to hurry up, though."
I'm digging. I'm looking for sounds.
And I found this drop that was so crazy-sounding.
I called Dirty. I was like, "Yo, I got it."
I played it, and instantly he was in love with it.
Introducing the Brooklyn Zoo,
something that y'all have never experienced before.
Something that you didn't expect
but you wanted and you needed it
because it's something that you just had to get.
We was listening to it over and over again.
He was like, "Yo, God, I think this might be my first single."
"Brooklyn Zoo" was, like, a really unorthodox --
Like Ol' Dirty Bastard.
You threw it on in a 1,000-person club,
and everyone is gonna end up
like 20 feet from where they started.
Choke No Joke: ♪ One-man army, Ason
♪ I never been tooken out, I keep MC's looking out ♪
Yo. Like, the flow is just crazy!
He didn't have a style.
Ol' Dirty Bastard's gonna make you like,
"What the -- What?!
What did he say?! Yo, he's crazy!"
Funkmaster Flex: He had the most swag.
His rhythm and his melodies were ahead of its time.
A lot of people zone in on his voice, not --
But it's the melodies. It's the -- It's the --
In his voice to come up, to come down
to stretch a word out.
♪ I seen and heard, no one knows ♪
♪ You forget, be quiet as kept
♪ Now you know nothing
♪ Before you knew a whole bloodclot lot ♪
♪ You don't wanna get shot
Funkmaster Flex: You know, his freestyle game, too.
It wasn't just what he was saying.
It's his hand movement and how he's moving.
You ever seen that video of that freestyle?
♪ Asiatic flow, mixed with disco ♪
♪ I roll up on the scene like the Count of Monte Crisco ♪
♪ And MC's start to vanish
♪ I rolled up on a jet-black kid ♪
♪ He started speakin' Spanish
♪ Yo, he wasn't from Panama
♪ I asked him how the...he get so dark ♪
♪ He said, "Sun-tanama!" Crowd: Ohh!
Funkmaster Flex: That's an MC mixed with being a b-boy
mixed with being from Brooklyn.
Connor: ODB sewed the seeds
for rap as expression
rather than rap as like a kind of technical exercise
in fitting together words to rhyme the most.
He knew exactly what rules to break at what time.
And "Mystery of Chessboxin'," for me,
is really the song that shows that the most.
What he's saying becomes such, like, a overload
of kind of, like, expression
or him trying to get you to hear him
that is just, like, this really great moment of him
almost, like, punching through the song
and reaching you directly.
And I think that kind of rawness
is really what makes people unable to stop watching.
Dirty's first solo album -- it was raw, it was new.
It was refreshing. You know what I mean?
A little raunchy. You know what I mean?
But, again, it was him.
Everybody trying to please somebody, man.
I ain't trying to please no...body.
Know what I'm saying?
Either you like my... or you don't like it.
I don't give a...
Ross: The record spread.
It was a hit record because of his persona
and how much he projected on screen.
And the camera loved him.
♪ Ooh, baby, I like it raw
♪ Yeah, baby, I like it raw
♪ Ooh, baby, I like it raw
♪ Yeah, baby, I like it raw
♪ Shimmy, shimmy, ya, shimmy, yam, shimmy, yay ♪
♪ Gimme the mic so I can take it away ♪
♪ Off on a natural charge, bon voyage ♪
♪ Yeah, from the home of the Dodger Brooklyn squad ♪
♪ Wu-Tang killer bees on a swarm ♪
♪ Rain on your college-ass disco dorm ♪
♪ For you to even touch my skill, you gotta go... ♪
Ross: He was dangerous on some level, but he was lovable.
You kind of wanted to put your arms around him
and give him a hug.
He had this everyman thing that we all love,
and he had that combined
with this person who had no boundaries.
♪ My flow is like bam, jump on stage, and then I dip down ♪
Ross: He was not built for fame and fortune and success.
Very few of us are.
He became the uber version of Ol' Dirty Bastard.
And he was, from my vantage point,
headed for some form of disaster.
Jacobson: When he was kind of alone,
he was a little bit more introverted and quiet.
He struck me as a young person who had a lot of responsibility.
He was scrappy. He was -- He was coming up
and he had a mission to make money.
Raekwon: Dirty -- he knew a lot of people who had money.
He knew a lot of people that didn't have money.
He knew people from his own neighborhood.
Everybody knew Dirty had a big heart.
His thing was always to give back to his people.
He loved to give people money.
And that's just who he was.
Because he always said, "I'm gonna make more money.
I'm gonna make more money." He was the only guy that I knew
that really didn't care about money at that time.
He loved to help people, but he also loved to be
three minutes away from where...is at.
He was drinking a lot, and he stayed in those areas
where trouble is right around the corner.
That's when you start hearing...
If a mother...see you drunk,
he gonna feel like he got one up on you.
Woman: Trying to get in the hotel.
He was just putting himself in bad places
at the wrong time, you know?
Icelene: I'm at home with the children.
Unique's father calls me, says, "Shaquita, don't be scared.
Unique is alright, but he was shot."
He was in a familiar place, and somebody attacked him.
I think that hurt him --
hurt emotionally and hurt physically
from the gunshot wound.
Life: Lot of the things Dirty went through --
getting shot and everything --
was because he stayed accessible to the people.
But you did have people that was jealous.
I mean, he had things that other people wanted, and, you know,
certain things happen, unfortunately, you know?
But he never let that deter him. He stayed who he was.
-[ Chuckles ] Okay. -You know what I mean?
Alright.
Icelene: It felt like magic.
You should be here so you can lay down.
I was there with him when he was writing his music
and playing the music and blasting it through the apartment.
It was something that we worked on.
You couldn't believe that something like this
was really happening.
[ Rapping indistinctly ]
[ Crowd cheering ]
My father -- he just did whatever he wanted,
when he wanted to, on a stage.
And I couldn't believe that that was my father.
He was being so funny, but it was still real.
He had that joker about him.
I think he knew what he is.
He's a man of respect. For honor.
♪♪
Man: Give it up for the ODB, y'all!
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪
♪♪
He really loved people.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪♪
He showered people with their love.
♪♪
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪
That love goes a long way.
You know? 'Cause he -- he had this strong love.
♪♪
♪
Mommy was his love, his only love.
♪♪
And it became -- all of that love
that you have from your wife goes into your children.
♪♪
Taniqua: We're different than a lot of people, upbringing wise.
We don't move like a lot of people.
Bar-Sun: My father understand that we was one.
We was all one, united and connected.
♪
Shaquita: It was kind of like keep us together.
Keep us tight, close.
But we can't just let anybody and everybody in.
♪♪
He didn't have us around everybody.
He always kept us away And just be like,
"Okay. This is where y'all are.
And this is where y'all gonna be."
We keep everything tight in our little cipher.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Cipher is from the mathematics.
Cipher is a circle.
And we don't let nobody break our cipher.
We don't let anybody come into our cipher.
If we do, we're giving you the ultimate trust and respect.
And once you are in, you're in.
And if you break it, that's it -- we're pushing you out.
ODB: Come on, man. I gotta spin this thing. Look out.
Spin it.Spin it, spin it, spin it!
[ Laughter ]
Icelene: I kept trying to get him back on track as being Unique Ason.
He didn't know which way to go at times
because there was so many people pulling him in a negative way.
Child: Are we going down or something?
It became a little confusing to him
on who was really there for him and who wasn't.
Jacobson: He was kind of a mixed bag of personalities.
There was a kind of -- a sadness in a certain way with him.
Raekwon: Once he started getting money, he just was confident
in what he believed that he was gonna be.
But you know how it goes. It start feeling different.
It start feeling funny.
Touré: I was working for MTV News.
"Brooklyn Zoo" was out.
And I was like, "Let's do a profile package with this guy."
The night before the shoot,
I'm on the phone with Dirty, his publicist.
Jacobson: Dirty wanted to make the first stop of the interview
be going to a check-cashing establishment.
And he's like, explaining, like,
"So, we're gonna go to the check-cashing place
and I'm gonna get food stamps.
'Cause that relates to the album cover."
And I was like, "Okay. It's got to be real.
This is not a music video."
You're trying to talk to a person,
but they're not really listening.
Icelene: He had a limo for the day.
We went to some check-cashing place in Brooklyn
we used to go to a lot. I'm thinking we just gonna
go in there and talk or whatever.
He wanted me to put my food-stamp card in there,
and I had it 'cause I had it in my wallet
'cause I used to carry it all the time.
He said, "Put your card in there. Put your card in there."
Woman: Thank you.
It was like 400 and somewhat dollars of food stamps.
He, like, fanned it out for the camera.
And I'm like, "Okay, okay, okay."
ODB: We good to go. Come on.
And then he put it in his pocket
and he walked out the door and he got in the car.
And I was like, "Wait! He left!"
Why wouldn't you want to get free money?
They ran that video over and over again.
Everybody just loved it, I guess.
I mean, but how could you be abusing the system
when the system is already crooked and...up anyway?
Besides, America owes the Black people
forty acres and a mule, any...damn way.
He called me drunk the night after it aired.
He was fearful that social services
were going to try and take his kids from him,
and he was extremely emotional.
I think I was kind of pissed off at Touré.
It's not media's responsibility to save you from yourself.
I didn't tell him, "Go do that."
That was his idea.
I didn't tell him, "Give the money back."
That's not my responsibility. He's a grown man.
Icelene: That video kept coming back to haunt us.
The whole New York government was against us.
Bain: Particularly for Black folks who've come up out of Brooklyn
written off as welfare queens and, you know,
folks who could only be at the bottom of the bottom,
that was liberating. He was so free.
He was so free with who he was and comfortable in his own skin.
It makes you feel a certain specialness.
Carey: I think he brought so much
personality and effervescence
and just, like, "No F's given" energy.
♪
I was working on my album.
I had already done the song "Fantasy,"
which samples the Tom Tom Club loop.
I was surrounded by record-company people
that really wanted me to be in one specific lane,
which was a very successful lane for me,
but I had a love of hip-hop music since I was a kid.
The SWV record had come out, with the whole Wu-Tang Clan
right before that -- "Anything."
♪ Whoa, oh, oh
♪ Ol' Dirty Bas, style cuts like glass ♪
♪ Gotta, gotta keep it high, power to the mass ♪
Carey: His voice in tandem with mine,
they were so different from each other.
People weren't expecting it.
I went in, redid my parts.
Then there was the session.
I had no idea what he was gonna say.
I had no idea what the rhyme was gonna be, at all.
I'm, like, listening in on the phone.
I remember this engineer, this poor guy.
He was, like, this short, little Caucasian man.
You know, really cool, nice guy, but wasn't ready for ODB.
And he was like, "Yo, Devil, go get me --"
[ Chuckles ] "Go get me this and that."
I was on the phone like, "Oh, my God."
A few more hours went by, he took a nap,
and then it's on speakerphone.
I'm listening. I'm dying.
I'm sitting there like the giddiest kid on Earth.
So happy. Basically jumping up and down on the bed, so happy.
And then when he gets to the "me and Mariah" section,
I'm flipping out even more.
I'm like -- I can't even believe what this is.
♪ Me and Mariah go back like babies with pacifiers ♪
Ghostface: When I heard him on Mariah's...
it was like, "Oh..." He knew how to do it.
You got regular rap songs and rap all through the...
But there's no moments in there.
Know what I mean?
His part is the moment.
When we did the video, I had the concept
at Rye Playland. Let's just shoot it there.
Man: Welcome to the...
Carey: In the pop version, the clown --
he's, like, leading you through the video.
So I said to ODB, "What do you think about that clown --
if now you've tied him on this pole and, like,
you've clearly taken over the moment?"
And he was like, "Yo. That's peace, that's peace, that's peace."
And I was like, "Okay, let's go."
♪ Yo, New York in the house
♪ It's Brooklyn in the house
Carey: I love, love, love his performance in that video.
Every single part of it was genius.
The way he performed, he was free.
He did stuff so spontaneously, like in the moment.
He was in the moment.
Even when he had the wig on
and was, like, looking up in the sky with no shirt.
Like, that was his thing.
♪ Me and Mariah go back like babies with pacifiers ♪
Carey: Not every hip-hop artist
was playing Madison Square Garden.
Backstage, we spent like 30 minutes
taking pictures with him and, like, everybody in the family.
He had maybe two dressing rooms
full of family -- kids, lovely ladies.
Lots of family.
The record was, I believe,
number one on the hip-hop charts for eight weeks.
It was a big deal for us -- I think for us both. You know?
Guesting on Mariah Carey's "Fantasy"
catapulted him into a whole other level of awareness.
People who may not have been hip-hop fans
were hearing him for the first time.
It went to his head.
I think he thought it was an opportunity
for him to get to a next level that unfortunately,
'cause of his self-sabotage, he did not get to.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
♪♪
[ Indistinct conversations ]
[ Singing indistinctly ]
♪♪
Russell Jones didn't have time to kind of adjust.
Touré: Suddenly he has money, and he's spending a lot of it
on stuff to make himself happy.
There was just massive excitement around him.
And you got to outdo yourself to be that guy.
And he wanted to be that guy.
Jacobson: Also, for him, he had a persona,
and he kind of had to keep the persona going.
He got pretty egotistical.
Some of his humility got pushed to the back burner.
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪♪
Ghostface: He knew how to get women.
He knew how to get 'em. He knew how to get 'em.
He'd do the... that you would want to do
but you were afraid to do it.
MeToo would probably come and get Dirty
for his troubling behavior.
♪ You give me your number, I'll call you up ♪
True Master: I was driving with Dirty.
We at a light. And it's just ugly girls.
Well, then, she starts smiling, and he starts smiling.
Like, "Oh, baby, pull over."
Gets her number, talks to her.
Get in the car. I'm like, "That bitch was ugly as hell, God."
♪ All the pretty girls in the world ♪
♪ And the ugly girls, too
♪ 'Cause to me you're pretty anyway, baby, heh ♪
He says, "Sometimes ugly bitches --
You'll have the time of your life."
[ Laughs ]
And I remember he controlled like 50 women at one time.
He came in the building with, like, a mom.
This was the power that he had.
Allen: He was a womanizer.
I didn't like how he treated my friend.
Icelene: One day, out of nowhere, a young girl knocked on my door.
She was like, "I can have your man and mines, too."
Raekwon: His wife, to me, was really
the only one that understood him.
But they would have they fights.
You know, his wife ain't no joke. She's a strong lady.
♪ I ain't got no time for no mother...bitches ♪
♪ Calling my mother...house with that bull... ♪
♪ You got three...babies to take care of ♪
♪ ...that...
Raekwon: If she suspected his ass,
she would prove it, kick his ass out.
So a lot of times Dirty didn't have
that support system no more because he was...up.
He messed with different girls.
All my friends and family know he's out there doing this stuff.
It was just real hard.
I got babies. Got one in the oven right there. See? See?
We're having a son real soon.
Taniqua: He was bringing different women over.
Very blunt.
"Here, Shaquita. I just had another baby."
♪
Icelene: I used to always threaten him.
I was like, "I'm not gonna be with you anymore.
I got three babies, and I'm just sick of this."
He had more money than I had.
He was like, "We're not getting a divorce."
Divorce? That's like when Moses parted the Red Sea.
You know what I mean?
But it had to come back together again.
You know? And it got to stay back together.
She was his. He was taking ownership of her.
He was -- [ Sighs ] cruel sometimes to her.
Icelene: I seen him in the car once with a girl --
in my car, my Infiniti that he bought for me.
I went knocking on the window, and she rolled the window down
like this much, and I was like, "Where's my...husband at?!"
♪♪
I went without for a long time
and just struggled for a long time,
but I was done at that point.
Man: Your wife has said that you hadn't paid
a fair amount of child support.
Of course I pay child support. You know what I mean?
I mean, why wouldn't I? I love my wife.
[ Laughs ]
Yes, I love her, dearly.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Ross: His name was Ol' Dirty Bastard.
He's living his life in public.
He was expected to do wild...
You know, do things like walk on the stage at the Grammys.
Announcer: It's music's biggest night!
The 40th Annual Grammy Awards!
We were all at my house, and he goes,
"How come you're not going?" I said,
"We lost already. They announced it at 3:00 or 4:00."
He got pissed,
was like, "I just spent $2,000 on a suit."
[ Imitates drumroll ]
Shawn Colvin and John Leventhal...
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪
ODB: Please turn it down.
The music and everything. Everything.
I went and bought this outfit today
that costed a lot of money today.
You know what I mean? 'Cause I figured
that Wu-Tang was gonna win.
Like, "Oh, my God. What is he doing?"
I didn't know how everyone else was gonna take it.
I don't know how y'all see it,
but when it comes to the children,
Wu-Tang is for the children.
We teach the children. You know what I mean?
Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best, okay?
I want y'all to know that this is ODB
and I love you all! Peace!
He came back straight to the house,
and he said, "Am I gonna get in trouble?"
"No," I said, "You'll probably be
the biggest draw in the world for the next 48 hours."
That never left me --
like, that statement and that moment.
I was just like...
He was a genius with those kind of moments
when everybody else was still scared.
After the Grammys, everybody was going crazy.
It worked.
U-God: It was plastered all over
every...news channel across America.
We got Ol' Dirty Bastard here. He was the big star of
the Grammys last night. Took over the whole...damn thing.
Yeah, wasn't even scheduled.
I didn't mean no disrespect. You know? I just had to --
You had to say what you had to say.
I was actually looking out for all rap artists.
Jacobson: When he walked up on stage at the Grammys,
that was a bad look for a major label.
There was not a lot of keeping him in check.
Like, this is not how you can behave.
The label was concerned with business --
making money from him and his career.
I don't know that they really cared about his well-being.
♪♪
Rifkind: He would literally come to my record-company office
twice a week -- with a record out, not a record out --
so he could just relax.
I don't know if that was the drugs, the drinking,
the pressure of his wife, baby mama.
I thought it was some paranoia,
but he was really having real issues.
ODB: I need help. I need help.
The government is after me.
[ Giggles ]
Rifkind: Well, I call some people,
and that's when I realized
the cops -- they were definitely looking at him.
♪
Touré: NYPD had a task force
that we called the Hip-Hop Police.
They tried to keep tabs
on where all the rappers were going,
as if they were some
organized-crime syndicate or something.
Choke No Joke: If they know Ol' Dirty Bastard you got a show,
they gonna follow him from his house
and they're gonna pull him over
hoping to catch guns, this, that, and the other.
Dirt was one of them guys like, "Yo. The government is on us.
They gonna try to kill me like this.
They gonna try to kill me like that."
I didn't take it as really like...
Fernando: People think that Dirty was kind of crazy,
and drugs were making him paranoid or whatever,
but he actually did have a legitimate concern
that the feds were after him.
He knew that he was on the radar of law enforcement.
It turned out that he was correct.
There's a 95-page FBI file on Wu-Tang.
They were being investigated
for racketeering and gun-running and all this stuff.
And all of this came out years later.
They had been following Wu-Tang for years.
A generation ago, the counterintelligence program
did the same thing to the Black Panther Party,
the same thing to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Did the same thing to Malcolm X, to Martin Luther King.
The Hip-Hop Police are the latest incarnation
of that surveilling influential Black folks
that might attract a following and doing whatever they can
to destroy those individuals and those organizations.
If you a Black man, you only got an opportunity to rise but so far.
They only give you so much power. Know what I'm saying?
But then they snatch it right out from under your feet.
Dirt was ahead of his time on that...
Fernando: In the years 1998 to 1999,
he really started getting into trouble a lot.
All of these charges --
possession of drugs, petty larceny,
wearing a bulletproof vest.
You know, he was shot twice.
He had to drive himself to the hospital both times.
So, after that, he's kind of paranoid
that people are gunning for him.
When he started his career, the press, you know,
was very much on his side.
These same members of the press
covered his arrests and his drug use.
Let's go. Ain't nobody no mother... amateur here. Let's go.
I think he felt attacked.
But I know that...
And I know that damn well
we are somepartying mother...
It's impossible to know what begets what.
If you don't like how you're being portrayed
and then you get high to lessen the negativity,
it's like a vicious cycle.
That can really color someone's self-image.
When I look back at that Howard Stern interview,
he was actually humble.
-Did you hear about that? -No. What happened?
You saved a little girl's life the other day, didn't you?
Yes.
Divine: It wasn't anything, like, special.
You know, it was a kid in trouble. You helped them.
Maati: It was a Saturday morning.
I was trying to teach my oldest sister how to shop.
I was a young child. I was only four years old.
They were standing in front of the van.
The car came from out of nowhere.
Divine: I was in the office.
You hear the collision. You hear the accident go on.
[ Glass shatters ]
Maati was nowhere. I couldn't find her.
And I kept saying, "Where's my daughter?
Where's my daughter? Where's my daughter?"
And everybody said, "Under the car."
When I bent down, all I saw was her.
And she wasn't crying. She wasn't screaming.
But when she saw me, then she screamed.
I remember, like, bits and pieces of the accident.
I remember the heat.
From out of nowhere, ODB lifted the car.
He's literally trying to lift up the car by himself immediately.
We help him lift the car,
and he brings the girl out from under the car.
She had a coat on,
and the coat was burned through,
and her leg was burnt.
I remember being rushed into the hospital.
[ Siren wails ]
Dirty went to the hospital to go check on the girl.
He kept checking.
He didn't just leave it like that.
And I told him, "Anytime you need to talk, call me."
So he would call me and tell me things
that were on his head, you know, and he was glad that he was there.
I think he was trying to prove that he was a good guy.
And I said, "I agree with that."
You definitely helped my child.
It shows what type of person he is, you know?
I got an album coming out.
It's called "The Black Man is God."
Next album. This is for the children.
Just make sure you get a good education, school.
You ain't got to tell your teacher off.
Tell that teacher off with education.
Know what I'm saying? Bomb his ass.
Know what I'm saying? White devil...
Yo, but, um, you know, when I say white devil,
I'm just saying that, you know, you got some good devils, you got some bad devils.
It's like you got some good Black men, you got some Black devil men.
Know what I'm saying? ...Black man is God.
We know that the white man came from the Black man.
So we created the devil. So we know that --
[ Speaking indistinctly ]
Fernando: Dirty's second album was supposed to be
called "The Black Man is God, The White man is the Devil."
And, of course, the record company didn't allow that.
The second album was not nearly as popular.
He didn't promote it as heavily.
I don't think it sold very well.
We did interviews, but there wasn't the crossover press.
He almost became like a caricature.
♪
He's all over TV. He's everywhere.
Slowly but surely, he became somebody else
and he started living out Ol' Dirty Bastard
more than Unique Ason -- to me, in my eyes.
We can hear him, but we couldn't see him.
He became so distant sometimes that it's like,
"Dang, we hear our father through the radio
more than we can even share time with him."
♪
Aisha: I hated seeing him high. I hated that part.
He was still there, and he was still aware, of course,
but I hated seeing him like that.
♪♪
The drug use -- it took away my older brother
to a different place.
♪
I started to, like, grow a dislike
for my other cousins because...
♪
He was having a tough time
adapting to this new world that he's in.
Icelene: He was getting all this money and stuff.
And he was around people
that was getting high all the time.
Raekwon: He thought if you were getting high with him
and drinking with him or whatever
that you was his friend.
He was using weed all the time, smoking marijuana.
And it started from that.
And then he would mix cocaine with it.
Then it got to the point where he was mixing
crack cocaine with it.
Raekwon: He was looking at the Wu sideways.
He was probably looking at his own family members sideways.
He was looking at his circle
that he was hanging with sideways.
He didn't know who to trust anymore.
Everybody around him became a yes-man
because they're looking at what they could get from him.
They ain't looking at if they're hurting him.
They're only looking at, "If I need to ask Dirty with something,
he gonna give it to me."
Especially when he high.
[ Chuckles ]
Icelene: He needed help. I kept trying to get him in programs.
You know, he just didn't want -- he didn't want to do it.
I think the drugs changed him mentally.
I don't know who that was sometimes.
Drugs took him out of him. Unique was lost.
I don't know what I'm drinkin.
Raekwon: You ever heard that record "Sideshow"?
It's about a clown that makes everybody happy.
Every time I look at Dirty, I think about that record.
My man going through so much,
but to the world, he's that clown face.
When he's by himself, he's going through it.
♪♪
The label pivoted away because he became almost a liability.
♪
Bain: He was cast aside
by the same folks who embraced him
when he put his soul on the line through his music.
We know this country has had a love affair
with Black pain and suffering since its beginning.
Folks would gather around lynchings after church
to watch Black bodies hung from trees.
ODB was a part of that spectacle
of Black pain, of Black suffering.
Jacobson: They wanted to report on him
because it was kind of like a car crash.
You couldn't look away.
I'm just hearing these stories,
and the stories are coming fast and furious.
He broke into somebody's apartment at 3:00 a.m.,
got shot.
Fernando Jr.: Dirty missed his court dates,
and he was put in rehab.
All of a sudden, it was in the news
that Dirty was on the run, that he had escaped from rehab.
Man: Let's make some noise...
[ Crowd cheering ]
Fernando Jr.: The Wu was giving a big concert.
♪
In the middle of the show,
RZA, like, quiets everything down.
He's like, "Yo, we got a special guest."
The first time in three years
we see the whole Wu-Tang Clan on stage tonight.
Raekwon: I could tell that he didn't want to be there.
He felt he had to because he didn't want to let us down.
[ Crowd cheers ]
Fernando Jr.: I think they caught him a couple days after that
at the McDonald's in Philly.
Apparently, one of the arresting officers was a fan of his,
so he knew it was ODB.
You know, what can you do when you're a superstar
and everyone knows that you're on the lam?
So they got him that time, unfortunately.
[ Cell door slams ]
♪
Bain: I think rehabilitation in prisons is a complete joke.
It's never truly been one of the goals.
I was charged with a felony and spent time in prison.
The feeling that I remember having
is, like, constantly watching my back
and fearing for my life.
You just have no idea where you're going,
what's gonna happen.
♪
The sense of violation is what I felt
when these cops had their hands on me,
taking me into the facility and just moving me around.
♪♪
A lack of bodily autonomy,
lack of my own free will to do what I want to do.
They tell you to strip, and they tell you take off your clothes,
and they go through this whole ritual.
In a room full of folks,
being told to take your clothes off,
"Bend over, open your... lift your..."
I mean, it's some...up...
The brutality, the inhumanity,
how degrading and dehumanizing it is.
That never leaves you. You know? That stays with you.
Icelene: He's off the street now.
But jail is not a place for him to be.
He just needed help from the drugs,
and they were just putting him in jail.
Taniqua: He was in Clinton.
That's where rapists, murderers was at.
Y'all got this person that's self-medicating
and put him up here.
Icelene: It was just hard being without your husband.
We had to make it back and forth to see him.
I was working two jobs.
It affected me and my children a lot,
especially my oldest daughter.
She just wanted her dad to be home.
Once, when we went up there, he was just quiet.
He didn't say nothing.
He got up, and he went in the bathroom,
and he started screaming.
Just started screaming.
Being in prison, anything could happen,
so I don't know what was going on with him.
Something was off.
♪ Energy building, taking all types of medicines ♪
♪ Your ass thought you were better than Ason? ♪
♪
True Master: He's complaining that they was injecting him
with...in jail.
Those drugs, you know, the so-called legal drugs,
...him up, too.
We see over and over again
this range of mental-health drugs
used to sedate and control folks who are in prisons.
It's not by accident. It's by design.
He used to say, "People want to kill me in here.
The government is gonna kill me.
The correctional officers are gonna kill me."
Prison really added on that paranoia.
He shut down more.
The government finally got to him.
I heard that it was schizophrenic.
He ended up in the psych ward.
He had lit his back on fire just to get out of prison.
I feel like, for you to go that far,
you have to have some type of mental disorder.
Icelene: It was hard knowing that he was in there like that.
He always knew that we were home
'cause the only real grounding he had
was what he made with me and those children.
He didn't want to come back into the industry.
He didn't want to be a rapper anymore.
He didn't want to come back to music.
I was surprised when he came back.
Fernando Jr.: Dirty did three years upstate
at the Clinton facility.
He basically had to set himself on fire
to get into solitary confinement.
Ross: He had one commodity -- himself.
So his only ways to make money were to try to make music.
I'm not even working for Roc-A-Fella on this day.
I just know that Ol' Dirty Bastard's coming home from jail.
I'm gonna get that footage.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
A white guy named Jarred was managing Ol' Dirty Bastard.
I don't know how,
but Jarred and Dame talked about signing Ol' Dirty Bastard.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Funkmaster Flex: Dame Dash and Roc-A-Fella
was the worst thing to ever happen to that guy.
Ol' Dirty was a trophy to them.
♪
I got to introduce myself?
I'm used to getting the introduction.
You know. I'm Damon Dash.
I always wanted to work with Wu-Tang.
When the opportunity presented itself, I capitalized.
Choke No Joke: Dame is trying to build
the roster for Roc-A-Fella.
All Dame thinking about is "publicity."
He signed M.O.P., N.O.R.E.
He trying to get Twista. He just signed Kanye.
Dash: I was just trying to speak
in every single language that anybody spoke.
It was, like, diversifying.
It was a different language and lingo.
With MC in the back, we're not allowed to talk about it.
I don't know why. You know what I'm saying?
Carey: Dame called me.
He's like, "I really need you to go with me to pick him up.
Like, this is an important moment, and let's do this."
And I'm like, "Yeah, you don't have to ask me more than once.
I got it. Let's go."
[ Indistinct conversations ]
Choke No Joke: He's surprised by Mariah Carey's presence,
surprised by Dame's presence.
He has no clue what's going on.
He don't even know that he's signing to Roc-A-Fella.
Jarred!
What -- Who --
Damon Dash. What's the deal with that?
You going to him now.
Man: He's in front of us.
I'm saying -- So --You're going to a restaurant right now.
You planning a surprise or something? [ Laughs ]
Woman: Yeah.
He was like a different person when we picked him up that day.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
I felt, like, this confusion/sadness
coming from him.
[ Indistinct conversations ]
You know I got to do it official, give him a chain.
He can't go home without that.
[ Cheers and applause ]
"I'm down with Roc-A-Fella. Yeah, I'm rolling with Damon."
They don't give a... about Ol' Dirty Bastard.
It was a business deal.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Next question.Man: Right here.
Dame personally signed Ol' Dirty Bastard
and gave him a million dollars out his own pocket.
A million dollars isn't a lot of money.
I think he deserved more.
You know, based on the records he sold,
we would make that back -- let's go.
I don't know whose idea it was to sign him.
You know, if you care about somebody,
you know you couldn't give this guy a million dollars.
Icelene: The million dollars is a mystery.
Me and my children never received a dime of that money.
My husband had no idea what happened to the funds.
I wish they would have used some of that money
to put him in rehab, to get him some help.
He was living with my mother-in-law,
like, basically sleeping on her couch.
And he was back in the same environment, doing drugs.
Ross: You know, Dirty was, I think, just trying to feed his family.
But from what I saw, the show "ODB on Parole" --
that felt exploitive to me.
Narrator: This is the story of Russell Jones,
a.k.a. Ol' Dirty Bastard.
'02, '03, '04, the game had changed.
The reality-TV shows,
people giving up more of their life.
Come on, Jarred. [ Laughs ]
Narrator: While he waited for his parole hearing,
he met Jarred Weisfeld,
a 23-year-old aspiring hip-hop manager.
Jarred has done everything. Everything.
Without Jarred, I don't know -- I don't know.
I am his co-manager -- with his mom, Cherry.
Icelene: Jarred didn't know who Unique was.
Jarred just knew who ODB was after coming out of jail.
He only knew him for a few months.
He ain't know him long at all.
Nobody had a conversation with Wu-Tang.
We didn't know what was going on.
So when he came out and he wanted to sign to Roc-A-Fella,
it was almost like...
"Hm. He feel a way."
♪
Ghostface: Dirt was the soul. I mean, he was the soul.
Out of the whole group, he was the soul.
And when he left, it was a big loss for us.
Big, big, big, big, big, big, big.
I wasn't even mad at him.
I felt like... us as a group let him down.
We wasn't there the way we was supposed to be there.
♪♪
How you live your life is how you live your life.
♪♪
Drugs was getting him at that time.
I know that face, know that little twitch.
I saw him a couple times, man. He didn't feel like him.
He had put on a lot of weight.
I never thought anything was gonna happen to him, though.
Choke No Joke: I went to the MTV Awards with him.
It was his first time seeing Method Man.
And I could tell, looking at Meth,
he saw that his brother wasn't the same brother.
It was like he was kissing a baby,
like his little brother.
It wasn't a grown man.
Yeah, he -- he was hurt. Yeah. I'm about to cry.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
Chang: The last time I saw Ason,
probably one of the... experiences of my life.
I was at the 36 Chambers Studio on 34th.
They were like, "Soph, Dirty's here."
I was like, "Word?"
Sat down. I just waited for him to come out.
He comes out of the bathroom,
and he kind of looks at me...
and then just keeps going.
♪♪
He was so high, he didn't...recognize me.
I left and I got in a cab and I called the studio.
And whoever picked up the phone, I said, "Dirty's high.
He's...high.
It's not okay. It's not okay."
And it was so upsetting.
♪♪
Raekwon: "Rock the Bells" was a big show for us.
We knew how important it was for all of us to be there.
-Turn the lights down! -Turn the lights off!
He wouldn't come out the room that day. He wouldn't come out the room.
I remember him up there on stage with us.
I think parts of him were just feeling like,
"Why the...am I up here?"
'Cause he realized the group that he helped become
one of the greatest groups in the world --
He didn't feel the love back.
[ Vocalizing ]
♪
Choke No Joke: None of us really knew him like that,
to tell him to do anything.
He definitely needed family.
He was in it because he loved it.
People that love it like that,
sometime they don't see that cleaver coming.
You know, everybody else in the family remembers
times they spent with their pops.
I only remember the nightmare, the last night I seen him.
That's the only real thing I remember.
Taniqua: I was at my father's sister's house,
and my cousin got a phone call
from her mom saying, "Come home."
I just had this intuition that something happened to my father.
Like, I don't know why, but I had this intuition.
I just started running.
Icelene: Unique was working on his last album,
and Bar-Sun was in the studio with Unique.
Right after he left the studio, Bar-Sun got a call, and it was
like, "We're trying to resuscitate him and everything."
He's like, "What is going on? He was just alive."
Taniqua: I was sprinting.
So, it was about a two-block run,
and it was really long blocks in Brooklyn.
And then I turned a corner, and I seen my brother outside
slumped over but crying, and I'm like,
"Bar-Sun, what happened? Bar-Sun, what happened?"
The only thing he could get out was, "Daddy."
Icelene: My son called me.
He said, "Daddy is not doing so good.
They're trying to keep him alive.
They're trying to resuscitate him."
And he's not doing so good. He might not make it."
♪♪
All I'm thinking is, he's gonna be alive
'cause he's so strong and he always get out of everything.
He's like a person that has nine lives.
It was dark. It was raining. It was just not a good night.
Taniqua: We get there, and I remember so much ambulance.
You could see cops, detectives outside.
Go into the studio, it was a whole crowd of people.
Like, all my family members.
And I see a white sock on the floor.
So I already automatically knew that was my father.
Raekwon: I was driving from Staten Island,
and I remember getting the call.
That...broke my heart when I tell you.
I pulled over on the bridge.
Tears was just running down my face.
Like, I couldn't believe it, man.
I ran up to the studio.
Seen him laid out on the floor.
♪
Ghostface: I'm in shock. Like, yo, it's my brother.
You know what I mean?
I walk over to him, look at him.
♪♪
I was there till they took him out the building.
Icelene: He was laid there, and most of the Clan members
were around, a lot of family.
They were trying to stop people from actually going to his body.
I'm trying to jump over the police, go under the legs.
I'm trying to crawl, and they're pulling me back.
They let us through, but they held Bar-Sun
'cause Bar-Sun was going crazy.
[Voice breaking] He was --
That's emotional 'cause...
he was trying his hardest to get to his father.
But he was just, like, really just acting out real crazy
like he wanted to fight everybody.
He was going crazy.
You know, I didn't know why I was mad.
A child is really not gonna know why they're mad.
They just know and feel that there's something wrong.
This is just...up.
You know, to see his father laying there like this
and knowing that it could have probably been prevented.
You know, I guess I was ready to fight everybody
because he was only one laying on the floor
and nobody was there to pick him up.
I laid down with him, and I just rubbed his head.
Teardrops falling off me, falling onto his cold body.
And then my mom was on the other side of him laying down,
screaming, saying, "Unique, Unique, wake up."
I just figured if I could yell
he could hear me and he'll wake up.
We was hitting on him and trying to pull him up and everything.
He just wouldn't get up.
And they kept saying, "Miss Jones, you know...
Excuse me. You can't -- You know, he's not coming back."
And I'm like, "No, he's gonna come back. He's gonna wake up.
And we just didn't want to leave the floor.
We kept trying to get him up.
Taniqua: I just looked up, and I looked at everybody,
and I just remember nobody crying.
Just us. Just us crying.
I just -- I was just mad 'cause everybody just sitting here.
I didn't understand why nobody else was crying.
♪♪
After it really sunk in, that he wasn't getting up,
we -- we got up.
And me and Taniqua, we was, like, yelling at everybody,
like, "...all you...
Everybody who sat and got high with him,
who...took money out his pocket, who allowed him
to stay away from his family while y'all got high.
He didn't want to come home
'cause he knew y'all would...get high with him.
...all y'all... ...all y'all.
I don't want nobody coming around me and my children.
...y'all. I ain't got no time for this...
'Cause that's all y'all want, is just to see him...high.
And now look where he at.
Now he can't give none of y'all...'cause he gone now."
♪
Right now I just feel I've been robbed. Know what I'm saying?
Hoodwinked. Bamboozled.
They stole something that I love so much.
Seem like everything I loved always been --
always be tooken away from me.
Carey: My friend and myself went to the funeral together.
[ Breathes deeply ]
It was deep. It was very --
It was difficult.
Raekwon: It was surreal to see him laying in a casket.
You know, you had brothers in there drunk, too.
You know what I mean? You know, that's how they was coming.
You know what I mean? Pouring...on the floor.
Pouring liquor on the floor.
It's like, "Yo. Come on, bro. Chill. Like, please, man.
Like, stop. Not right now."
♪
You know, he was the only artist that ever died on my watch,
so that was the first time I ever had to deal with that.
I'd squeeze him. I'd hug him.
I'd...kiss him all over his...face.
I'd probably sit there and cry and wouldn't let him go.
I might fall asleep next to you. You know what I mean?
Like, yo, that's what it is when you love somebody like that.
You love somebody like -- My love was like that for him.
It was strong.
[ Applause ]
♪
Icelene: I'm pushing real hard to keep the legacy going.
That's all I think about every day.
♪
Taniqua: He's immortal. That's how I feel.
I feel like my father's immortal.
And he's never gonna die.
His soul, his spirit, his essence, his aura.
It flows around everybody.
Chang: He was outrageously talented.
He behaved in an outrageous fashion,
sometimes to his detriment.
But he also, as an artist,
just embodied who he was so fully.
And I don't think you can say that of a lot of artists.
♪
Ross: You know, Dirty is misinterpreted.
♪♪
A segment of culture want to remember him
as the guy who jumped on stage at the Grammys
or all the crazy...he did
as opposed to the great art he created.
It does him and his legacy a disservice.
You know, a lot of people gravitate
towards the lower story,
and it bothers me.
Sometimes when you push out too much frequency,
people don't like that.
[ Indistinct shouting ]
And that's...up because energy is a blessing.
Aisha: His family gave him a lot of his strength.
He spent a lot of time with his family.
His work, his children, his widow.
His rightful place in Wu-Tang.
I think that's his legacy.
ODB: Yo, peace, man. Ol' Dirty Bas out, man. I'm out.