REMEMBERING ODB
In a recent article I did about Flavor Flav, I referred to Flav as being one of the first cats in hip hop whose personality was just “out there”. I also made a reference to ODB; if only I had known that his time with us was going to be so short, I would’ve reached out for the brother.
What did ODB bring to hip hop? Well, he truly bought the kind of humor I grew up hearing in parks and on street corners in New York, DC and Oakland. Nobody, and I emphasize NOBODY kept it gullier than ODB. Like the time he showed up to the Welfare office with MTV’s camera crew in tow, as well as with his wife and kids, in a limousine, that was the funniest @#%$ ever. To top it off - he had his welfare card on his album cover. Yes, he did. The welfare people went after him for that too.
I will forever cherish the VH1 episode: “ODB on Parole” because it captured a man, not a rapper, not a thug, not an artist, but a man in transition. A man who truly had to come to grips with the consequences of his life. And it is a hard thing to do. He was brutally honest when he said, “I don’t know how to deal with life without drugs.”
Or in an argument with – one of his many - babies mothers, he slammed the phone down yelling, “***** you gonna get your money, and then you gonna leave me the @#%$ alone, and I want blood tests for them kids!” I don’t know of too many people - especially rap artists-- who are willing to bare themselves like that in public. But Russell Jones did it. And he stood up like a man.
I can’t remember which magazine, but while ODB was incarcerated in Clinton, a writer went there and interviewed him. He found ODB to be basically, out of his element and on the edge. This is in stark contrast to the perception the public had of ODB. You would think a wild guy like him would be just fine in a place like Clinton, after all, he was the personification of the ghetto. But he wasn’t half the thug that he was perceived to be.
Remember the photo of him in his drawers, with no shirt revealing bullet wounds and Lord knows what else? And the Dracula style gold-fronts? Nobody could pull that off like he did.
What about the shows he stole. Literally. He was infamous for rushing the stage, whether it was because he didn’t like the group performing, was drunk, or a combination of the two.
I’ll never forget the time my mother called me up while she was watching the American Music Awards to ask me who Old Dirty ******* was, because he had just rushed the stage to accept an award that he wasn’t even nominated for. He said he had paid a whole lot of money for the outfit and was gonna be ****ed if he didn’t get to show it off. Now that’s keeping it real.
Or what about the time on MTV, when it was Praz, Mya and ODB, and ODB took one of his gold fronts out revealing an empty space in his grill. Or when Praz and Mya were talking about what they were going to do for the community – charity wise, and someone called in and said,“ODB, I’ve heard Praz and Mya talk about what they were gonna do for the kids and the community, but what are you gonna do?” To which ODB responded: “Who me?” “Yeah you!” With timing only a seasoned comic would have, ODB responded:…“Nuttin!”
The first time I heard ODB was on a tape of the Bobbito and Stretch Armstrong show, some guy – who sounded drunk – called in to the show and was ranting, “Peace God, peace God, this is the God Unique! Yeah, who was the crab rapper? Yo God, let me serve him God!” My initial reaction to him rhyming was at first: incredulity. He slurred his words and some words were just… incomprehensible. But, his spirit, that’s what got him over for me. He was funny! Later the God Unique emerged as the Old Dirty ******* with a crew from Staten Island called the Wu Tang Clan.
What will ODB’s legacy be? I don’t know. The late Tupac Shakur is being remembered as a voice of a generation, a thug poet whose “Thug Life” moniker and audacious acts may have led to his untimely death. The late pioneer MC, Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five is remembered with reverence by many of his peers, but died broke and unknown to the masses of rap fans world wide. The late Eric “Eazy E” Wright, a founding father of gangsta rap is revered by rap fans over 25, he helped to usher in a style of rap that touched the hearts of kids in and outside of the inner-cities of America. Though, there was nothing socially redeeming about his music, his death due to AIDS related pneumonia, inspired many a brother to use condoms.
I think ODB’s legacy for us will be that he represented that time in hip hop when it was coming out of its adolescence and into adulthood and was looking for direction, and that direction led some of us down that dark path on the insatiable quest to keep it real. Along that path some of us took wrong turns, we found out what keeping it real really meant. It meant trips to Narcotics Anonymous, bullet wounds, and incarceration and for some: Death. But if you were lucky enough to survive all of that you might, you just might make it to grow old.
May Russell Jones find eternal rest and Long Live Hip Hop.
The All Mighty Mark Skillz
markskillz@aol.com
