Ol' Dirty Bastard

There's genuinely no one in hip-hop history who sounded like ODB — Russell Jones was chaos theory in human form, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment. As a founding member of Wu-Tang Clan he brought this raw, slurring, off-kilter energy that made tracks like Shimmy Shimmy Ya feel like they came from another dimension entirely. His debut solo album Return to the 36 Chambers is one of those records where you can't tell if the guy is a genius or completely unhinged, and the answer is obviously both. He crashed the Grammy stage in 1998 to announce he was broke, went on the run from authorities, got his name legally changed to Big Baby Jesus — the man was unpredictable in a way that felt genuinely alive. Gone at 35, two days before his birthday, and hip-hop has never quite filled that weird, irreplaceable gap.

Name (English)

Ol' Dirty Bastard

Name (Japanese)

オール・ダーティー・バスタード

Reading

おーる・だーてぃー・ばすたーど

Born

November 15, 1968 – November 13, 2004

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Monkey

Origin

Fort Greene, New York, United States

Occupation

rapper / songwriter / musician

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ol'%20Dirty%20Bastard
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%80%E3%83%BC%E3%83%86%E3%82%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%82%B9%E3%82%BF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q336924

Tags

• New York
• rapper
• songwriter
• musician

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.