Ol' Dirty Bastard

Ol' Dirty Bastard, a.k.a. Russell Jones, was the most distinctive personality on the first few Wu-Tang Clan records, but then again, he'd also be the most distinctive personality in a Fellini movie: pure id run wild, an MC with a mangled voice that constantly erupts into rage and grotesquerie. Blessed with delirium tremens–style production by fellow Wu-Tang soldier RZA, ODB's solo debut, Return to the 36 Chambers, is a miracle of messed-up-ness, like someone feigning drunkenness while walking a tightrope. "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" is the hit (dig the backward verse), but the extended gurgle that opens "Goin' Down" is the peak of insanity.

During the next four years, ODB made more headlines than music -- getting arrested repeatedly, announcing he was changing his name to Big Baby Jesus, and so on. On N***a Please, he no longer sounds like he's pretending to be out of control -- he sounds like he's being eaten alive by his own shtick. Aside from the Neptunes' lithe (and Kelis-augmented) track for "Got Your Money," the production is a major comedown from Return. And ODB's cover of "Good Morning Heartache" belongs to precisely the same creepy category as Sid Vicious' "My Way."

The Dirty Story is a feeble and badly sequenced piece of catalogue exploitation: five tracks apiece from the first two albums, plus the infamous remix of Mariah Carey's "Fantasy," on which ODB groans, "Me an' Mariaaaah go back like a baby and a pacifiaaaah." It's still better than the disastrous Trials and Tribulations -- ODB was already imprisoned when record execs decided to milk another album out of his name, and the result is a cold, sticky mash of snippets of his voice, recycled verses from other records, cheap-ass synth production, and gratuitous "guest verses" to mark time. (DOUGLAS WOLK)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide