Finally. After 4 1/2 years in the making, NASA has begun countdown to liftoff. NASA is an international collective of musicians spanning the genre spectrum. At the apex, Squeak E. Clean and Dj Zegon. We met in April of 2003 at a friends studio, and began to make music together the next day. We spent all of our time sampling rare Brazilian records from the 60’s and 70’s to make tracks, and soon we began to develop the concept for NASA. We appreciated how we had become such good friends through our passion for music, and decided to make a record with all of our heroes and favorite musicians with this as a model. People from different worlds coming together through shared inspiration and love of music. That’s why all the crazy collaborations like Ol’ Dirty Bastard with Karen O, and Fatlip, David Byrne with Chali 2na and Gift of Gab, or Tom Waits and Kool Keith. Continue Reading “NASA Movie Trailer”
Category: Ol’ Dirty Bastard
Black Knights @ Club 740 (ODB Tribute Nov 23rd 07)
THE BLACK KNIGHTS ROCK THE STAGE REPN FOR THE WEST COAST WITH BROOKLYN ZU ..REST IN PEACE RUSSEL JONES..
Sunday Randomness: Wu-Tang Clan Live in 93
Classic Wu-Tang material, Ol’ Dirty talkin’ mad shit and a sick performance of “Protect Ya Neck”, circa 92-93. Part 1 of 2
More classic Wu-Tang material, raw performance of “Shame on a N****” from the 36 Chambers. Circa 92-93. Part 2 of 2
VDB Rewinds: Wu-Tang Plot The Future
By Matt Diehl
Rolling Stone 9/18/2003
Hip-hop heroes focus on solo work
IS WU-TANG CLAN OVER? “IT’s SON ice, really,” says Wu leader RZA. Despite breakup rumors, Wu may eventually come back someday. “When it’s time to rock, I think everybody’s down,” RZA says. In the meantime, bonds among the Staten Island, New York, rap crew are strong: Most of the Clan MCs are helping out with one another’s solo discs because, as Method Man puts it, they’re “Wu for life.”
What’s going on with Wu-Tang Cland
1. Masta Killa
He’s the only Wu-Tanger to never release a solo album-butthat’s aboutto change. Masta Killa will soon drop No Said Date, which RZA calls “a crazy classiccompletely raw. He’s the motherfucker right now.”
2. Raekwon
A new Raekwon effort — The Lex Diamond Story-is expected to come out later this year.
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: Wu-Tang Plot The Future”
VDB Rewinds: Dirty Seed
I DIDN’T KILL MY WIFE! (BUT I AM ON THE RUN)
by Josh Tyrangiel
Time 12/04/2000
When we last heard from OL’ DIRTY BASTARD, he had ducked out of a drug-treatment facility moments before a scheduled trip to the Los Angeles Criminal Courthouse. Now this modern-day Dr. Richard Kimble is making his way across the country, ducking Johnny Law and helping old friends. Last Tuesday, Dirty, a.k.a. Russell Jones, assisted his Wu-Tang Clan mates during a concert at New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom. Much to the surprise of the audience and some of the group’s nine members, Dirty, clutching a champagne bottle, performed two songs before addressing his faithful: “Y’all know they had the ODB locked down, right? Well, I’m here to tell you that they can’t keep me down. Now I’m free, and I’m out there like a bird flying around, so y’all better leave some birdseed on your windowsills, because I may be flying by your house.” With that, he dropped his microphone and took wing.
VDB Rewinds: Put Out An APB On O.D.B.
By Josh Tyrangiel
Time 11/06/2000
OL’ DIRTY BASTARD released himself on his own recognizance last week. Unfortunately, the law did not. Dirty, ne Russell Jones, fled Impact House, a Pasadena, Calif., drug-treatment facility that had been his court-ordered residence since June, just before a scheduled trip to the Los Angeles Criminal Courthouse to discuss his progress and treatment with a judge. After the Wu-Tang Clan rapper failed to show, a no-bail bench warrant was issued for his arrest. Jones’ police file is the stuff of legend, even by rap-star standards. What makes this latest escapade particularly sad is that Jones, according to a friend, appeared to be getting clean and had been hoping to do publicity for the release of the Wu-Tang Clan’s new album in November. But if Jones is seeking safe harbor, he shouldn’t look homeward. Two charges are pending against him in the State of New York too.
VDB Rewinds: Dirty Stories
By Matt Diehl
Rolling Stone; 11/11/99 Issue 825
The lowdown on the making of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s masterpiece
BEING THE WU-TANG CLAN’S RESIDENT wildman isn’t an easy job, but Ol’ Dirty Bastard fulfills the role with gusto and then some: Thanks to his tabloid shenanigans, the controversial MC has racked up more arrest records than musical ones. In the past two years alone, he’s been arrested for shoplifting, for making terrorist threats at L.A.’s House of Blues, for wearing illegal body armor and for possessing crack cocaine. With true ODB bad luck, just a month before the release of N***a Please, his second solo album, he was sent to rehab for a lengthy stint. Still, he left behind one of the strangest, funniest, funkiest, most compelling albums of 1999. Below, the behind-the-scenes story of the making of ODB’s masterpiece.
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: Dirty Stories”
VDB Rewinds: Wu World Order
By Matt Diehl
Rolling Stone 10/15/98
“Rap is like the polio vaccine: Once they knew it worked, everyone wanted it.”-Grandmaster Flash
WU-TANG CLAN LEADER RZA MAPS OUT HIS BATTLE PLANS FOR THE MILLENNIUM, INCUDING ALBUMS FROM METHOD MAN, CAPPADONNA AND GHOSTFACE KILLAH
MASTER P PETER WATCN HIS BACK: WHEN IT COME TO RELeasing multiple multiple albums, da last don has fierce competition from rap’s illest conglomerate, Wu-Tang Clan. Already this year, the Wu posse has released five albums, three in the past two months: Dirty Weaponry, Killarmy’s second release; The Last Shall Be First, the debut from the Wu offshoot Sunz of Man; and RZA Presents Wu-Tang Killa Bees: The Swarm, a compilation featuring new tracks from Wu-Tang veterans as well as fresh recruits like Remedy, the first white Wu-affiliated rapper, and the all-female crew Deadly Venoms. And don’t expect the flow to slow down: The next eighteen months could find more than twenty-four Wu-related projects hitting the street, including new albums from Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Inspectah Deck and Bobby Digital, the alter ego of Clan mastermind RZA. “Bobby’s a motherfucker that’s down for the bullshit,” RZA explains. “I think people are going to love him, because people love bullshit.” Here, RZA gives the 411 on the Wu world order.
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: Wu World Order”
VDB Rewinds: Charges Dropped Against Ol’ Dirty Bastard
by Matt Hendrickson
Rolling Stone; 03/18/99
Wu-Tang rapper plans to sue the New York police
Wu-Tang clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard is off the hook — for now. A Brooklyn grand jury declined to indict the thirty-year-old rapper (born Russell Jones) on charges of first-and second-degree attempted murder after he and his cousin Frederick Cuffie were involved in a wild police shootout on January 15th. Police fired on ODB’s 1999 Chevrolet Tahoe, later claiming that the rapper had fired first But forensic tests revealed no evidence that ODB had shot a gun, a point that he has maintained since his arrest. “The police was lying; I don’t own no gun,” said the agitated rapper, sitting alongside his attorney at a press conference held after the charges were dismissed. “I’m not a soft-ass nigger, but I know how to stay out of trouble.”
ODB has vowed to sue the New York Police Department for an unspecified amount. “Cops took shots at me; now I’m taking shots back,” he said. “If I don’t sue, I’m gonna look like an ass.”
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: Charges Dropped Against Ol’ Dirty Bastard”
VDB Rewinds: Burglars In The House
Matt Hendrickson
Rolling Stone 08/20/98
OL’ DIRTY BASTARD, FOXY BROWN GET ROBBED IN BROOKLYN
IT’S BEEN A ROUGH SUMMER for rappers in Brooklyn as Foxy Brown and the Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard were victims of separate – and, the police say, unrelated – burglaries. While Brown was not injured, ODB was shot once in the back.
On the morning of July 8th, Brown’s mother answered the door of their brownstone in Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights. According to police, two men then pushed their way into the apartment and forced Brown’s mother into the bathroom while the rapper, her brother and a friend slept upstairs. Brown’s mother escaped and called police. By the time authorities arrived, the two intruders had fled without stealing anything, and, as of press time, they had not been apprehended.
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: Burglars In The House”
VDB Rewinds: Citizen Of The Week
By Joel Stein
Time 03/09/98
When OL’ DIRTY BASTARD, a member of the Wu-Tang Clan, left his Brooklyn studio on Monday, he was met with the sight of a 4-year-old girl trapped under a 1996 Mustang that had run her over. O.D.B. and several members of his posse rushed to the rescue and helped lift the car off her body; he later visited her while she was recovering in the hospital. Then, at Wednesday’s otherwise boring Grammy awards, O.D.B., who had lost an award to Sean (“Puffy”) Combs, tried to add some excitement by rushing to the stage, grabbing the mike and proclaiming, “Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best!” To top off his week, the next morning a chastened O.D.B. soulfully apologized.
VDB Rewinds: Review Return To The 36 Chambers
By Toure
Rolling Stone 4/20/95
* * * THE VOICE OF LANGSTON HUGHES Langston Hughes Smithsonian/Folkways * * * * RETURN TO THE 36 CHAMBERS: THE DIRTY VERSION Ol’ Dirty Bastard Elektra
In 1967, the year Langston Hughes died and the year before Ol” Dirty Bastard was born, Senegalese intellectual Leopold Sedar Senghor wrote, “The organizing principle which makes the black style is rhythm.” Though characterized by an obsession with rhythm, the evolution of black style is generally marked by some level of thematic or sonic dissonance meant to distinguish new developments from past styles and present imitators. This dissonance is often simply the sonic interpretation of the chaos of day-to-day African-American lives. New York is often the center of such tumult and, not surprisingly, the birthplace of black styles, from the Harlem Renaissance to or Dirty Bastards “Brooklyn Zoo”
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: Review Return To The 36 Chambers”
VDB Rewinds: To Elektra, He’s Not Just Another Ol’ Dirty Bastard
By Havelock Nelson
Billboard 02/25/95
BROOKLYN BASTARD: As it nurtures and develops Ol’ Dirty Bastard “from the ground up,” Elektra Entertainment is hoping crossover and urban radio will eventually respond to its grass-roots efforts.
The company’s marketing strategy involves taking the rugged rapper’s solo debut album, “Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version,” from the hip-hop world to the world at large. The plan for the set, which ships March 28, revolves around the artist’s association with Wu-Tang Clan.
Born Russell Jones, Ol’ Dirty Bastard is a loose part of that gold-selling Loud/RCA collective. His moniker came courtesy of his cousin (and Wu-Tang ringleader) the RZA, and functions as a convenient description of his distinctive raw and soulful vocal style.
Jones breaks his hip-hop handle down: “I’m dirty because when I step to a mike I come uncut; I speak my mind from the heart. The ol’ comes from the fact that I was influenced by the old school–everybody from Al Green and Millie Jackson to the Sugarhill Gang. And the bastard part is there because there is no father to my style.”
Continue Reading “VDB Rewinds: To Elektra, He’s Not Just Another Ol’ Dirty Bastard”
Rest In Peace to Ol’Dirty Bastard
He would have turned 39 years of age today. One of the Greatest.