Ode to Old Dirty

We are of the same age. We grew up during the time hip-hop was evolving. Many of us of this era mirrored the legacy of hip-hop. The beginnings of hip hop were humble. The performers of hip-hop did it for the love of creative expression. They were expressing the art they felt in their hearts. The pain and reality of growing up in the ghettos. The pain and reality of growing up poor. They expressed these feelings creatively through hip hop. The story of the children of hip hop was told by many an orator. Old Dirty Bastard of Wu Tang, the perinneal group of hip hop, comprised of 9 members, was the statesman of hip hop. His aura made him a stand out not only in Wu Tang, but also in hip hop in general. "Got your money" is a classic. His famous cameos like the one with Mariah Carey, "Me and Mariah go back like babies and pacifiers," is brilliant. ODB was brilliant in his art and his life is/was conflicted provided vast material. 13 children with many women, shootings, public assistance, but always able to express these dramas in rap.

Hip hop in its finest hour is an art of conflict. Started from bohemian roots, beat-boxing with a clap of the hands to a mouth and beating out rhythms from an overturned paint can with a stick on the streets of the ghetto in front of neighborhood folk to bling blinging with million of diamonds draped on a wrist with beat machines costing thousands of dollars, lip synching on a stage with an audience of persons of a different hue in a country were english is not its primary language.

The death of Old Dirty Bastard brings home that someone of my age group, so young, has dropped dead. He lived life hard. He went through much tribulation during his adult years, and one would suspect did so because of his hard childhood. The sometimes bad choices he made during his adulthood were much fodder for the US Press, but many of us of the hip hop community understood what and why he did some of these things he did because he was a product of his environment trying to live lfe and making mistakes along the way. His life mirrored a lot of those of the community he was born of, and he rapped about this life, and we listened. ODB was a revered member of the community, faults and all.

Old Dirty Bastard will be missed. RIP Russell Jones.