Novel.

It's May 23rd, 1995. In the neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen at Clinton Studios, a lecture is recording a live compilation, mixtape, Hillstyle-Live, with Dirty set to perform. Dirty's solo album, returned to The 36 Chambers, the dirty version, has been out for about two months now, and it's a hit, selling 81,000 copies in its first week. Arriving at number seven on the billboard 200 chart, the album gets rave reviews from critics. Hours late and with no sign of him, everybody's wondering when he's going to show. In the crowd, ODB's ANR, Dante Ross, is struggling.

It's a blurry evening. I'm going to say I was at least two sheets in the wind trying to keep shit together.

After a number of acts have performed, ODB finally emerges onto the stage. He's rocking a fishing hat with some shades and carrying a bottle of juice or something. From the minute he walks on, it's pretty clear that Dirty isn't feeling too festive.

I ain't even want to come to this motherfucker.

Odb's right-hand and hype man, Buddermunk, direct legendary producer, Pete Rock, to queue the for Shook One's for their first song, but Jody stops to show in its tracks.

Fucking record companies beat dudes and niggas. It's fucking puppets, man. It was a.

Hectic night and Dirty gave no shits. He did not give a fuck. He just did what he did.

This should have been a victory lap for ODB. But at this moment, he wasn't thinking about any of that. His peace was disturbed, and he had something to get off his chest. I mean.

Mothafuckas was laughing. She was funny. I think that's the show when he just starts talking to Pete Rock. People wasn't going to boo. People was just bugged out.

As Dirty is going in, people in the crowd are laughing and chanting his name before it gets awkward and quiet. Dirty was up there dissing his own label at a show that they booked him the headline.

Niggas is so used to getting used as a motherfucking puppet.

It's like, Niggas, be ready to get publicarized. I can't.

Speak on what Electra did or didn't do to publicarize them, but I've seen firsthand how a lot of these companies try to profit off of the experiences of black people. And I respect Dirty for saying that shit out loud in front of everyone. If you were a major label artist like Dirty was at that time, executives often tried to fit you into a neat package and soften those edges that make you who you are. But Dirty's superpower was his freedom. Odb made an album on his own terms. But when he got out into the world, that's when his desire for total freedom started to put him in harm's way. For 5 Percenters, being God is about understanding the power you have over your reality and what's in front of you. There was a lot that was in O-D-B's control in his creative process, but there were a lot of people that wanted to control him too, and that was never going to end well.

What you get is what you get. What you see is what you see.

From USG Audio, Novel and Talkhouse, I'm Colleague-La and this is ODB, A-Sun-Unique. Episode four, Got to be free. I could relate to Old Dirty bastard because I myself, dealt with frustrations with institutions and agencies. In June of 2020, I was invited to join the prestigious photography agency, Magda photos, but it wasn't genuine. After George Floyd was murdered, a lot of these agencies were scrambling to look inclusive and diverse. Magda photos has been around for 76 years, and I was the third black person in the agency. That's why they hired me. But they didn't really give a fuck about my work and nothing like that. I'm a filmmaker and I'm a photographer. I take my work very seriously. It's like they hired a very deep artist for their own shallow purpose. I never felt welcomed. As black people, the worst feeling that we've all experienced, whether it be in a restaurant or a hotel, is the feeling of being unwelcomed. It's hurtful. That's the way that I felt within Magnum Photos. I was a token, basically. Once that wore off after a year or two, then the whole energy changed. They told me, Yo, you're lucky to still be here with us.

And I was like, Lucky? I was like, Yo, you're lucky to have me. I turned the tables on them. And that didn't work out well. So Magnum Photos pretty much just used me and some other black folk in 2020 and then let us all go. I was upset about it and I spoke out to them about that. I'm just not with them anymore. Dirty, his situation with Electra was similar because it's like an animal in the zoo. They want to tame you to a degree. They still want you to be that lion. They want you to be that guerilla, but they need you to be tame to an extent. I never had the attention the ODB had on them, but I know the stress of people and corporations trying to get something out of you. It can wear it, you're mental, and sometimes you got to speak your truth. That night back in '95 at the Illstyle live show, Dirty wasn't just talking shit to his label. He's facing the world and daring it to blink, and he's also trying to protect himself. I said, I.

Can't fuck with that.

Odb was pushing back against what he saw as an intrusion of his creative freedom. He didn't name names, but some of the people that Dirty was calling out were even there in the room.

I think part of that was at me. I wanted him to do a second verse on a shimmy shimmy. I never got it. I got the backwards verse. I would say that some of that was me and I think some of that was, I think, largely Sylvia. She definitely wanted to tell him about himself. He didn't want... He didn't want to be in that shit.

Sylvia Rome was the CEO at Electra during the time that Dirty was there. She was and still is the only black woman to ever run a major record label in the industry. But at that time, Rowen's taste was more for the glossy side of hip hop than the grid of ODB's world. But Dirty was never trying to put himself into a neat package. In fact, he pushed against the rap star mold that was so fashionable in that time.

The brilliance of Dirty, whether it's going the opposite direction of all the puff stuff, that's black aspirational culture. And he's like, I'm a celebration of dysfunction and poverty. And there's nothing wrong with who I am. I love myself and I love everything I come from.

Before Dirty was wildling on Electra, a wave of new MCs and artists had broken onto the scene throughout the early 90s. In '93, Wutang dropped their first album alongside a tribe called Quest, Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Outkast, and more, ushering in a new era of rap. But hip hop was also recovering from rap radio blackouts after controversies around N. W. A. And public enemy had rattled label execs. The the labels wanted to make music for the charts. As a commercial act, Dirty was a captivating personality, but he was also seen as dangerous. His raw and eccentric persona was always going to be a source of tension with the corporation trying to sell him to America. Nothing showed this better than ODB's controversial plan to market his first album. In '94, back before the album was finished, Dirty pulled up on Dante Ross with an idea.

He came to my office and he said, I got thoughts. I got thoughts. He pulled out a welfare card. He's like, Yo, man, I want this to be my album cover. I was like, Yo, that's a crazy idea. I was cognizant of UB 40.

Ub 40 was a British reggae band whose band name and debut album, Signing Off, referenced the yellow unemployment benefit attendance card.

The album covers an English version of the welfare card, and that record was on a major label. I said, if they did it, why can't we?

Dante took Dirty up a few floors of the offices to meet Ali Truch, an art director who had overseen creative for hip hop acts like Blacksheet, Buster Rimes, and Brand Newbie.

Dante had brought him down to the art department, and the art department at this time was quite small. We had a meeting, and Dirt basically talked about his idea, and my head started to spin and the ideas started churning.

She was like, Give me a couple of hours. Me and Dirty went to TGIF and we got hammered straight up.

My job was to take that concept and push it further, resolve some of the ideas and how to make them come to life.

We came back, we're fucking hammered. She came down and showed it to us.

And.

It was tremendous. Allie, the thing she did was the welfare Insignia. She was like, You know, we can make that into the W-10. She put the little Ws in there, which was genius. We had to lean's welfare card, not Dirty's, and we mocked up her card, but we had a photo of Dirty somehow. This was before there were scanners and shit, right? Everyone in the world didn't have Photoshop on her laptop. We used a Color Xerox to blow it up. She made a mock-up for us, and it was tremendous. It was pixelated because it's on a Color Xerox, and it was expensive to use back then. It was like you couldn't just use it. But she hooked it up for us, and we were like, Yeah, it's incredible. I pinned it up on my board. I was like, This is going to be the album cover.

Odb was making a powerful statement with his artwork. This was a time before everybody was fronting and flashing jewelry and the cars, Dirty, he wasn't about that. He was just showing the reality of his life. He wasn't afraid to talk about it, you know what I'm saying? He was posing ideas of class and poverty in America to anyone who picked up the album. But ultimately, he would need to sign off from the senior figure at the lecture to get that image onto shelves. Luckily, Dante was in his corner, and he could be persuasive.

David Byther ran with it. We all thought it was cool, so we did it. That's how it came to be, but it was all Dirty's idea.

With the album's cover art figured out, Ali was busy handling the creative direction for the rest of the album's visuals.

Dirty, he was very descriptive and very clear what he wanted. And for whatever reason, he just trusted me for creativity, especially album packaging. You just start talking, get the ideas rolling, make a connection, and then after that, it was my job to put all the pieces together, set up the photoshoot, hire the photographer, make sure that he had everything that he wanted.

Dirty was getting comfortable with Ali, and he brought her into the fold as a valued member of his team.

He invited me to go listen to music like I was genuinely wanted. It wasn't like, Oh, some record exec is going to be at the studio today and everybody be on their best behavior. He was always himself. I remember one time he asked me for my phone number, and I was like, Okay, well, of course, he's got to live up to his name. It wasn't uncommon to get hit on in the music business as a woman on any given day. I remember being like, Oh, sure. And I gave him my business card because the last thing I needed was him calling me at home like, No, we're not going on a date. But I thought it was sweet, and I thought he was adorable. And that might sound crazy, but I just had a fondest for him. He was always himself. Who else is he going to be?

The team arranged a photoshoot to capture Dirty's World as he saw it, but they had no idea how it was going to go down until ODB was on the set.

I asked him if he wanted a stylist because I had a ton of respect for Wutang. I didn't know if he would need a stylist or want a stylist because he was from Wutang. So he's like, Allie, I don't want a stylist. And I'm like, Okay, fine. And in my mind, I'm like, God only knows what he's going to show up in for the shoot or what he's going to spend the money on. And sure enough, day of the shoot shows up. He has on these baggy jeans guest T-shirt, but I don't even know if it was authentic guests. It might have been a knockoff.

I think the shoot started at 10:00, and unbelievably, Dirty was fucking on time. I was late. He made fun of me for being like an hour late. And he's like, Oh, who's late now?

Shooting musicians or famous people can get tricky. I photograph celebrities for different creative projects. Sometimes you don't know where it's going to go or how you're going to fit within their particular vision. Dante hired this friend, Danny Clinch, to photograph him. Danny had worked with a lot of hip hop greats, and Dante thought that he'd be a good fit for ODB's wild creativity. He had.

Shot a lot of shit for me. He shot Brand Newby for me, two Pete Rock records for me. Nothing's ever going to throw him for a loop.

Ali was still working with Dirty's guest shirt, but eventually she leaned into the vibe he was expressing.

He goes, Ali, I didn't buy clothes, but I got this. And he opened his mouth and he had the grill. And in my mind, I'm like, Oh, shit. And I said to him, Okay, we're going to shoot your mouth then. And that's when I had Danny do the super powerful macro mouth shot, which ended up becoming the cover for Brooklyn Zoo. And it was perfect.

They had an iconic album cover, and now they had the perfect image to go for the Brooklyn Zoo single. But the crew were still searching for images for the rest of the album packaging.

We didn't know what we were going to do. Danny was like, What do you guys think? Dirty was like, I want to shoot it in a fucked up apartment if I can. We had a location band, and we were going to shoot at my friend Nelson's place, Rick's Boy, and we went there. It didn't look fucked up enough. Then Dirty was like, Oh, I got it. He hit a payphone, called 60 Second Assassin. We went to 60 Second's house. We pulled up in Bedstead. There was a chop shop on the block, a crack spot on the corner. It was on the to the town heights border. It was on the Utica side, Kingston side, which is still fucked up, but it was really fucked up over there back then. The location van guy was not feeling us. He was beefing. And then Dirty was like, Yo, chill. And someone got us a couple of cats on the block and they were like, Yo, we got you. They were definitely strapped and they held the dude down in the van. And Dirty was like, Yo, you good? Relax. Dude was tight, though. We go up five flights of stairs to 60 Seconds House, and we went in there and dirty was like, Yo, shit don't look fucked up enough.

He started art directing. He took the two TVs, put them on top of each other, sent the assistant, who was terrified, and he made one of his people's go at her to get 40 ounces and blunts. He went and he cracked the blunts open and put the blunt guts everywhere and emptied the 40s and started drinking one and took a shirt off, and that was the shot. That's the infamous shot of him on the couch and standing by the shit, and we shot it all and got it all done by 3:30.

It was a collaboration, but what is always the best thing about any project, whether it's film, an album cover, is the thinking, the idea. And he had the concept, so he gets most of the credit, because if the concept's not there, nothing has legs.

Ali came away from the experience seeing the fullness of ODB as an artist.

I accepted who he was, the way he spoke, the way he looked, and I just let him be himself. And as long as he didn't disrespect me, which never happened. I mean, there were some fun, quirky moments. He is, after all, old, dirty bastard. But for the most part, it was just a really fun collaboration.

That's the beauty about Ali and Danny both. Sometimes you're around someone's aura, and it's so powerful, as crazy as they are, you know you got to just follow them over the hill. That was dirty that day. It was like he was in charge. We were all smart enough, entrusted his vision and liked him enough, I think, on a genuine level that we were all like, All right, let's do it. It was the greatest session I've probably ever seen, and it was really easy to do, and things are dirty weren't always easy. This is really easy. It was like magical. I remember Ali showing me the contact sheet, and we were laughing out loud.

When the group saw Danny's photos up close, they knew that they had made something special.

I knew that we had iconic imagery. I'm a student of rock and roll and rock and roll imagery, whether it's Sid Vicious with the shirt all bleeding. Just like when I first seen the Beastie Boys image of them in front of the world's fair shit. You know when you see something that is unique and potentially iconic.

The cover for Return to the 36 Chambers is one of the most powerful statements in ODB's artistry.

You show people he could do whatever the fuck you want. Be yourself. Don't conform to what the label wants you to do. Be you. You have Wutang, which is about to struggle and owning the struggle. Dirty did it with a comical lens, but it certainly is owning the struggle and celebrating the struggle. Dirty, when he was Lucid and before it won't haywire, he always had a vision for how he wanted to be presented, what he wanted to show everybody, how he wanted his shit art directed to look, to smell, the sound. That was a testament to his brilliance.

It says a lot about his fairnessness and pride in who he was and the circumstances he came from.

That was one of the major reasons that he put that food stamp card on the cover of his album.

Here's writer and producer Skiz Fernando on what the album cover really meant.

He wanted to make sure that people were not ashamed to be on public assistance, and that's how much he loved his people. He was like, Hey, I'm not ashamed to be on food stamps. It's like, if you need help, you need help.

When I look at those images, they reflect the music. It's a reaction to the shiny suit, R&B, dance, aspirational aspects of rap that were coming into play. You have this aspirational aspect of it, Diddy, the Bad Boy thing, which is more like the Sylvia Rowen School of it.

Sylvia Rowen was all about black music that could fly with listeners everywhere. But dirty's music was underground and gritty and Dante was all in.

People were so over trying to tell me shit about Dirty. They just knew I was paying that shit in no mind. My relationship had become so adversarial with Sylvia. She gave up on trying to tell me anything by that point. Because what are you going to tell me? I got a hit record. Sylvia... I have no respect to her. But what are you going to tell me about myself when I got a hit record that you hated on me most of the way?

Dirty's style of humor and spontaneously was creating imagery that would make him into an American icon. But away from his music career, Dirty was enjoying his life in fame to the fullest. He brought that same chaos and irreverence to the New York party scene where the outcomes weren't always so positive. As ODB was putting the final touches on his album, he was also running through New York's club scene. Dirty was building a rep as a party animal, and right there was Dante Ross, caught in the fray.

He was infamous for going to nightclubs and causing scenes, and he was the bane of my good friend Chris Lighty, rest in peace, his existence. Chris Lighty and a woman named Jessica Rosenblum, they ran all the clubs. Big clubs, not like hole in the walls, like big things, particularly the tunnel and the palladium.

The tunnel and the palladium were two iconic New York City hotspots, known for drawn crowds of party-goers for performances from the dopest MCs of the era. On the south side of East 14th Street in Greenwich Village, the palladium was a staple of the New York rap club Circuit. Buster Rimes, Notaries B-I-G, and other heavy hitters would perform at packed out shows.

He would perpetually show up at their events and cause a scene. Whether it was just climbing up on something and trying to perform or getting dancers riled up. He was infamous for jumping on stage at anyone's show, demanding the microphone.

Dirty was probably the most visible of the Klan members in the early days just because of his wild look and his antics. There was a huge anticipation for his album. And living in Brooklyn, you could just feel it.

Brooklyn Zoo was released officially in January of '95 as the first slice of Dirty's highly anticipated album.

In.

The track, ODB is pure confidence and swagger, which resonated with New Yorkers. When the song dropped, Dirty's brother, Ramsey, was also in the city hitting the party scene. Him showing up at different shows, unannounced other people's shows, it just created this whole legend and lore of my brother's status at the time. Brooklyn Zoo was just like different energy. It just encapsulated Brooklyn at the time, encapsulated New York. Just the degritty and dirtiness of it that my brother was able to convey on that track like it hit all over and people loved it, man.

When Brooklyn Zoo first came out and was from rip a huge record in New York, we got booked maybe on a Wednesday to do a Friday night at the Palladium. In the.

Middle of a set from The Lost Boys, Dirty was plotting to take over. The group were coming up alongside The Wolf, but ODB didn't really give a shit about any of that.

In between them doing their first song, Lifestyle: The Rich and Shameless, he bummers the show. Somehow we got a live mic, got on stage, got the crowd.

Riled up.

Intimidated the sound man to pressing play on the bat. And he did Brooklyn Zoom and Shimy Shimy and ruined the Lost Boys show.

As you might expect, the Lost Boys were pissed about Dirty's stunt. Soon, they were circling Dante and Dirty's crew of rappers also known as Brooklyn Zoo. They were.

Going to beat my ass, blaming me. The Brooklyn Zoo was there, and they encircled them, became a Mexican standoff. And I was in the middle of it, fearful for my 145 pound ass. I was real skinny then. I thought I was going to get shit kicked out of me by the Lost Boys or there was going to be a gunfight because I'm sure there were several guns in that group of maybe 20 people surrounding me. Dirty didn't pay any mind, destroyed the show. At the end of it, somehow Big Cap, rest in peace, rescued me from the fracas. I'm trying to tell you. And immediately after Dirty and then performed, they got kicked out by security.

Scene like this were a regular source of stress for everyone in in a circle. Even his right-hand man, Buddha Monk.

I was worried for Dirty every day. Even though I was rap, and I was a gun holder too, I had to have my gun. I'm glad I never had to use it. There was a time where Dirty was in the Palladium dancing and stuff, and Fredro and all of them came.

Fredro Star was chilling with members of his hardcore rap outfit, Onyx. The two weren't close, but dirty had issues with one of his boys, Sticky.

They were popping, we popping. Dirty had his head down, dancing like this and stuff, and Fredro walked up on him. But Dirty thought people was getting up on him to do some crazy shit. He popped, caught Fredro, backed him up. Then when he looked up and realized who its was. He was like, Oh, shit.

A common collected voodoo watched as people on Fredro's camp passed the gun around. The beef was heading for bloodshed.

You could see sticky past the joint off to him and Fredro cocked it back. I jumped in front of Dirty and said, I'm going to Fredro, You know what, man? You don't want to do that. Where are you going to go after you do that? Your career is going to be over everything. Dirty, he didn't know that was you. His head was down, bro. Just let that slot. Later on, he said that Dirty came and apologized to him or something. I don't know. I wasn't there for that particular thing of it, but Dirty never told me he apologized to that.

You never knew what might go down in the middle of a pack club with Dirty? He was going to do whatever it took to be seen.

He did this thing that the Foojies one time too. Before their album came out, they had Nappy Heads was their first hit record, the remix. They were doing the CMJ Showcase and Kerrace One was the host. He was a dirty fan and dirty and me got the sound man to queue up Dirty's joint. Literally, the Foojies were on the side of the stage. They're ready to go. He's like, Oh, before I bring on the Foojies, bring out your man. Dirty the bass comes on and he goes fucking ham. He goes nuts and does Brooklyn Zoo and shimmy shimmy and destroys it. It was such an uncanny and weird-ass performance that the audience didn't really know if it was good enough for a split second. Karris-wonk was like, Dude, that was the greatest shit you ever saw. I was like, Yeah. Then we saw there off the side of stage, we're laughing. They go on, Now, it's the Foojies. Prase is so mad, he had on shades, and he ran out super hype on the stage and he tripped over the monitor and fell into the audience. We were like, You see what your man just did?

But what are you going to do to dirty and his crew of maniacs? Nothing. We left the building because who knows what would happen if we stayed. There's just shit like this all the time.

As outrageous as he was, he had this magnetic quality. It's like, what's this guy going to do next?

The same qualities that grabbed people on Brooklyn Zoo was the same fuel for dirty's Balanced Energy. You had to take it with the package. But these antics were growing old with some of the people closest to him and his label. Sylvia Rowland and others at Electra started seeing ODB as a problem child. During an event at the suburb, Dirty crashed the stage and stole the mic from an executive named Chuck Bone, who was a close friend of Rome.

Dirty performed and skated with the mic. Chuck kept asking me to get the mic back, and I was like, I can't do nothing for you, man. I want to talk to Dirty about that. Sylvia called me and she was like, You have to get the microphones back. There was some classism going on. That's the best way to say it. It was like, there was a little culture clash between what the woo does and what Sylvia and her crew of cats and kittens were into. They didn't necessarily love what Dirty did, but they could not front on what was going to happen.

The thing is, none of it was personal to ODB. The way he saw it, every stage was a golden opportunity.

In his mind, he felt like he belonged on the stage every moment. If he walked into a place and they had a stage, he should be on it. If I can find five minutes of fame to let them see dirty face, I just got another 100,000 people. He knew what to do when he got on stage and he knew what he could say to make people feel him.

Some people are just that way. I feel like we look back on rock and roll stars like Jim Morrison was like that. He was like, knowing to go somewhere and fuck shit up. Iggy pop was probably like that too. I think that All Dirty was in the great tradition. Guys who went to the club and fucked shit up. He didn't understand the rules, and that was part of his genius.

Then when the reports come back in on the newspapers and television and they say, Hey, Dirty, crashed to the stage and this and that. He just was like, People need to know that us as entertainers, sometimes we got something more to say than just being programmed to get three minutes on the fucking stage and get off. I'm not going to be that person. You're not going to program me. If you calling me an artist and someone who can design music, let me design this stage with some shit that you all didn't program.

Dirty's behavior and wild antics could have derailed his solo career, and it's easy to write him off as someone who wasn't in control. But in the nation, it's important to understand that Dirty saw life through a different lens. A lot of that was shaped by what he learned from his older cousin and mentor, Papa Wolf. Onetime when I was filming with Papa Wolf in Brooklyn, he was standing on his stoop in the rain, and he was getting hot about this exact issue.

I'm old time, sir. I never stopped, son. Don't get me mad, though, all right? Everybody got their each his own. See, nobody in this world is here to live up to no man's expectation. You know what I'm saying? No man to live up to no other man's expectation. All you got to do is be you and let the next person be there and this world will be a long time. Because you can't judge a person. Anytime you try to keep telling a person or something that they are doing there, that's these elements that they got to take. That shit don't bother you. Let man be man how he is. Don't you change your man. If he smoke a cigarette, let him smoke a fucking cigarette. If he's sniffing dope, let him sniff a dope. There's a reason why man do what he do. When you change the order of a man, you change the order of a universe. That's why you can't control the atmosphere. The atmosphere can't be controlled when you're trying to change man. When man controls the whole atmosphere, everything in the atmosphere is caused by the son of man with high exposure.

Peace, man. I can't fuck around no more.

You can't change your God. That night at Clinton Studios during the I'll style live show, Dirty was telling Electra, fans, and anybody else watching that he was running the show.

I ain't no motherfucking puppet, man.

I'm the old.

Dirty bastard, man.

When Return to the 36 Chambers came out, it made ODB a star. Friends watched dirty corral his genius into a potent body of work that put him on the map. But for those closest to him, it seemed like life was starting to tear at the seams as fame creeped in.

When I first started working with him, as wild as he was, he still had 12 o'clock next to him. He had Papa woo around. He had Iselin. He had his kids. His foundation was much more formidable. He was more involved in all of these relationships with these people. As he got more famous, those things dissipated. All bets are off. Dirty was a wild motherfucker before Fame and fortune. When fame and Fortune showed up, he was that much wilder.

Up next on ODB, Ason Unique, all eyes are on Dirty as he stunstraw media scrutiny and put a target on his back.

We both looked at each other like this.

He's like, Oh, God.

You're right, Doc. They coming for me. They're coming for me. They coming for me.

They coming for me. Coming for me.

Coming for me.

Coming for me. Coming for me. Coming for me.

Odb, a son unique, is produced by Novel and Talkhouse for USG Audio. The series is hosted by me, Carly Kalah. The series was written by Taylor Jones and Muhammad Ahmed. The producer was Taylor Jones with additional production from Muhammad Ahmed. Production support from Lee Meyer. Our researcher is Zeyana Youssef. Our editor is Veronica Simmons. Our executive producers are Dante Ross and Budamunk, Georgia Moody, and Max O'Brien for Novel. Josh Block for USG Audio and Ian Wheeler for Talkhouse. Production support for USG Audio by Josh Laulangi. Production management from Cherie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Now, our fact checker is Dania Suleiman. Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development. Sound design and mixing by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Location and studio recordings by Michael Jeno. Original music composed by Tom Young. Special thanks to Sean Glenn. This is a USG audio podcast. For more information or to check out our other podcasts, go to usgaudio. Com. For more from Novel, visit novel. Audio. Novel.