Novel.

Please note, this episode deals with issues around addiction and mental health that some may find disturbing. Check out the show notes for more details.

I did get the call that there was a shooting and that he had been arrested for pulling a gun out.

I said, dirty, if you do that, every cop in New York City know you was. There's no way you're going to get away.

With this shit. In my opinion, I think he had addiction issues and the government decided to deal with that by putting him in jail and prison. When he.

Was locked up in prison, none of them came out to see him. So my brother felt like they forgot him.

For ODB, what began as a stint in rehab will become a three and a half year ordeal navigating the criminal justice system. By the spring of 2003, dirty's health had deteriorated. His deal with Electro was over and he was no longer himself. On the first of May that year, Dirty was finally being released. As ODB leaves the center, he moves slow and sluggish. He looks confused by all of the noise, but he flashes a smile as he sees familiar faces from his old life.

The minute he got out, I was right there when Mariah Carey pulled up with Damon Dash, and it was like a breath of fresh air.

Ten years before, Dirty had sent a limo for Buddha's release from jail for a guncharge. Now was Buddha welcoming his brother home?

They walked him over to her limo. She got out and hugged him and everything and they filmed it.

While he was locked up, Dirty had asked Rizard to be let out of his deal with Rizard's Wutang Productions. Towards the end of his prison term, Dirty had been in close touch with Damon Dash and Rockefeller Records, which was the home of Kanye West and co-founder, Jay Z. They were the ones who stepped up during Dirty's parole hearings.

To get out of there, Damon Dash and all of them helped make it possible. Sending the right letters. Mariah Carey, everybody sent a letter saying, Yeah, they're going to help him through this time and stuff like that.

Now that he was set free, Jody knew exactly where he wanted to go first. He wanted.

To go to Coney Island. He wanted to go get him some oyster and clams, and we did just that. We had about 30 people with us, and we bought everything. Everybody enjoyed themselves. We pulled the limousine up, kept the doors open. We party right there. He was free. He was home and we was going to make a party out of it. And from the way I saw him in there at the hospital before we got him out, I could see that he was moving faster. He was getting back to himself. And then when he got off that medication, that's when you start hearing real dirty.

Asong was starting to feel like himself again, but the pressure to live up to the old dirty bastard name was looming.

Dirty didn't want to let his fans down. He wanted to keep the world intrigued with what he was going to come up with the fuck next. That describes it all. He was.

Free, but prison had left major scars that would make his comeback difficult. Now there was the question of who he wanted to be in the world. Russell, the fun-loving father, hero and friend. Ason, the disciplined God of his reality. Or ODB, the wild brother running with the zoo. From USG Audio, novel and talkhouse, this is ODB, A Sun Unique. Episode Seven, back home. That day at Coney Island, when Dirty got to taste freedom once again, came after three and a half years of hell in America's criminal system. A journey that all started in a California courtroom. By '99, ODB's rap sheet had become a long list of bizarre offenses that kept the cops lurking. The FBI had even started to compile a file of his run-ins and history of arrest. After pleading no contest for illegally wearing body armor, ODB was sentenced to three years probation and a $500 fine. Dirty was also ordered to start a year long rehab treatment in Pasadena. He avoided prison, but he still had a lot to deal with. Alcohol and drugs had taken a toll on ODB. Throughout his career, he'd become almost as famous for his behavior as he was for his music.

The writer Skiz Fernando saw this play out firsthand while covering The Wolf's Early Rise.

Russell Jones drank. That's when he became a old dirty bastard. Then he would indulge in all types of behavior, which was not necessarily maybe what Russell Jones was all about.

In August 1997, during a tour stop in Atlanta as openers for Rage Against the Machine, the Klan had turned up for a last minute show at the Atrium. They were celebrating their second album, Mutang Forever, going platinum. During the show, ODB was roaming the stage as Ray, Kwan, Rizza, and Jizza run through their tracks. Dirty is wearing a tank top and shorts, drenched in sweat. At some point, Dirty goes off on a rant that borders between stand-up comedy and a confessional. You all niggas know that I'm like you all, I swear, at home for real? Not you, one of your aun, one of your cousins. I'm related to you, you know it. For real.

Drunk ass nigga.

Stop fucking drinking so much. The clan was used to how dirty got down. His act as the drunk master was part of the woo's DNA. But this footage is difficult to watch. The crowd and everyone on stage don't seem to know what's going on with him, if he's high or if he's serious. So what? Do you know what the fuck do you want me to do? You thought the trust was illegal? Basically, it was legal. Odb did what he wanted to do, but that free will was also playing a part in the dangerous situations he found himself in. It's unclear whether rehab was actually helping dirty resolve his issues with substances and alcohol, but he was making regular visits with the judge and progressing through his treatment. Odb's lawyer, Peter Frankl, felt that forcing dirty into rehab was the wrong approach.

As far as drug treatment goes, you've got to be engaged in order for it to be helpful for you. It's got to be something that you want to do. It can't even be something that's court-ordered because the court can order me to go for an inpatient drug treatment. But unless I'm really engaged and really interested and really believing that I need that treatment, it's just going to be a waste of time. I don't know that he always felt that he needed treatment that was thrust upon him.

Buddha also thought the experience was just hurting his friend.

It didn't help. It made it worse. They were injecting him with something that wasn't agreeing with his body. It started swelling his face up. It made his speech impediment slower. He wasn't himself. It took him like three minutes to turn left. I just know they was giving him drugs and he wasn't there for that.

Odb needed to be in a space that would support recovery, but he was losing control. What happened next was a wild sequence of events that would throw everything into jeopardy. In October of 2000, 10 months into his yearlong rehab, ODB was granted a weekend leave to join Wutang for a recording session for their third album, The W. After going a couple of hours past Curfew, Dirty did the unthinkable. With just two months left in his court-ordered treatment, the brother ditched rehab and jetted out on a plane home to New York. Breaking Curfew meant that he could face prison. Dirty had been given a lifeline to avoid jail with rehab, but now he was on the run. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and ODB became the center of a national news story with law enforcement agencies after him. On a late night comedy show, comics ridiculed the idea that Dirty was a menace.

You can actually feel the fear in the air.

The.

Tension.

Lingering since.

October 17th, when the.

Odb became a fugitive from justice.

Panic, fear.

Evacuations, and mass hysteria. That's what.

Happened when people.

Found out that the old dirty bastard was on the.

Streets again. Back in New York, ODB hopped between the homes of family members and friends as he avoided the cops.

Dirty was on the lamb at that point. He had just escaped from rehab. No one knew where he was. He was like crazy. And then Wutang was doing their first big show in New York in a long time. So obviously everyone's going to be there.

On November 21st, 2000, the Klan was playing a release show at the Hammerstein Ballroom for the new album. With the NYP on a hunt, the last place where ODB needed to be seen was on stage with his brothers. But this is the old Dirty bastard.

Dirty calls me and he's like, Yo, Buda, I'm coming. I'm like, Dirty, don't you do that. Don't you do this shit to me right now. Listen, I can't get my hand wrapped around the fact that you're going to be there. Third, if you do that, every cop in New York City know you is. There's no way you're going to get away with this shit. I'm coming. Don't worry about it.

Somewhere backstage, Raquan was getting ready with the rest of the clan.

I remember that day he walked in and he walked in with his mother that day and it's like they killed him when they walked in and they was cooling. You know what I mean? They was fresh and that put a smile on my face to where I forgot about everything else. I was just happy to see him. And at the same time, scared too because I knew that coming here is a possibility that you might get arrested coming. Police is right outside. They may lock you up after this big dog. But he didn't care. He had to be there, and he wanted to be there.

I'm walking around through the crowd. I'm walking through the stage. I don't see him. All of a sudden, his car come on and he pulled off and started rap it. In the middle.

Of the show, Ridge was like, Yo, I got a special guest to announce. I had seen this guy in this bright orange parca with the hood up with the fur collar. I'd seen him backstage. Then when he took his head off, just the whole place was just like.

Chaos.

Because everyone knew that Dirty was on the lambs. It was like, Where do you think Dirty is? Where do you think Dirty is at? Guess what? He's at the Wutang show.

He got on the mic, he blew that shit up, and then they just did. I thought that was the meanest intro ever to a show. This nigga.

Is already in there. I didn't even know that was him in the jacket with the hoodie, and I didn't know how bad this medicine swole him up. I started pushing the girls down to the ground and pushing people out the way to get to the stage because I said the minute he finished, I got to get the hell out of here. Yo, bro. You can see that before he even got off the stage, the cops were already looking for him. They were in regular clothes instead of uniform because they knew he was going to show up. They had a feeling that he was going to show up that he couldn't resist coming to that show. And he did.

I don't know how he got out because that place was surrounded by cops. That was like an incredibly historic moment.

A few weeks later, ODB popped up at his family home in Park Slope for Thanksgiving dinner. When his brother, Ramsey, arrived, he couldn't believe it.

When I got to the house, he was there already. He was there already. I was shocked. I hugged him. I said, Dude, I love you, man. I'm worried. I was fearful for him. I said, Look, you got the authorities after you, man. I love you being the outlaw. But I felt like he was also himself to leave a place that you were being helped with your addictions to just be on the run like that. I didn't know what was going to happen down the line. We were all worried for him, especially my mom. He just left the house after that, because he was still being hunted down by the authorities. I didn't feel that him being hunted like that was justified, but I was worried for him because he was also addicted and I worried about his welfare. That's why he came to my parents' house in Park Slope because it was like a place of refuge.

Dirty was on the run for a whole month before the police eventually caught up to him. After moving to a hideout, we're members of the Zoo Ninjas, he decided to join them for a ride down to Philly. While in the drive through out of McDonald's, a cop recognized Dirty in the 1991 Mitsubishi Galat with New Jersey plates. She stopped him and he didn't try to run. Dirty had reached the end of the line. In addition to violating probation and failing to complete rehab, Dirty was facing penalties for outstanding drug charges in New York, including possession of 20 vials of crack cocaine. On July 18th, 2001, Dirty was sentenced to two to four years. Odb ended up at a maximum security facility called Clinton Correctional in upstate New York. Away from his loved ones and children, Dirty grew remote and isolated. Ramsey tried to see his brother with Dirty's wife, Iseline, but couldn't get through.

About a day later, she called me up and said he refused our visit. I said, Why? She said, I don't know. And she told him I was coming, but I guess he didn't want me to see him in that condition, in that environment.

Well, it was suggested to me by my editor who said, Why don't you go and visit him in prison?

One of the few people who managed to see ODB during this period was the British music journalist, William Shaw. Jody's contract with a lecturer had ended while he was in prison, and he'd entered the New Deal with a smaller label, D Three Records.

His people were trying to obviously get him some income, and so we talked to them and they said, Yeah, sure, go and interview. We'll tell him. A new American prisons were nothing like the ones we have in Britain. They're very hostile places. I traveled up all the way to Clinton, which is right up the top of New York State. It's a long, long journey. That's part of the tragedy of those places. No relatives get to visit prisoners in those places. They're so far away. And I think it was winter. All the trees around were naked. You come across this Gothic-looking prison, just horrible stone prison. I had to say I was meeting him as a friend or a relation. Well, I clearly wasn't a relation, but the prison staff there aren't necessarily the sharpest bunch of people either. So I sat down, waiting around, and eventually said, Come on through. And of course, you're searched. And the guard who took me up there, I can remember, was just like, could tell I was so far out of my comfort zone and out of my place. And he said, Don't touch the door handles. And I said, Why not?

Because if anybody knows if you're from outside, they spit on the door handles. There's a real darkness in those places, and you wait for the prisoners to arrive, and it was just like a school dinner area or something like that. I didn't walk this man who just looked defeated before it even started. I remember being really shocked, just seeing this man. He used to perform as being such larger than life figures, and he looked very broken the moment he walked in. When you see people with extreme depression, they just look so internal and so inside themselves. So he talked very slowly, very quietly. He was hesitant about most things. He was confused. He talked about how he felt he wasn't sharp anymore, talked about feeling like he'd landed in a spaceship in the wrong place or something. I think he was just very fragmented as a person, and I'm not sure he wanted ODB to exist. I think he just wanted some peace. It was awful. I mean, it was just a horrible thing to witness, to be honest. He had no idea I was coming. He didn't even know his album was out. That was a shocking thing.

Despite arranging the interview with his new label, Shaw realized that dirty didn't have much control over what was happening with his career. His new label, D3, had recycled old material and used the outside producers to cash in on his notariety.

The album had just come out. They'd been put together off various bits and pieces and he didn't know it was out. The most excited I saw him was like, Wow, I've got an album out great.

The mention of music lit a brief spark in dirty, but as the conversation went on, the effects of the powerful drugs Dirty was taken became apparent.

I thought he must be on some medication because of the way that he moved. When people shuffle when they're on medication, he was very much like that. But I think he was just at very, very deep depression. I said, Are you taking any medication? He said, I wouldn't take medication in a place like this. You've got to know what's happening around here.

Before his sentence, ODB was sent to Kings County Hospital to be evaluated. Just as he rhyme in his hits on Brooklyn Zoo, he was now actually in the G building under the influence of some powerful drugs.

Enough to make.

A nigger.

Go crazy in the G building taking all types of medicines. Your ass thought.

You were better than a sir. At this time, it was reported that dirty was prescribed a psychotropic drug called Haldol.

We'll never know what actual treatment he got because prison systems are not known for their great mental health treatments.

Jamie Lowe reported on dirty's career throughout this time for her book, Digging for Dirt.

I believe that prison and jail are mental health catastrophes, and so I think that at just first glance, him being there was incredibly problematic. I don't know if the psychiatrist was a good psychiatrist or a bad one. I know he got out of prison and was not well.

By the.

End of the interview at Clinton Correctional, Sean felt that he had connected with Dirty.

And so I went back the next day, and then the day after, but he refused my visit and refused to visit both days. I think he couldn't even bear talking about himself. I think just confronting the reality of where he was was not great for him. I only saw him when he was not the man he should be. I only met him, and I can only really say in terms of my that I saw him as a man who was admitting that he was not himself anymore. He was wrecked. He was wrecked by the system. He was wrecked by being in prison. He was wrecked by prolonged drug use, but mainly by being a person who was mentally ill in a prison that was not able to cope with somebody who was mentally ill and actually really hostile to somebody in his condition. I mean, he should never have been in prison.

Dirty's celebrity brought him no special treatment. Whos was assaulted by fellow inmates more than once, and the group even jumped him and broke his leg.

Papa Wo told me that Dirty was being extorted in prison, which I can totally believe, and people were just trying to test him to test how crazy he was or how tough he was. The problem with that was when he was sent to the psych ward, that's when they put him on all these drugs.

To Ramsey, his brother, the transformation in dirty triggered by incarceration was unmistakable.

It changed him a hundred %. When he went in, he was ODB. He was OSIRIS. I remember seeing when he got out and his whole personality changed because of the medication they were giving him or whatever they were putting in his food. He was almost like a zombie. I saw him take off his shirt one night when he was at my mother's house and he had burns on his back. I asked my mom, I said, Where did he get those burns from? She told me, Your brother got attacked by some inmates. So in order to keep them off him, he set himself on fire.

Dirty was locked up for nearly 30 months. A lifetime of unchecked mental health issues, police harassment, media exploitation, and substance abuse had compounded into a full blown crisis. After he was freed from prison and he moved back to Brooklyn, the question remained whether ODB had anything left to give. Back home after that night celebrating with oyster and clams at Coney Island, Dirty was trying to rebuild his life and make up for lost time. Voodoo was one of the few trusted people who made sure that Dirty was on the right path.

For the first couple of months I had to stay at his house every day. I had to have keys and stay with him in there because even though he had got out, he still was going through a lot.

Dirty wanted a reset, a new beginning where he could take his life in his own hands. Even though he needed more time to recover, Durney wouldn't let off the gas. He was pressing his new manager, Jared Whitefield, to find opportunities to rebuild the ODB brand.

He wanted to go fast. Everybody else started trying to make him feel like he was going too fast at it, and he should have took some more time off when he got out. They thought Jared was pushing Dirty. Dirty was pushing Jared to push Dirty. Dirty is like, Nah, man, I ain't got time to do that. My family, I don't want my family starving. This bread that's coming from over here is new bread. They can't tell me when I can get a check, how the check get cut. I get to make all the decisions, make all that shit happen. And Jared did what he wanted.

Dirty began to distance himself from his cousins and the Klan. On the day he was released from prison, Rizza, Jizza, and the rest of the Klan were all absent. My name is Damon Dash. I'm the.

Ceo of.

Rockefeller Records.

We want to be.

The best at everything.

Damon Dash was all about the hustle. In the early 2000s, he was the image of a bold, enterprising black man in the music business. When Damon called to discuss partnering on the New Deal, Dirty jumped at the chance to join the rock. When I.

See someone.

That's talented, that's about their business, that wants to get money, I could care less what anybody else says about them.

All I know is what I see, and that's why I chose to get rid of old Dirty bastard. What's his new name? Dirty McGirt.

Upon his release, Dirty was joining one of the hottest rap labels in the game. Jay Z was cementing his legend, and Kanye was putting together a groundbreaking debut with College Dropout. As a new member of the team, Damian would give ODB the famous Rockefeller Chain. But the new Alliance didn't feel like the right situation for Dirty to return to form.

Before the press conference, Rezz and them must have called and he was feeling some way like, I got to do this for me and my babies. I got to make a new home for us. And that's what he did. Did I say it was the right home? I never thought it was the right home. I always thought Wutang was the home.

With his new deal at Rockefeller, Gears returning for ODB to work with the new stars in hip hop.

There was a track that Ludacris had did, and Ludacris had wrote the lyrics. Dirty loved Ludacris, so he wanted Ludacris to help him write the verses. Ludacris wrote the verses. Dirty went two times without me. It was more him and Rockefeller. But everybody knew along the lines like, don't nobody know how to deal with Dirty better than Buddha.

After a few false darts, Buddha was called in to try to help ODB be the same dirty that the whole world was waiting for. There was a lot riding on dirty and Buddha believed in him. The God had created a whole world in the past. He just had to tune in to the right frequency in order to do it again.

I'm hearing what they're doing. I'm like, Nah, God, there's no energy there. Scratched this whole shit. We starting all over. Nah, God, yes. Yo, dirty, listen, we are starting to fuck over or I came here for nothing. Yo, man, just hold those vocals. And then we started over, even though we hold the vocals. When we got finished, she said, Erase all vocals. Then there was a moment where he didn't want to give me no more energy. I'm like, no, that's too much energy. I said, all right, well, you come out here and listen, you see for yourself. And I sat back on the couch and let him hear. And he didn't say, You write God, and he got right up and went back in there and gave me the rest of it.

Dirty had burst onto the scene in the early 90s and was so sure of his identity. While he was in prison, he was listening to new artists and looking outside of himself for his voice.

Then he had headphones, so I guess he listened to a lot of 50 Cent, but he wanted to start screaming like everybody else. I'm like, You're not 50 Cent. They want to hear Old Dirty bastard.

Old dirty had always been real. Buda was trying to remind him to just be himself.

That was my job. As much as I hate talking to the one that was helping me feed my family like that, that's what he had me there for. You got to be able to say it more than anybody because if I can't trust you, Buda, then I can't trust nobody with it.

In 2003, Jamie Lowe lucked out with a free pass to the New York City Music Festival, CMJ, where Dirty was playing a comeback show.

I absolutely wanted to see him perform. There were all of these rumors about what was happening with him.

As a Wutang fan, she was excited to see Dirty performing again, but she didn't recognize the man she witnessed on stage that weekend.

I felt like if he was scheduled to perform CMJ, he must be doing great. And I was excited to see him. It was a very typical evening of waiting, waiting, waiting until 3:00 AM, and then he finally came on.

And it.

Was one of the most devastating performances I've ever seen. He just was so sad. He was crying on stage. He wasn't rapping. He was standing there, and Budamunk was wrapping lyrics. And it was just awful to watch because it was this audience that wanted to see a old dirty bastard, but they also wanted to see a grotesque performance. The caricature that he had built himself to be, there was this expectation that he had to fulfill it, and he clearly wasn't physically or mentally able to.

William Shaw continued to watch ODB's career as he struggled to find his footing post-prison.

He was following pathways. He'd sat down when he was a younger, more vibrant artist, but they weren't necessarily very good for him. They were a continuation of that persona. I can remember writing that piece, thinking that I was seeing somebody at the end of their life.

People talk about how dirty was ravaged by the drugs, but it's not as simple as that. Drug use alone couldn't explain dirty's worsening condition.

It never did nothing and didn't affect how I believed in him or how we should have done things. Sometimes I felt like, and some people may not understand this shit, dirty getting fucked up wasn't him being on drugs. He had so much shit coming at him. And when you want to escape sometimes, yo, just why watching TV or being with the kids is not going to do it.

In late 2004, over the course of back to back shows, ODB was growing more despondent during his performances. He fell off the stage in Fort Collins, Colorado, and re-injured his leg, but he continued on to the next show. At the show in Vale, Colorado, it was reported that dirty was given cocaine and got high in his hotel room. The detour would cause him to miss his to join the rest of the clan for a reunion show in Jersey. On the morning of November 13th, 2004, dirty was heading back to New York when he swallowed a bag of his remaining cocaine. That afternoon, he was picked up by Rizza and brought to the Wutang's 36th Chamber studio. While some of the brothers were making music, Dirty's heart started racing. He called his three children and Iselin to the studio and spent time with them before sending them home. Soon after that, he collapsed. Buddha got a call across town. It was Dirty's manager, Jared.

I'm sitting and we get me in Dungeon doing this new song and then all of a sudden. Yo, Dirty just died. He's in 36 Chambers and hung up. Rapper, old dirty bastard or ODB, died yesterday after complaining of chest pains. But this rapper had a history of pain, a troubled life of drugs in jail.

The obituaries announcing ODB's death were never going to capture the entire picture of who he was. The God who went by many names: Russell Jones, ODB, OSIRIS, and Ason Unique, died of an accidental drug overdose two days before his 36th birthday.

Mommy got there and called me because she already knew how I was going to feel. First thing she said to me, Buddha, I don't think you're going to be able to come up here and see him like this. You're going to lose everything of you right now. But I could tell you like this, he's smiling right now. Like he was tired and he was at rest. I just sat at the table for hours, like in a days.

Up next on ODB, a son unique, the God's legacy and a return to the beginning. Odb, a Sun Unique is produced by Novel and Talkhouse for USG Audio. The series is hosted by me, Carly Kalar. 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 Daante 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 Huston in Charlotte Wolf. Now, our fact-checker is Dania Suleiman. Willet Foxden 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.