If you needed any reminding, a quick play through ‘Raw Ride’ or ‘Goin’ Down’ will bring that raw feel straight back to you, but if you feel like a more cerebral run through the great ODB’s legacy, The Quietus have a nice article online today. Focusing on Return to the 36 Chambers, (in honour of its anniversary), writer Cian Traynor rightly points out that “twenty years after its release, the album still feels like an anomaly worth celebrating”. One particular paragraph demonstrates Dirt McGirt’s lasting aura succinctly:
“George Clinton, for instance, believes that Ol’ Dirty Bastard introduced a new cadence to music. Kanye West said he’d cut a piece of his finger off just to have that voice. Questlove credited ‘Brooklyn Zoo’ as being so radical that it changed the way he thought about rap music; that it felt as if Screamin’ Jay Hawkins had somehow made the best single in hip hop history. Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest said that if you listen to Dirty’s lyrics, there’s no question that the person behind them is a mastermind.”
Check it out over here.
