Dimensions
153 x 230 x 20mm
The first biography of hip hop superstar and founding Wu-Tang Clan member ODB to be written by someone from within his inner circle: producer, MC, Brooklyn Zu member, and Wu-Tang affiliate, Buddha Monk, timed to the tenth annivesary of his death. When Ol' Dirty Bastard died in 2004, a little over a decade after rocketing to fame with the Wu-Tang clan, the world of hip hop lost one of its wildest icons and most inventive performers. Buddha Monk lost a friend. Buddha was Dirty's right-hand man on stage and in the studio. A close friend since childhood, Buddha witnessed Dirty's trials and triumphs, from being harassed by the cops on the corner of Putnam and Franklin Avenues in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn-where an ODB mural now stands-to touring the world with Dirty at the height of his fame to going on the run with Dirty after he escaped from a court-mandated rehab. With his insider perspective, Buddha sets the record straight on ODB, who loved hip hop and became, as both a member of the Wu-Tang Clan and as a solo artist, one of its most revered and influential performers, but who struggled with fame and his public image. In the final years of his life, ODB cycled between prison and drug treatment facilities before collapsing in a Manhattan recording studio while working on his comeback album for Jay-Z's Rock-A-Fella Records-dead at age 35 from a combination of cocaine and painkillers. ODB's legend lives on in near folk hero proportions and many stories have been told about him. People might know that Dirty once picked up his welfare check in a limousine, that Dirty lifted a burning car off a four-year-old girl in Brooklyn, that Dirty stole a $50 pair of sneakers on tour at the peak of his success. And many have questioned aloud whether his antics were carefully calculated or the result of paranoia and mental instability. Now it's time for Buddha to tell the true story-the Dirty Version.
