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“I come with that ol’ loco
Style from my vocal
Couldn’t peep it with a pair of bi-focals
I’m no joker! Play me as a joker
Be on you like a house on fire! Smoke ya!”
-Ol’ Dirty Bastard on “Shame on a Nigga”

When Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) was first released in 1993, I became a fan instantly. The hard gritty style revitalized hip hop and was a marker in the evolution of the form.

Just as Public Enemy had Flava Flav to provide a different sound and some comic relief, the Wu had Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Playing the jester at a sonic mass-execution took a special blend of lyrical style, off-kilter delivery and personality that only the ODB could deliver.

He wasn’t in the top half of the Wu as far as mic skills, but his first solo album Return to the 36 Chambers was surprisingly good and proved that he could carry the day himself.

While doing press for Return, he famously took along MTV’s cameras in a limousine while he and his wife and kids went to the welfare office to pick up food stamps that he was somehow still eligible for despite selling millions of albums. The entertainment value of this stunt counterbalanced perfectly the fact that he inadvertently became the “Welfare Queen” that Ronald Reagan railed against a decade earlier.

As time passed, his legal troubles derailed not just his own career, but the Wu’s while they waited for him to be available for studio time. When he was finally sent up on drug charges in 2001, they proceeded without him.

Despite signing with Roc-a-Fella and playing some gigs with the Wu upon his release, ODB never quite returned to form. Even so, his death (while recording his comeback album), is a substantial loss for hip hop. Today would have been his 36th birthday.

We’ll miss you Dirty. Rest in Peace.