Rediscovered: Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ‘Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version’

March 29, 2025 1

Days after unloading his maiden solo album,Ol’ Dirty Bastard completed his transformation from emerging rap star to a sparkling conservative talking point.

During a March 30 airing of an MTV interview, the then-26-year-old jumped out of his limo to pick up food stamps and a $375 welfare check. As a member of Wu-Tang Clan, he’d already earned fame and, presumably, enough money to render food stamps into rap song vignettes — shadows of a recent past he was able to escape. But there he was collecting government-sponsored sustenance on national TV. His caseworker saw the appearance and revoked his eligibility. ODB was caught. But the thing is, “caught” suggests that he was ever hiding in the first place. In a brief, but indelible rap career, ODB eschewed pleasantries for pleasure, wisdom for weirdness, and formality for force on his way to iconhood. Released 30 years ago today, 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version crystallized ODB as one of rap’s most idiosyncratic heroes — as unconventional as he was unashamed.

Sprawling and spontaneous, The Dirty Version plays out exactly as its title suggests, with ODB reimagining Wu-Tang’s raucous menace through the prism of his own eccentricities. The LP begins with an extended rant about impending rap greatness, gratitude, and… gonorrhea. Threaded by spurts of half-sung NSFW poems and R&B piano, it’s an appropriately strange introduction to ODB’s hazy playhouse of free associative raps and meandering melody.

It could all be as brutal as it was whimsical. Juvenile and subtly profound. For “Goin’ Down,” he slips and slides over sinister horns and percussion that could soundtrack a dungeon, swerving into a rambunctious half-sung flow that careens into a sloppy rendition of “Over the Rainbow”; his grizzled vocals soar between a hum and a growl simultaneously. His wife makes a guest appearance for an interaction that’s as unnerving as it is raw. He maintains all the rugged randomness with “Raw Hide,” a micro-posse cut featuring Raekwon and Method Man. There, ODB lets loose bars that are as blunt as they are elementally honest. And adventurous:

“Who the fuck wanna be an MC
If you can’t get paid to be a fuckin’ MC?
I came out my mama pussy, I’m on welfare
Twenty-six years old, still on welfare
So I gotta get paid fully
Whether it’s truthfully or untruthfully”

While ODB’s bars are rooted in real emotions and spurts of autobiography, his guttural delivery, as well as his eclectic imagination, rendered them all semi-impressionistic. One moment he’s calling an audience to party; the next, he’s imagining a “bald-headed bitch for your bald-headed wife” (“The Stomp”). RZA’s murky soundscapes — audio canvases laced with hazy piano loops and dusty brass instruments — only enhance the disorienting effect; the rumbling bassline and dazed strings of “Brooklyn Zoo II (Tiger Crane)” make ODB and Ghostface Killah’s vocals feel all the more manic.

With all the shouting and jagged melodies, Return to the 36 Chambers can be abrasive. But on tracks like “Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” ODB swirls all his impulses into something mesmerizing. Skittering through a piano loop fit for an ice cream truck, ODB sounds like a sex witch doctor, turning the last syllable of each word into a melodic micro thrill: “Ooh, baby, I like it raw.” It’s a freaky adventure that’s as irresistible as it is inexplicable. What does “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” mean? I’m not even sure ODB could’ve told you. But you could feel it. You still can.

While it’s a classic, Return to the 36 Chambers can feel scattered compared to other Wu releases; as Method Man noted on Genius, ODB actually repeated verses on the album. Even more interestingly, Meth would say most of the rhymes weren’t even ODB’s. Through this lens, the album is a mess. But that unwieldiness is exactly the point. ODB embodied the best kinds of chaos, and more important than any one or two couplets was his eccentric vocality. It’s hard not to see him in the works of quirky stylists like Young Thug, Danny Brown, and plenty of other artists who just wanted to get weird.

Thirty years removed from its release, Return to the 36 Chambers stands as a masterpiece of synchronized clutter — prideful, free-wheeling and uninhibited. Glorious bars and unfortunate ones — delirious sing-song chants and coarse diatribes. Even with RZA behind the boards, it’s more the result of a spiritual reflex than meticulous craftsmanship. In a word, it was raw — just the way ODB liked it.

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