Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers

Two decades after its release, the Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers:The Dirty Version is the rare hip-hop album that sounds as fresh and funny as on the day ofits release. With a never replicated style, the most obscene man in show business rhymeda chronicle of the nastiest thoughts put on record, bringing hip-hop to a place where it couldbe dirty andstinking.

Much beloved and purchased, Return was not only a comedic masterpiece, but alsoa meditation on the nature of freedom and the power of swearing. By connecting the Ol’Dirty Bastard to a forgotten literary tradition, this book demonstrates that the rapper’sartistry contained a profound repudiation of shame, and offered rich themes which havegone unexplored.

Taking the ODB beyond the headlines, Jarett Kobek also explores the consequencesof the wild tales that provided years of tabloid fare, suggesting that beneath the shock value wasa very serious story which was ignored by almost everyone. A Black man in America refusedto acknowledge social control and was crushed by the American criminal justicesystem.

Is it possible that by recording and commercial recording his shameless message, theOl’ Dirty Bastard doomed himself to a short lifetime of police harassment and prisonviolence?