Ol' Dirty Bastard, aka Russell Jones, died suddenly in a recording studio earlier today. He would have been 36 on Monday. This is sad news, and my sympathies go out to his family and friends. Wu-Tang is for the children.

"This evening I received a phone call that is every mother's worst dream," wrote
ODB's mother, Cherry Jones, in a statement released tonight. "My son, Russell
Jones, passed away. To the public, he was known as Ol' Dirty Bastard. To me, he
was known as Rusty, the kindest and most generous soul on earth. I appreciate
all the support I received. Russell was more than a rapper-- he was a loving
father, brother, uncle and most of all, son."

ODB was a controversial figure, and he was often a lightning rod for various reactionary critiques of hip hop as pathology. He was the butt of Dennis Miller-style vapid and totalizing jokes for his drug addictions and the infamous incident in which he (somewhat justifiably) stormed the stage at the '98 grammies immediately prior to Shawn Colvin's (remember her? Me neither) acceptance speech to point out that Wu-Tang, not Puffy, should have won the Best Rap Artist grammy. Whether under the racist lens of a vapid SNL alumnus or the more nuanced but often problematic frame of cartoonist Aaron McGruder's pomo nationalist comic book aesthetic, ODB was often reduced to a caricature of minstrel as rapper, uncouth black figure unwittingly debasing himself for whites' entertainment. (Miller was entertained, McGruder disgusted.) But ODB was always, i think, conscious of the fact that he was shaping his stage identity by navigating (or failing to navigate) the geography of such constructed identities, and even if traction and control seemed ultimately out of reach, i think ODB deserves to be remembered and 'read' as an artist and cultural producer rather than simply as an object of derision or shame. He was a talented and unconventional rapper and his work with the Wu-Tang clan, particularly on Enter The Wu-Tang/36 Chambers, is classic. I come to bury the man who once referred to himself as "Big Baby Jesus," (which i always thought was kind of awesome,) not to praise him. But I think that maybe we should take this moment to think about what questions the figure of ODB and his legacy raise about the politics of hip hop, the "gangsta" and the performance of racial difference in the neoliberal terrain of the post-napster recording industry.