DISGRACELAND - Ol’ Dirty Bastard (Wu-Tang Clan Chapter 8): An Attempted Murder Rap, Bloodthirsty Rottweilers, and Self-Immolation

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Ol’ Dirty Bastard once saved a four-year old girl who was trapped under a Ford Mustang. He took a limo with an MTV news crew to collect his welfare check. He was charged with attempted murder of an NYPD officer. Chased by bloodthirsty Rottweilers. Shot by men in ski masks. His fame led to an addiction to cocaine, and that addiction led to ten arrests in the span of a few months. He was granted a weekend furlough from a rehab facility but went AWOL and wound up on the lam. Before long he wound up in Dannemora, aka Clinton Correctional Facility, aka Little Siberia, a maximum security prison in upstate New York, where he had to go to extreme lengths just to stay sane – and to survive. This episode was originally published on October 10, 2023. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ ⁠⁠X⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠ ⁠⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Wu-Tang Clans, old dirty bastard, are insane. He once saved a four-year-old girl who was trapped under a Ford Mustang. He took a limo with an MTV news crew to collect his welfare check. He was charged with attempted murder of an NYPD officer, chased by bloodthirsty Rottweilers, shot by men in ski mass. His fame led to an addiction to cocaine, and that addiction led to 10 arrests in the span of a few months.

He was granted a weekend furlough from a rehab facility, but went AWOL and wound up on the lamb. As his cousin, the Rizza once said, there was no line between life and art for old dirty bastard. And though his increasingly troubled life came to Eclipse's art, ODB did make great music. He was Wu-Tang's secret weapon, a blend of drunken old-school R&B and raw gonzo rap,

which had very little precedent in which changed hip-hop forever. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Aft or Stern MK2. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to You Remind Me by Usher. And why would I play you that specific slice of headstand dance cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America. on July 18th, 2001. And that was the day that Old Dirty Bastard was sent to a maximum security state prison,

where he was brutally attacked, set on fire, and nearly died. On this episode, a Ford Mustang, welfare checks, Rottweiler, ski masks, maximum security, and Wu Tang Clan's Old Dirty Bastard. I'm Jake Brennan, and this... This is disgrace land. Russell Jones, the man the world knew as old dirty bastard, sat at a table in a small room with his mother sitting to his right and his lawyer to his left. On the table, a cluster of media microphones was trained in his direction.

On the opposite side of the room, reporters stood next to their video cameras, many of which were already rolling tape. Dirty, aka Russell here, try to look relaxed. He reclined in his chair, his long-sleeved shirt mostly unbuttoned and his hair pulled back in braids. But dirty was far from relaxed. He scanned the room with an anxious glare as his lawyer read from a prepared statement. As you are well aware, a Kings County grand jury voted yesterday to exonerate Russell Jones of all wrongdoing in relation to an incident, alleged to have taken place on January 15, 1999.

Clearly, the incident did not take place as reported by members of the New York City Police Department. Reporters raised their hands. One wanted to know, was he going to file a lawsuit? Yeah, man, he was going to sue the shit out of him. And another reporter asked, was he scared? Was he scared? Would you be scared if you were driving into Chevy Tahoe just making your way through Brownsville on your way to your aunt's house and an unmarked police car with two cops from NYPD Street Crimes Unit?

That's the stop and frisk unit with a rock hard boner to eradicate guns from New York streets, by the way, forces you to pull over for no reason at all. The cops jump out of their car with their weapons drawn, yelling at you like a couple of psychos, and so you roll your window down and say, yo man, don't shoot, it's just me, old dirty bastard, and you got your cell phone in your hand, not knowing that that cell phone is going to come back to haunt you later, and you freak out even more because the cops are walking slowly towards your car, and you think, nah, you know they're going to shoot you,

And you can't help but think about Biggie and Tupac. Both shot in the street, just like this, both dead. So you panic. Your nerves get the best of you. You get the gas, man. You just fucking floor it. And those two cops, they do start shooting. Blam!

Blam! Blam! Holy shit! Eight bullets pierced the back of your car. Your heart is racing. And then those two cops lie in their report and say, you shot at them first. That the cell phone you held in your hand was not a cell phone, but a gun. And now you're charged with attempted murder.

of a police officer. Yeah, he's scared. He answered the reporter's stupid question as succinctly as he could. I'm scared like a motherfucker. For 30 years counting, he'd been getting scared. It happened gradually. Those 30 years had built up to this, to this strange place he now found himself. Simultaneously, one of hip-hop's biggest names and one of law enforcement's biggest targets. His wild eyes and his fucked up teeth. The way he jumped on the mic like a gonzo, a biz marquee, half singing like a shit-faced R&B crooner and half rapping like the guy had been cooped up in a basement for days. To some, he was fearless, and to others he was unhinged. But old dirty bastard was not Russell Jones. Dirty was a character, a persona. Being dirty was Russell's job. Dirty was a conduit for all the bad

shit that built up inside him. The five percenters taught you to build, as in add on to your life, as in the eighth supreme number, that the more positive your build is, the more negativity you can push out of your life. But now, in 1999, despite Wu-Tane's phenomenal success for Russell Jones, he was building in the wrong direction. There was so much bad shit to deal with that sometimes it felt like he'd be dirty forever. Back in the day, in the 70s, growing up in the Brooklyn Zoo, it wasn't like this.

Life back then was more stable. Unlike any other member of Utaim, both of Russell's parents lived at home when he was young. They both worked and they both loved music. Marvin, Otis, Aretha, Jimmy, all kinds of R&B and rock and roll. It provided a soundtrack to the Jones household. Russell, or Rusty, as he was known then, sang with his sister to entertain party guests. And he made his own music with his cousins, Bobby Diggs and Gary Grice, aka the Rizza and the Jizzah, respectively. But when they weren't watching Kung Fu movies at the Deuce and Times Square

are hustling apples at a fruit stand in Brooklyn, just like Rizza and Jizzah Russell got himself a 5% name too. Hassan unique, like a son unique. That's S-O-N because there was no father to his wild side. But in the mid-1980s, life as Russell knew it changed. His parents split up. The once stable Jones family home wobbled on its foundation. Russell tried to find stability in a new family by marrying his high school sweetheart. But with three young children of their own and money nearly non-existent,

they were forced to move into a homeless shelter. Then Russell and Bobby started to hustle more than just apples. In 1991, out in Steubenville, Ohio, they thought they could pave a path out of poverty by peddling dope from New York. And they were wrong. Russell's tenure as a dealer was shorter than Bobby's. He was pinched early on into their Midwest venture and returned back east. But not long after that boondoggle, life as Russell knew it changed once again. This time, for the better.

He changed his name from Aeson Unique to Old Dirty Bastard, taken from a kung fu movie called Old Dirty. and the bastard. Old represented his love of old school music. Dirty was a reflection of his raw gutter poetry and bastard, well, there remained no direct lineage for his style. For Dirty and the other members of Wutang, the group was meant to be a positive build, a lifeline thrown into the sea of despair they were all drowning in, a way to get safely to a prosperous shore. And in many ways, it was. But Wutang took Russell Jones from the Bushley, to the majors. And if you want to play in the majors, you do what the All-Stars do.

Not 40s of Old English, by the way, which was Russell's intoxic and choice up to this point. All-Stars did cocaine. Cocaine separated the men from the boys. Richard Pryor and Rick James, they did cocaine. And that sacred powder which inspired the creative minds of many a genius. Cocaine was meant to make Russell free to unlock the deepest pockets of his creative well. Instead, it was a lightning rod for all the bad shit. Russell, doing blow, was like Russell, looking in the mirror and saying,

Old Dirty bastard three times. Sometimes it made him paranoid. Other times, it made him hyper aware that people really were after him. The hardest thing was telling the difference between the two. November 16th, 1994, Brooklyn, late. Dirty looked over his shoulder as you walked down the street. alone. The car behind him had been following him for a few blocks, and he didn't know who was bound to wheel, and he didn't want to know. He just wanted to get away, to break free. He darted

into the backyard of a house nearby and hid. He kept very still, and the car idled for a moment, and then the engine rumbled and it drove off. Thank God that was over. Then he heard another low rumble, this one coming from just feet away. Three Rottweilers, stepped out of the shadows, teeth bared, saliva dripping. Dirty was shaking. He spotted a doggie door at the base of the house's back door, and in his altered and panic state of mind. He surmised that if he could only make it inside the house through that doggy door,

then he could get himself to safety. He bolted. He ran faster than he'd ever run in his life, and the dogs gave chase. And their jaws nipped at his heels as he dropped to all fours and shuffled his way past the flap and inside. Then the home's owner awoken by the dog's frantic barking, shrieked his dirty barrel past her.

She picked up her phone and dialed 911 while Dirty bounded up her stairs to the second floor, Rottweilers in hot pursuit. Upstairs, he made it inside a room and slammed the door shut behind him, and the dogs were scratching at the door with their claws and raming it with their heads. And Dirty ran to the window and threw open the sash. The cold November air rushed in.

He climbed to the window like he just climbed through the doggie door and jumped. He landed on the lawn below, and he could still hear the dogs, and then he heard the sirens. The ones the homeowner had just called, blue lights getting closer, was always something. If it wasn't strange people in cars, it was dogs. And if it wasn't dogs, it was cops. Everyone was after him. Everything made him scared.

Five years later, in 1999, at the press conference where his lawyer announced that the NYPD were dropping their attempted murder charge, dirty sense of fear and paranoia reached a fever pitch. U-Tang don't be fucking with nobody, so don't fuck with us, he nervously told the rumor of reporters. And that goes for the FBI, the CIA, and all y'all motherfuckers. Stay off our backs. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of the Girlfriends Oh my God, this is the same man A group of women discover They've all dated the same prolific con artist

I felt like I got hit by a truck I thought how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care So they take matters into their own hands I said oh hell no I vowed I will be his last target He's gonna get what he deserves Listen to the Girlfriends

Trust me babe on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters.

He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them, changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do.

You know, you look back at it, and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. February, 1998, Brooklyn. The girl couldn't move.

She was pinned beneath the Ford Mustang, the engine running hot against her skin. She smelled gasoline and thought she could hear the sound of flames crackling. She was terrified. She cried out for help. She could hear her mother somewhere nearby screaming, my baby. Where's my baby? And the girl was only four years old. And just seconds prior, she was crossing Fulton Street when the Mustang came out of nowhere.

Fast. She had no time to react. and the car hit her straight on. She rolled up onto the Mustang's hood and bounced off as if she were weightless. And it all happened so quickly that she wasn't even sure how she ended up like this, lying flat on the pavement. And the hulk of burning steel that had just smashed into her now crushing her like a buck. She didn't know what to do.

And she tried to wriggle free, but it was useless. She cried some more. Her heart pounding in her throat, and the flames getting louder now and the heat searing. And then she heard another. voice. Come on, come on, we can lift this car. The voice got closer, and soon she could see about a dozen sets of hands gripping the car and pulling it into the air, and the Mustang rose. She saw a bunch of faces, one face in particular, the face of the man who rallied a group of bystanders on the street to save a four-year-old stranger seconds away from death, and she knew who he was.

Everyone in the neighborhood knew him. He went by many names, Osiris, Dirt McGirt, Big Baby Jesus, Asaun unique, his mom called him Rusty. But to this little girl, he was a hero. The story of how old dirty bastard saved a girl trapped under a car is the stuff of legend. But it is also 100% true. After all, as Dirty himself wants to succinctly put it, Wu-Tang is for the children. And that random act of kindness wasn't so random to Dirty's neighborhood.

To most, he was already a local hero. He was a hero because he didn't let the same. excessive Wutanko to his head. He stayed humble and down to earth. He gave money to strangers on the street. He paid for people's groceries at the bodega if they were short on change. He bought his mom a house and gave his dad money for a down payment. Yet despite all that, not everyone saw him as a positive force. In 1994, ODB became the most famous abuser of the welfare system at a time when U.S. President Bill Clinton was pushing for massive welfare reform. Dirty received a $45,000 advance from Elektra Records for his first solo album

returned to the 36 Chambers, the Dirty version. Dirty had an MTV crew follow him as he took a limo to pick up and cash his $375 welfare check. The loophole, of course, was that he had yet to file his taxes and was still collecting welfare based on pre-fame income. You know how hard it is for people to live with nothing, Dirty ass during the MTV news segment? You owe me 40 acres in a mule anyway. For real, I'm in this rap game to get money.

I got babies. It's time to take care of my babies. I didn't think it would work, but it worked, and we got food stamps. Slick Willie, Bubba, Bill Clinton called for welfare overhaul, but dirty was slicker. He used his welfare card as the cover art of his solo debut, which sold 81,000 copies in its first week and peaked at number seven on the Billboard 2. My man's living it, Risa told Rolling Stone magazine when asked about the realness of his cousin. There's no line between art and life for him.

But soon, the art took a back seat to the life. At first, the arrests were minor but plentiful, petty larceny, bar fights. Then in 1998, the same year he saved the four-year-old girl, he was charged with second-degree harassment of his wife, endangering the welfare of their children and failing to pay child support. He threatened to kill members of security at the House of Blues in L.A. after he caused a disturbance and was asked to leave. From the next year, in 1999, he was pulled over in his range rover, arrested for three vials of crack. And two months later, DejaVu, another traffic stop, another stash of crack seized by police. And two months after that, he was stopped again after he ran a red light and a red convertible Mercedes.

Cop searched the car, finding 20 glassene envelopes with more than 500 milligrams of cocaine. Pondyne Possession with intent to sell. These are merely a few examples of his many transgressions. All in all, Dirty was arrested 10 times in the span of a few months. In November of 1999, he was sentenced for crimes he committed in California, which included the House of Blues incident as well as for wearing a bulletproof vest, which under California law was illegal for quote-unquote violent felons. He got three years probation, a $500 fine, and 12 months in rehab.

Dirty's illegal extracurricular activities cut into his time with Wu-Tang. And when the group's third album, the W, dropped in 2000, ODB was featured on just one song. He did manage to appear at a Wu-Tang show in New York City that same year thanks to a weekend furlough granted by his California rehab facility. The show was a big deal. It was the first time in three years that all members of Wu-Tang had appeared on stage together. Rizzo made sure the crowd knew what they were seeing. History.

But even historical moments such as those were fleeting. As soon as the show ended, the group splintered apart yet again. Dirty, however, didn't go where he was supposed to. He didn't honor the terms of his furlough and head back to California and back to rehab. Instead, ODB went AWOL. He walked right out of the Hammerstein ballroom, right past security, past NYPD, past the minders from out west who were supposed to be monitoring him. Dirty was gone.

From Manhattan, he went to the Bronx, and from the Bronx he went to Jersey, from a safe house in Willemborough to a home in Florence Revelling on the Pennsylvania border surrounded by trees, where birdsong was carried on the wind. It was peaceful, but dirty couldn't chill. Not even here, not even out in the woods. He thought about the people who were surely looking for him, cops, doctors. He thought about other times when he thought he was safe, like that time just a year ago,

when he was violently woken up from a deep sleep by men in schemes, who had broken into the house he was staying in. They shoved a gun in his face and took his jewelry, and then they shot him point-blank. He could still see their eyes peering out from the holes in the mass. But it wasn't just their eyes. He had the eyes of the whole world on him, bearing down like a two-ton Ford Mustang, crushing him, searing into his flesh, into his very soul. If it wasn't strangers in cars or thieves with ski-mask or dogs or cops, it was trees.

The fucking trees. So, he went back on the road, not with Wu-Tang, but with some friends who were picking up a car across the Delaware and Philly. The city made him more nervous than he expected. His senses were heightened, especially his sense of danger. As soon as they got there, he regretted it. He wanted to be back in the middle of nowhere, back in the New Jersey boonies. His friends said, nah man, you wanted to come with. You got to wait for us to do our third.

thing. But Dirty was insistent. Something was off. Philly wasn't right. They had to go back. Now. So they did. They were almost to the Walt Whitman Bridge when Dirty told him to stop the car. He had to piss. He couldn't wait. And they pulled over to McDonald's and Dirty went inside, hit the head, came out, stomach, rumbling. Falaia fish sounded real good right about now. He looked up at the menu and he lingered for too long. Oh shit. Is that old Dirty bastard? Fuck, some kid and lied made him. But this wasn't the neighborhood in Brooklyn where Dirty was a hero.

This was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was a fugitive. So, time to go. Get in the car, get across the bridge, hide out with the birds and the trees. But Dirty wasn't fast enough. Philadelphia PD was faster. They rolled up, two cars, blocking the car Dirty was in before it could even leave the parking lot. And he couldn't move. He needed someone to come along and save him like he had.

save that little girl, but no one was coming. It was dirty against the world, and the world was winning. We'll be right back after this world, word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm And in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always,

can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a career. like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises.

And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yello I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things.

Tena, Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien.

And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells,

running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. There wasn't much that the Rizzo wouldn't do for his cousin, old dirty bastard.

From the jump, they had a special bond. They cut school to catch Kung Flu Flicks at the deuce. They stood lookout for each other while applying a five-finger discount at stores on Staten Island. And they beatboxed and rhymed on mixed tapes along with their other cousin, the Jizzah. From Brooklyn to Steubenville to Shaolin, from the humiliating depths of poverty to the upper echelons of popular culture. Dirty scared some people, but Rizza knew the dude was just eccentric. Rizzo loved Dirty like a brother.

Rizza had Dirty's back. So, when Dirty called Rizza from a prison and said, Yo, man, you gotta come up here. They're gonna kill me, man. You gotta come up here now and break me out of this place. Rizza seriously contemplated it for a moment. For real. Rizzo played out a jailbreak in his mind.

The ins, the outs, the what-ifs. Of course it was a crazy idea, a stupid idea. Rizza put that kind of criminal behavior behind him long ago, but he could hear pure fear and desperation in Dirty's voice. The fear was as raw as Dirty's libidinous mind when he held a mic. Rizzo wanted to help somehow. So he brought attention to Dirty's plate with a note on Wutang's website. The note read,

Old Dirty Bastard fears his life is in jeopardy and that a conspiracy is in effect to kill him. These concerns have been presented to the D.A. in prison effects. have been alerted to the threat to his life. None of these state officials have given any regard to this matter. If something happens while ODB is in the custody of these officials, his family, his 13 children, and Wu-Tang will seek full retribution in a civil resolution. It was the summer of 2001.

Dirty was in Danamara, aka Clinton Correctional Facility, aka Little Siberia, so named for the prison's cold and remote location some 300 miles north of the city. north of the city. Little Siberia, his old dirty bastards, knew maximum security home for the next two to four years. Two to four was better than eight, which is the number of years he originally faced for his laundry list of offenses, including the 20 glassene envelopes of coke he was busted

with. After he was nabbed in Philadelphia while on the lamb from rehab, Dirty copped a plea deal and got a reduced sentence. Like a number, though, would make a difference. Two, four, eight, It didn't matter. He knew he'd be lucky the last one year in this place. Little Siberia was no safer than life on the outside. It was more of the same. More paranoia, more terror. But now, just concentrated.

Dirty was that rare breed of inmate. Not just a target. He was a hip-hop megastar who thought he was actually a thug. An art imitates life kind of dude. And that was fucking rich. Just as rich as he was. Look at this welfare want to be fuck-mugging for the cameras while collecting a state check and a stretch job.

He didn't know the first thing about thug life. Real thug life. Little Siberia would show him. Little Siberia was hell. Little Siberia was worse than hell. This was worse than getting shot at by the NYPD. Worse than getting clipped by crazy fuckers and ski masks or chased by bloodthirsty Rottweilers.

Dana Moore wanted what dirty had. Money. clout, fame. Every hardened inmate wanted to be the one who out-crazed Wu-Tang's craziest member, the one who put him in his smirking punk ass in his place. The attacks were routine, and they were violent and quick. The guards turned a blind eye, paid off for simply beyond caring. One inmate smashed Dirty's face bloody with a telephone receiver.

Some other dudes pounced on him when he wasn't looking, fucked him up real good, and then snapped his leg in half. And when he wasn't getting beat down, he was getting threatened to get beat down. And they told him not to close his eyes at night, because if he fell asleep, they were going to set his bunk on fire and burn him alive. Dirty was terrified. Things were spiraling out of control. He was at the mercy of prison gangs, the most violent human beings he'd ever encountered in his life. Mercy wasn't even in their lexicon.

He needed to do something if he was going to survive. He needed to get himself as far away from everyone else as he possibly could. He wouldn't let them have the satisfaction. So old dirty bastard lit himself on fire. The stunt got him immediately pulled from the general population, which was exactly what he wanted. But this stunt classified him as mentally unstable. Prison staff put him on halidol,

an antipsychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia. And he gained weight, and he had a hard time walking. And his movements were labored and clunky, and his jaw clenched shut on its own. He was catatonic, a shell of his former self wrapped in an expanding husk. And when he was finally released from prison, after nearly two years on the inside, old Dirty Bastard had changed. And so too had the world. May 1st, 2003, was the day Dirty became a free man again.

He'd spent 18 months at Little Siberia, followed by another three months at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center. And now it was time to start over, start fresh. It was time, as the 5% elders would say, to work on his build. Let the positive push out the negative. But he faced this challenge in a city that no longer looked the same. The twin towers of the World Trade Center have been reduced to rubble.

Run DMC's Jam Master Jay have been shot dead in his studio in Queens. The New York Police Department's street crimes unit, the one that accused Dirty of attempted murder in 1999 had been dismantled. And Dirty's group, Wu-Tang Clan, had moved on without him. In December of 2001, when Dirty was doing time at Dantamora, Wutang released their fourth studio album, Iron Flag. It was the first Wu-Tang record that didn't feature old Dirty Bastard at all. Also absent, for the most part, was Capadonna, who, by this point, was seen by some the group as traitorists following his association with Michael Caruso. The so-called Al Capone of Rays turned personal manager who have been secretly acting as an informant for the federal government. Iron Flag, though received positively by many critics and certified gold a little over a month after its release, did not do as well on the charts as previous Wu-Tang albums.

It debuted at only number 32 on the Billboard 200. 27 spots lower than the W had placed one year prior. Dirty wasn't worried about the charts, or about Wutang. Dirty was just worried about himself, his build. Dirty needed to protect his neck. He needed to make it. He'd already made it through an extremely traumatizing, nearly two-year prison term.

Just barely, but he did. So in theory, that meant he could make it through anything. Money helped, money, talked. Rizza offered up 500K, a place to crash, and a studio to start making music again. But JZ's label talked louder. Rockefeller records offered one million bucks for Dirty to sign on the dotted line. In order to sign with Rockefeller, however,

Dirty had to be let go of his contractual obligations with Rizza and Wutang productions. Rizza didn't want to let Dirty go. Rizzo didn't want to let any of them go, But one by one, Ray, meth, ghost, deck, U-god, master killer, they all came to Riza and asked to be set free. All except Jiza who did handshakes and not ink on paper, but I digress. They didn't want out of the group. Wu-Tang was forever. Wu-Tang would always be there and they would all come back to it, back to Shaolin in one way or another.

No matter how big their egos got or how crazy their solo careers became. What they wanted was to get out of their contracts. The 50-50 contracts they'd signed with Riza way back in 1993 as part of Wutei's groundbreaking deal with loud records. Riza's brother and business partner, Devine, really didn't want to let anyone walk. To Devine, this wasn't a personal matter. Put your love in your back pocket, he allegedly told Ghostface.

This is business. And in business terms, letting all these guys leave would go down as the worst move in hip-hop history. He didn't just let $40 million waltz out the door. But in the Rizza's eyes, it was personal. As he later explained, he didn't think it was fair to keep his brothers in bondage if they wanted to be free.

Their freedom meant more to him than the bottom line. Now, it wasn't that simple and that beautiful. Riza, of course, is a brilliant businessman as he is a brilliant producer, an MC, and Rangler of personalities. Many Wutang members have said that they had to fight Riza and Devine to get free. And there's a sense that Rizza's Kumbaya narrative was constructed after the fact. Regardless, though, everyone got what they wanted. They were free, and Dirty even got his Rockefeller deal.

For fans, it seemed like it was the beginning of the end. The dissolution of hip-hop's greatest dynasty. But non-fans of the group. And I'm talking specifically about the NYPD, the ATF, the FBI, the collective of law enforcement agencies that have been trying to mount a RICO prosecution against Wu-Tang for years, they all knew this wasn't the end.

The law wasn't that naive. They'd seen mafia families splinter apart exactly like this. It never stemmed the tide of crime. It merely made more waves. Violent clashes for power that painted New York streets with blood. Corruption beget more corruption.

So the FBI didn't let up. Their file on the Wu-Tang got larger. and their list of CEOs got longer. They kept watching, kept waiting, knowing that at any moment, something would happen to blow their case wide open. I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of Disgraceland is to be continued.

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