Milestones: Nigga Please by Ol’ Dirty Bastard
Milestones: Nigga Please by Ol’ Dirty Bastard
The album showcases both sides of ODB’s persona: the comedic, larger-than-life figure and the troubled individual. It's a complex portrait of a man grappling with his demons.
The claim that drugs make good music is hard to refute, considering the list of albums created under the influence of substances. Whether it’s jazz, glam rock, metal, or trap, LSD, alcohol, and the like have been inspiring musicians since the beginning of musical history and will likely continue to do so long after records, CDs, and cassettes have become relics of the past.
Just as drugs can drive artists to new heights, they can also lead to a complete loss of reality, not to mention death. Prominent examples would be Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett and the punk outlaw GG Allin. Ol’ Dirty Bastard doesn’t immediately come to mind, as his debut album is celebrated as a flawless, albeit slightly overexcited, classic of New York. On Nigga Please, however, the Wu-Tang Clan’s oddball was given all the freedom and drugs in the world and let loose in the studio without any filters or reason.
One might even claim that Return to the 36 Chambers is the better album, but ODB’s sophomore effort remains one of the wildest and most interesting hip-hop albums of all time due to its unique sound, making it just as worth listening to.
If we didn’t know better, we could even go so far as to say that with these 13 songs, he laid the foundation for all the stream-of-consciousness and meme rappers of the following decade. Whether it’s Lil B, Viper, or even artists like Lil Uzi or Lil Wayne, they let their thoughts run free once in the booth without thinking twice about what they’re saying. The difference is that some spit out incoherent gibberish while others rap their hearts out. With Nigga Please, ODB finds himself somewhere in between and is beyond any classification.
Chris Rock makes it clear from the intro what we’ve gotten ourselves into with this album: “I’m in the wrong place, at the wrong mothafuckin’ time. With the wrong mothafuckin’ man. The O.D.B., baby.” The smooth Neptunes beat has already lulled us for a while when Dirt Dog suddenly causes the mic to nearly overload for the first time. He’s not rapping the usual braggadocio but rambling incoherently about party mayhem, grandpa’s stinky feet, and numerous cleaning products. The most sensible lines come from Brooklyn Zoo member Zu Keeper, who isn’t listed as a feature anywhere. Pharrell’s sugary hook is then the cherry on top of the Coke cake of absurdity. “This is not a commercial song:” It’s hard to put into words how much the opening line understates it.
But it’s the closing words of “Recognize” that give voice to Russell Tyrone Jones’ drug use. Dead drunk, he pays homage to Rick James, slurring so much that half of it is incomprehensible. “Rick motherfucking James is something out of the ordinary,” he says. One song later, with a cover of James’ “Cold Blooded,” he makes it clear just how special he considers the late soul singer to be.
After “I Can’t Wait,” an incomparably hectic, cocaine-induced race with the beat, Dirty’s reinterpretation of the soul classic seems like one of the biggest musical “fuck yous” of the ‘90s. A “fuck you” to his label and anyone else who thought the New Yorker would play by the known rules after the success of his debut. By now, it’s clear: With Nigga Please, ODB does what he wants, and it’s both impressive and unsettling to watch him do it.
That Dirty can’t sing should be self-evident. Due to the intensity with which he screams into the mic, one hopes his heart doesn’t leap out of his chest the second the beat stops. You want to call a doctor for the man but are too busy hitting the repeat button until you can no longer resist the groove of the Neptunes instrumentation and start yelling along at the top of your lungs.
This effect can be observed in many songs on the LP. Often, you want to skip the song before the chorus on the first listen, only to rap along with every line after the tenth time through. However, the album doesn’t really become more accessible with repeated spins; on the contrary, the more closely you listen, the more grotesque details you discover, such as background burping. At the same time, though, you also realize how absolutely brilliant the productions by the Neptunes and RZA are and how tailored they are to a spiraling ODB.
If “Cold Blooded” hasn’t made it clear enough how little Dirty cares about his label, he makes the point himself on “Rollin’ With You,” not without first asking for a beer: “You white motherfuckers could never, ever take over. You shut the fuck up, and you shut the fuck up.”
On “Gettin’ High,” the rapper may have followed his directive a bit too ambitiously, as he ultimately leaves the stage to his Brooklyn Zoo colleagues. Alongside the previously appearing Zu Keeper, MCs with charming names like 12 O’Clock and Shit Stain step up to the mic. It’s arguably the most conventional song on the album and, thus, the only real miss. However, the mere fact that ODB disappeared from his album for a considerable time underscores its unparalleled character.
The timeout bears fruit on songs like “You Don’t Want to Fuck With Me” and “Nigga Please.” Higher than the ISS, Big Baby Jesus mumbles and screams some of the funniest, most nonsensical, and most offensive lines ever heard on a successful rap album. Want examples? “I don’t answer phones/I’ll never reveal the Wu-Tang secret”; “I’ll have it raining ice drops the size of automobiles”; “I kill all my enemies at birth/Shut the fuck up! Bitch, and let me stick my hands up your skirt.” In between, Dirty mumbles so much that one can only guess what he’s saying.
“I Want Pussy” is the moment when you start to worry about the prematurely deceased rapper seriously. It really sounds, especially in combination with RZA’s absolutely fantastic, hypnotizing beat, like you’re listening to a man who’s losing his mind.
This image briefly calms down again with the surprisingly soulful “Good Morning Heartache,” a much-needed break, only to be reaffirmed with the closer “Cracker Jack.” Between lines like “Bitch you got herpes in ya ass. Every time you fuck a nigga, he dies fast” and “If you wanna die, you gotta drink my sperm. The other way to die, is eat a can of worms,” ODB shouts, “I’m gettin’ hot and touchin’ myself!” Nothing, absolutely nothing, makes any sense here anymore. Even RZA’s minimal boom-bap beat sounds like it’s giving up the ghost. It’s the perfect finale for an album like this.
The fact that an album like Nigga Please could reach number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1999 is absolutely incredible in retrospect. Never since then has a rapper dared to so consistently shit on every expectation and quality standard and been so successful with it. Indeed, “Got Your Money” probably contributed greatly to that. But even the album’s lead single is anything but radio-friendly from today’s perspective. Even a tamed Dirt Dog, at least during the creation of this LP, sounds like a rabid dog verbally lashing out without regard for loss.
Nigga Please is unjustly overlooked. It’s an absolute experience. No other hip-hop album captures the abandon and “no fucks given” attitude of a drug high as perfectly and unfiltered as Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s sophomore effort. It’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes musically questionable, sometimes disturbingly disturbing, and consistently utterly unique. If he hadn’t left us so early, the New York weirdo would be counted among the most exciting voices in New York today.
“Wu-Tang is for the children,” he said back in 1998 at the Grammy Awards. So kids, let this album be a lesson to you: Stay away from drugs. Even Dirty’s role model, Rick James, would probably agree.
Great (★★★★☆)