The new documentary on the life of Ol’ Dirty Bastard reveals how “correct” the late rapper was about the cops being after him and the Wu-Tang Clan.
A&E’s “Ol’ Dirty Bastard: A Tale of Two Dirtys” was released on Aug. 25 and goes deeper into ODB’s (real name Russell Tyrone Jones) wariness of the government and how accurate he ended up being, People reports. The documentary highlights the rapper’s mistrust of the police decades before a Freedom of Information Act request revealed the 95-page FBI file the New York Police Department was using to pin a RICO prosecution against the Wu-Tang Clan.
“He would literally come to my record company office twice a week with a record out, not a record out, so he could just relax,” music executive Steve Rifkind says of ODB in the documentary. “I don’t know if that was the drugs, drinking, the pressure of his life…. I thought it was the paranoia, but he was really having some real issues.”
“I called some people, and that’s when I realized the cops, they were definitely looking at him,” he adds.
The documentary outlines some of the NYPD’s investigative work at the time, including its Enterprise Operations Unit (referred to in the film as the “hip-hop police”), which kept a close watch on local influential rappers. ODB would be leaving his home to attend concerts when he would get pulled over by police.
“Dirt was one of those guys like, ‘Yo, the government is on us.’ They gon’ try to kill me like this, they gon’ try to kill me like that,’” Wu-Tang’s Ghostface Killah recalls in the film.
Journalist S. H. Fernando Jr. appears in the documentary and confirms how “correct” ODB was about the government watching him and his group members.
“People think that Dirty was crazy or drugs were making him paranoid or whatever,” Fernando says. “But he actually did have a legitimate concern that the feds were after him. He knew that he was on the radar of law enforcement.”
“They had been following Wu-Tang for years,” he adds.
ODB died of a drug overdose in November 2004 at 35. Eight years later, the FBI’s five-year file on Wu-Tang Clan from 1999 to 2004 was revealed. In 2016, VICE discovered that the file included “inflammatory allegations” that accused the legendary hip-hop group of racketeering. However, no charges were ever filed against any Wu-Tang members.
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