House of Scorpio. Ol’ Dirty Bastard aka Dirt McGirt aka Osiris artfully incarnated the depraved side of the Scorpio nature. Prone to extremes, Scorpios are always all in - be it in their work, sex, spirituality, or in Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s case, debauchery. The wildest of a set of wild Wu-tang cats, ODB played rap’s drunken monk who took not giving a fuck to a another level. Thirteen children. He collected welfare checks on MTV. Got shot and was found trying to crawl through a doggy door. What appears to most as simply depraved and unconscious behavior was, often times, more like gritty performance art, an operatic battle with shame and self destruction full of larger, more pointed subversion. When he grabbed the mic and interrupted the Grammy Awards to announce that Wu-tang was “for the kids”, it was a classic bit of Scorpio candor. Kanye somehow could not manage the same stunt as gracefully. Scorpio dances with death, is seemingly defeated but then resurrects again. What’s crazy is that Scorpios are high frequency enough to actually aware of the entire process. The fact that he renamed himself Osiris, the Ancient Egyptian god of resurrection, tells you just how much he understood of his own artistic nature. Take this snippet from a 1995 interview with Rob Marriott in Spin for further proof. Propers to Noah23 for seeing this post before I wrote it.
How would you describe your style?
It’s like opera mixed with hardcore hiphop mixed with Patti Labelle mixed with Janis Joplin. It’s all in one. You know how you go to niggas’ shows and you gotta sit there and look? You can’t do that with my music. Your head gonna start shakin’, your feet gonna start tappin’, your back is gonna start archin, then you gonna be in your own world. Then your world is gonna be my world because it’s the same world anyway. That’s why Ol’ Dirty Bastard is gonna rule one day. My next album is gonna be the shit cause I’m singing on the whole shit. Diana Ross and the Supremes shit. Martha and the Vandellas. Tenptation-al type shit.
It’s like you pulling shit out the grave…
The grave! The grave! I’m pulling niggas out the grave!
Bones and all!
Bones and all! You could see Al Green on the stage for a second, then he’ll disappear. Then boom, it’s Dirty again. Then I’ll go into my Patti LaBelle shit. Then I’ll change it up.
What is your mind-set when you perform?
Don’t let anybody get up on stage before me. I get mad. When I’m drunk, I don’t want nobody having that stage. I don’t care who it is — Led Zepplin, Patti LaBelle — I don’t give a fuck who it is. Nobody is fuckin’ with Dirt Bas’.
Does it get you angry when people try to compare you to other rappers?
Yeah. The only niggas that got a similar style is Busta and Biz Markie. Biz Mark is incredible. I know the nigga is incredible because he just like me. He don’t give a fuck. Only difference is that I’m just going deeper into not giving a fuck. But I’m dead-ass serious. I want niggas to actually see what I see and feel what I feel…It’s like a wino in the street: If you want to understand that man you got to sit down and drink with that motherfucker. You can’t just try to talk to that motherfucker - you probably couldn’t get on that nigga’s level.
What was going through your mind when you got shot?
Number one, I got shot. It made me understant that I do only have one life to live and that it can happen to me. And shit happens when you be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bullet went through my back and it came out through my front. It ruptured my spleen, but it didn’t hit no bones or nothing. The doctors don’t even know how that happened, so that’s all praises due to Allah. It just let’s you know that I was meant to be here. And anyway, I wasn’t going nowhere because ain’t nobody taking me off this motherfucker till I’m ready to leave this motherfucker.
Did you ever think you were going to die?
Hell no. I don’t play that dying shit.
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