4 Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Brooklyn Zooīuilt around an agitated sample from Bobby Ellis’s rocksteady staple Step Softly, the late ODB’s gloriously aggressive 1995 debut solo single finds him stepping anything but softly on the track.
Where earlier rap icons Big Daddy Kane and LL Cool J had come undone with their saccharine forays into romance rap, the Ticallion Stallion successfully showed us his sensitive side without taking off his Timberlands. And just like Meth’s relationship, the track (in both of its remixes: this version overseen by RZA which accompanied the heavily played video and the radio version handled by Puff at the top of his game) worked in the face of all obstacles.
With co-star Mary J Blige (who’d also lend her soulful pipes to Ghostface Killah’s All That I Got Is You the following year), offering a haunting interpolation of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s 1968 duet You’re All I Need to Get By, Meth pays tribute to the low-maintenance love of his life, a down-since-day-one type who still revs his engines ( “I got a Love Jones for your body and your skin tone/ Five minutes alone, I’m already on the bone”) and who‘s loyal enough to dress demurely if he’s ever incarcerated. Blessed with a husky, blunt-addled voice, agile wordplay and rugged good looks, the MC had spread his street-corner charisma liberally across Enter …, notably on his own, self-titled solo track, and this 1995 hit perfectly harnessed his rugged-yet-smooth appeal. That Meth was the first member of the Wu to release a solo album – 1994’s The Tical – was hardly surprising. Released in May 1993 on Loud Records after a DIY pressing the previous year earned the crew a Killa Bee buzz, the Wu’s opening salvo – featured on their instant classic album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) – was the perfect east coast antidote to Dre and Snoop’s crisp G-funk or, as GZA would put it, “the dirtiest thing in sight”.ģ Method Man ft Mary J Blige – I’ll Be There For You/You’re All I Need to Get By (Razor Sharp remix) With eight distinctive voices (an incarcerated Masta Killa had yet to sign up) ravaging an RZA track powered by that trusty trumpet glissando from the JB’s The Grunt, quotable lines abound, from Method Man’s playful Irene Cara impression to GZA’s bitter takedown of his unappreciative former label Cold Chillin’ and the wider music industry henceforth “a mountain climber who plays an electric guitar” was the de facto stereotype of the clueless A&R. From the second Inspectah Deck attacks his opening verse ( “I smoke on the mic like smokin’ Joe Frazier/ The hellraiser, raising hell with the flavour”), it’s easy to see why the clued-up radio caller at the song’s start is desperate for a repeat fix of the debut single from the mysterious, kung fu-crazy Staten Island crew.
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