Album: Nigga Please
Release Date: September 4, 1999
Producers: The Neptunes (tracks 1, 3 and 4), Irv Gotti (2, 5, 7), RZA (8, 10, 13), et al.
Review: Where to begin? With working titles like God Made Dirt and Dirt Don't Hurt and The Black Man is God; White Man is the Devil - not to mention a cover of Rick James' "Cold Blooded" and the Wu's second guest appearance by Chris Rock - it's a safe bet the audience is in for a wild ride for Nigga Please's 47 minutes. This is clearly ODB at his wildest, his most unleashed - and it basically, more or less, just about, kinda pays off.
Chris Rock goofs on the rapper's name in the Neptunes-produced "Recognize" before the hook, which is the first real draw on the album. ODB raps and sings the first two lines and The Neptunes come in falsetto for the last two lines, the comically self-aggrandizing "Mr. Courageous ODB / Ya need to recognize he's a P-I-M-P." This is followed by "I Can't Wait," which features the tag "Big Baby Jesus, I can't wait / Nigga fuck that I can't wait" a full 22 times. It's a bit taxing, and features some of ODB's most awkward rhymes: "Bitch take off your shoes / Take up the brew / Motherfucker you knew / Fuckin' with the doo / Dirt Dog don't make any room." Fortunately its sins are washed away by the entertaining cover of "Cold Blooded," because Dirty's singing voice has only ever wavered between unpredictably entertaining and genuinely soulful.
The bouncing "Got Your Money" follows and reminds me of some of the best/tightest sounds on Return to the 36 Chambers, as Dirty slips through his verses with the playful upbeat-hitting silliness of Slick Rick. "You Don't Want to Fuck with Me," produced by DL, provides a real classic Wu sound - it's just a shame it couldn't be used for some of ODB's tighter lyrics. What we get instead are the album's loosest, most scrambling and X-rated lyrics (that include ODB burping after a line about licking girls' assholes). The wonky tracks 5-7 are, thankfully, followed by the RZA-produced title track, "Nigga Please."
"Nigga Please" brings a funk-inspired beat with guitar chord loops and big brass to accompany several tight verses by Dirt. Songs like this are my favorite representation of the late emcee - wild without a doubt and maybe insane, but brilliant. You can't help but laugh and go along with ODB when he spits lines like "I'm immune to all viruses / I get the cocaine, it clears out my sinuses" and "Kill all the government microchips in my body / I'm the paranoid nigga at ya party." His drug habits were well known his entire life, and he admitted in interviews that he believed the government had planted microchips in him.
The album loses focus a second time with the forgettable "Dirt Dog" followed by, ahem, "I Want Pussy." On the latter track, Dirty sings a hook built around the song's title before and after a 15-second "verse," ending with a minute of Dirty saying "My momma cannot protect y'all." It's not much to work with, and feels more like an outtake than a real song, despite the moody RZA beat. Just like before, these lackluster tracks are followed by a favorite - this time, it's the cover of "Good Morning Heartache," a duet of ODB and Lil' Mo.
The listed closer is "All in Together Now," which is produced wonderfully by True Master and finds ODB under control and performing comfortably. Admittedly, its title comes from a song of the same name by a pre-Wu group made up of RZA, GZA and ODB, so some hardcore Wu fans may be a bit disappointed not to hear the former two members on the track, but it's a great ending followed by the Return to the 36 Chambers-esque banger "Cracker Jack."
My lasting impression of this album is that it's ODB loosed entirely from whatever restraints he had in the mid-'90s, which results in seven fantastic songs and six that range from lukewarm to forgettable. As much as I love those half-dozen tracks scattered throughout the album, I found myself as eager to move onto the Method Man / Redman collaboration Blackout!, released just two weeks later, as I had been to get more familiar with Nigga Please in the first place. Hardly a love letter to the album.
Legacy: As the final proper album released before Ol' Dirty's death in 2004, Nigga Please is bittersweet. Let me explain. In 2001, Elektra rushed out The Dirty Story (a greatest hits compilation from his two albums with them) to help them escape their contract with the artist, who they found to be more trouble than he was worth. The year later, in 2002, The Trials and Tribulations of Russell Jones came out and some call it ODB's "third album," but I'm reminded of The Dirty Story because of the content. The vast majority of songs are skits from MTV interviews, remixes of past songs featuring ODB (like Wu-Tang's "Reunited" and "Dog Shit" and ODB's "Baby C'mon," "Damage" and "Brooklyn Zoo II") and so on - all thrown together while ODB was on the run from the law. Only three songs of its 18 are arguably "new/original" tracks, so I neither believe it's his "third studio album" nor did I include it on the Map. Then Dirty died of a drug overdose in November 2004 while in the studio finishing his next LP, alternately titled Dirt McGirt and A Son Unique. This last album was accidentally released for one day by iTunes and leaked across the internet in years since. So in the grand scheme of his solo career, Ol' Dirty Bastard's only two properly-released LP's in his lifetime are Return to the 36 Chambers and Nigga Please - the first phenomenal, the second a decent follow-up that lies somewhere in quality between Bobby Digital in Stereo and Beneath the Surface. I personally found that A Son Unique is so damn good it negates the flaws of Nigga Please just how some of Please's tracks make up for its lukewarm tracks, but since A Son Unique failed to obtain a wide release, the water-treading Nigga Please is the final note of a life cut short. Like a microcosm of his life, it's an off-kilter and utterly unique image of a man too wild for the everyday world.
Recommended Tracks: "Got Your Money," "Nigga Please."
Next Week: Method Man & Redman - Blackout!
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