Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version

Every Wu-Tang solo album from the mid-nineties has a clear thesis. Return to the 36 Chambers does not. Released in March 1995, Ol' Dirty Bastard's debut is deliberately unhinged: he sings badly on purpose, laughs mid-verse, abandons rhyme schemes halfway through, and somehow produces one of the most durable rap records of the decade.

"Shimmy Shimmy Ya" is the one everybody knows, a piano loop and a hook so simple it should not work. "Brooklyn Zoo" is the opposite, three and a half minutes of pure aggression over a beat that barely moves, and it remains the definitive ODB performance. "Raw Hide" brings in Method Man and Raekwon. "Goin' Down" and "Drunk Game (Sweet Sugar Pie)" let him sing at length, badly and beautifully. "Cuttin' Headz" closes the record with an old RZA and ODB routine from before either was famous.

RZA produced most of it and the sound is the grimiest of the entire Wu catalogue, all crumbling soul samples and drums recorded like they were down a corridor. There is no other rap album that sounds like this because nobody else would have dared to make one.

This Get On Down reissue presents the album as a double LP on Elektra, licensed through Rhino, with the sequential tracklisting of the original. Still completely singular.