Following excerpt is from "It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation" (M.K. Asante, Jr.)


"The late Russel Tyrone Jones-also known as Joe Bananas, Dirt Mcgirt, Dirt Dog, Ason Unique, Big Baby Jesus, Osirus and most commonly Ol' Dirty Bastard-died frontin'. Much like my brother, ODB spent his adult life dancing between jail, welfare, and stints with rap success. And also like my brother, ODB vehemently denied his middle-class upbringing, and instead promoted a poverty-stricken, dangerous one (as if being Black wasn't enough). In "Caught Up," he raps:

I'm a ghetto n***a dog so I get it how I live
Got Money, lock 'em off, f***ers still I got drama
Got two strike dog and five baby mamas.

"I was furious," said William Jones, ODB's father. "You know, that story about him being raised in the Fort Greene projects on welfare until he was a child of thirteen was a total lie," he added.
When Jones talked to his wife about their son's bogus claims of ghettoship, her response was simple: "he did it for publicity." Of course he did. ODB understood that boasting racist and classist stereotypes about Blacks would reaffirm them in the minds of a largely white consumer market. This would explain the correlation between ODB's run-ins with the law and simultaneous spikes in record sales.

ODB's story reminds us that most artists feel that in order to "make it," they need to portray a stereotypical image that is marketable to white America. As a result, artists like ODB downplay their middle-class origins and artists who are from the ghetto avoid portraying and calling out the savage injustices that created their condition."

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