How Ol’ Dirty Bastard heroically saved a four-year-old girl
Ol’ Dirty Bastard has a strange legacy. He was highly respected as a rapper, and his style brought excitement and shone a light on a different way of approaching hip-hop. His flow was dynamic, with strange inflexions, unusual cadences and cartoonish intonations. However, his legacy is often tainted by the serious drug use that ultimately took his life.
That said, many previously unknown stories about him have come to light since his death, and one particularly took hip-hop by surprise. Decades after his death, People magazine reported that, while he was alive, the late Wu-Tang Clan member saved the life of a 4-year-old girl who was nearly killed.
The incident occurred in 1998 when Maxine Lovell and her daughter Maati found themselves in deep trouble. Lovell’s daughter, Maati, was only four at the time, but while she was on a walk with her older sister, she was hit by a car, which left her stuck under a ’96 Ford Mustang.
In an interview, Lovell recalled the incident, remembering, “Maati was nowhere! I couldn’t find her. And I kept saying, ‘Where’s my daughter? Where’s my daughter? Where’s my daughter?’ And everybody said, ‘Under the car.’ When I bent down, all I saw was her. And she wasn’t crying; she wasn’t screaming, but when she saw me, then she screamed.”
She continued, “Some brothers came from out of nowhere. They lifted the car. Someone slid [Maati] from underneath. She didn’t cry, and she didn’t scream. She didn’t know what had happened to her. But when she saw my face, she started wailing.”
One of the “brothers” who helped save Maati’s life was the legendary Ol’ Dirty Bastard. The ‘Brooklyn Zoo’ emcee noticed something was wrong after he heard and saw a commotion outside Papa Wu’s Brooklyn Sounds recording studio on Fulton Street.
During an interview with Howard Stern, Ol’ Dirty Bastard addressed his heroic actions and explained, “I just stopped my car in the middle of the street, and I ran towards the car. Like, what’s goin’ on? Everybody’s talkin’ so fast and movin’ so fast, it’s like [a] spontaneous reaction.”
Beyond just a spontaneous reaction, Maati’s mother revealed that the emcee even kept in contact with them to make sure everything was alright, unveiling in an interview, “He kept checking [on us] — he didn’t just leave it like that, and I told him, ‘Anytime you need to talk, call me.’ So he would call me and tell me things that were in his head.”
Maati revealed that she was forever grateful for Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s actions and was extremely sad when she saw the news that he had passed away in 2004 after an accidental drug overdose.