The Wu-Tang Clan member who Method Man claimed stole most of his verses
Ol’ Dirty Bastard was as erratic a rapper as he was a person, with his flow being entirely impossible to predict or imitate. His rapping was unorthodox, but according to his Wu-Tang Clan bandmate, Method Man, he didn’t actually write many of his lines; he just made other people’s lyrics his own.
Speaking to Complex in 2011, Meth recalled that ODB’s debut solo album, Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, took a long time to finish, before its eventual release in 1995. Dirty worked at “a snail’s pace”, according to Meth, and he didn’t even pen many of the lines he rapped on the album.
“The majority of the verses on that album are old RZA rhymes and GZA rhymes,” Meth claimed, “‘Approach the school, 9:30, you’re late’, that’s RZA’s shit, I heard that shit when I was 14 years old.”
Meth was referencing the Return to the 36 Chambers song ‘Don’t You Know,’ which GZA also laid claim to during an interview with The Real Hip-Hop in 2019. “If you listen to the rhymes, ‘Sitting at my class at a quarter to 10 / Waiting patiently for the class to begin’,” GZA said, “I was in high school when I wrote that!”
GZA was by no means bitter about the fact ODB had used his rhymes, at least during this interview. He called ODB’s style “different and unique”, and he seemed happy to facilitate that. In turn, on GZA’s own pre-Wu-Tang Clan solo album, Words from the Genius, ODB contributed lines that GZA used. This was how they operated back in the day.
While GZA, speaking in 2019, seemed to be relaxed about ODB having used his rhymes on his debut solo album, Method Man did, in his interview, recount a time when GZA wasn’t quite so easygoing about it. In fact, it seems he threw it in ODB’s face.
“I remember GZA and ODB got in an argument one night,” Meth recalled, “and GZA was like, ‘N*gga most of that shit on your fucking album is mines anyway!’”
Meth, for his part, claimed a piece of ODB’s solo song on Wu-Tang Forever, ‘Dog Shit’, for himself. “The fucking, ‘Calling me a dog / But leave a dog alone / Because nothing can stop me from burying my bones’,” he said, “I wrote that when I was 15 years old.”
It can often be a big deal when a rapper is accused of having stolen or borrowed lines from someone else for their verses, but it feels different in the case of ODB. He may not have written many of his famous lines, but that wasn’t necessarily what he was about. He was a born performer, and nobody could ever hope to match his distinct style.