Ol' Dirty Bastard dies

Why it matters

The autopsy on Ol' Dirty Bastard, completed in mid-December 2004, attributed his death to an accidental overdose of cocaine and the prescription painkiller tramadol. He had collapsed in a Manhattan recording studio. He had been there to work on a comeback album. This is the second death of a Wu-Tang member, after the long arc of legal and personal trouble that had dominated ODB's late career. He had been in prison, on the run from prison, in court-ordered drug treatment, and back in prison again, mostly between 1997 and 2003. He had also kept making music throughout, the difficulty of his life never quite stopping the voice from coming out the way it did. The studio he died in was for sessions on A Son Unique, the comeback record that would, in fragments, be released posthumously. Wu-Tang never reunited as the original nine after he was gone. There has never been another voice in commercial rap like his voice. You can put on "Brooklyn Zoo" right now and the voice will still surprise you. That is the part that does not age.