It's safe to say that hip-hop has never seen an album like Ol' Dirty Bastard's 1995 solo debut Return to
the 36 Chambers. The brief glimpses of ODB's unhinged genius provided by Wu-Tang Clan's landmark
Enter the Wu-Tang album two years earlier were begging to be expanded on to a larger canvas, and,
with RZA guiding production, the album promised to give Dirty the creative license to make one of the
most bizarre, entertaining and original LPs in hip-hop history. With his raspy, drunken flow and dark
sense of humor, Dirty fearlessly attacks from all angles, throwing himself fearlessly into punchy rhyme
attacks ("Damage," with GZA), drugged-out party jams (the monster singles "Brooklyn Zoo" and
"Shimmy Shimmy Ya") and bizarre, grimly hilarious fantasies of sex and violence ("Don't U Know" and
the R&B-tinged "Sweet Sugar Pie").
