“Shimmy Shimmy Ya” – Ol’ Dirty Bastard
(Words/music: Robert Diggs Jr. and Russell Jones, available on Return to the 36 Chambers, Elektra 1995)
In the world of the Ol’ Dirty Bastard, “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” plays fairly straightforward. That being said, “straightforward” for the ODB sounds spastic and bizarre to the rest of us. Once you get past his oddities – his declaration for his preference for “rawness,” for example – “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” follows a fairly straightforward structure. Behind that relentless piano loop RZA crafts, ODB repeats himself through most of the track. Unlike some of his more free-associative tracks, “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” gives the impression that Dirt thought about what he wanted to say, specifically a Wu-Tang shout-out, and set out to accomplish it. It has a hazy, almost drunken feel to it as the beat and the piano seem out of sync – the perfect musical accompaniment to an ODB solo track.
Of course, the charm of an ODB solo cut isn’t the cunning wordplay or the masterful production – it’s the personality behind the rhymes. Even in a fairly set routine, ODB makes the track feel like it could fall off its hinges at any given moment. It’s an odd sort of excitement – the way Dirt’s voice rises and falls sounds hypnotic, yet at the same time it sounds inches away from collapsing in on itself. Dirt’s role in the Wu-Tang Clan was to bring the crazy personality among many skilled lyricists, and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” finds him flying the freak flag proudly, even if it’s not his strangest moment.
More on Ol’ Dirty Bastard: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm
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