Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s name is now on a Bed-Stuy block in Brooklyn, where a ceremony officially unveiled ODB Jones Way.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard got his name put on a Brooklyn street this weekend in a ceremony 20-plus years in the making.
A stretch of Putnam Avenue in Bed-Stuy was officially co-named “ODB Jones Way” on July 25. His estate put the ceremony together alongside Brooklyn Council Member Chi Ossé, and ODB’s brother, Ramsey Jones, confirmed that the sign stands at the corner of Franklin and Putnam, on the same block their grandmother calls home.
It really doesn’t get more full circle than that for a Brooklyn legend.
That block already has a mural of his debut album cover, making the corner a full outdoor monument to the man.
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Born Russell Tyrone Jones in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, ODB became one of the most singular voices Hip-Hop has ever produced.
ODB rhymed in a way nobody else could touch, mixing singing and rapping into something that sounded completely improvised and entirely his own. That legacy was cut short on November 13, 2004, when he collapsed at RZA’s recording studio in Manhattan and was pronounced dead at the scene.
He was just two days away from his 36th birthday. AllHipHop broke the news of his death in 2004, and the medical examiner eventually ruled his death an accidental overdose, a lethal mix of cocaine and prescription painkiller tramadol.
Witnesses said he’d been complaining of chest pain before he collapsed.
ODB Jones Way puts him in elite company across the five boroughs.
Brooklyn already honors Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace Way in Bed-Stuy, unveiled in 2019 near where Biggie grew up on St. James Place. Queens dedicated a stretch of Linden Boulevard to Phife Dawg in 2016, while the Bronx named a plaza after Big Pun in 2021.
Staten Island, Wu-Tang’s spiritual home base, even has an entire Wu-Tang Clan District, and MF DOOM’s name graces a block on Long Island.
New York has made it a tradition to write its greatest rappers directly into the city’s geography, and ODB’s legendary antics made him worthy of that honor long before any ceremony happened.
