Album Review: Nigga Please

Russell Jones has always been a loose cannon. But it was the period around this release where the ODB train totally derailed, with Jones ending up in prison (not before leading the FBI a merry dance around the entire United States). I guess we shouldn’t have been too surprised, while his peers in the Wu took on gangster or superhero personas, ODB declared in 1999 that he had renamed himself Big Baby Jesus. Somewhere between insanity and incarceration ODB released this, his second solo long player.

The album opener, Recognize, features Chris Rock serving as a master of ceremonies by announcing that, “This ain’t the young DB / this the old DB / this ain’t the embryo DB.” This is followed by the first of many unintelligible verses from ODB himself. I Can’t Wait continues this trend, ODB has never been exactly coherent, but here he is totally crazed, one can only imagine what the recording sessions must have been like. It initially appears that the track will succumb to hip hop cliché as ODB offers shout outs to Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg as well as other rappers, but the fantastic climax actually has ODB offering shout outs to the army, air force, submarines and Eskimos and thanks them for, “playing my music in the submarines and the boats.” Any doubts as to whether or not ODB has lost the plot are answered on this track.

The album’s best known track is undoubtedly Got Your Money: the song that finally brought The Neptunes a mainstream hit. ODB offers a lovely sentiment at the beginning of the track, “This goes out to all the pretty girls in the world and all the ugly girls too / cos to me you’re pretty anyway.” Before going on to slur one of my favourite ever lines, “I don’t have no trouble with you fucking me / but I’ve got a little problem with you not fucking me.”

Elsewhere, ‘You Don’t Want To Fuck With Me’ is as uncompromising as the title suggests. One can’t help but think that if any other artist performed this song it would be utterly dire. Somehow, ODB makes this a really enjoyable track. The lyrics are disgusting, and at times, you get the impression that ODB is just making the stuff up as he goes along, but nevertheless, he is never anything else than entirely entertaining. The track ends, fittingly, with a belch and some screaming. Elsewhere, ODB offers a garbled cover of Rick James’ Cold Blooded and he croaks and murmurs through the Billie Holliday standard, Good Morning Heartache.

ODB is a man wrought with conflicts, the chorus of Rollin Wit You; “Jesus, I’m rolling wit you” is sandwiched between more profanities than nearly any track I’ve ever heard. Meanwhile, on I Want Pussy, ODB denounces prostitutes claiming somewhat unbelievably, “I want pussy for free / I don’t want none of y’all having my money.” Confusingly, on the finale Cracker Jack, ODB exclaims that, “Girls ain’t pretty to me anymore / cos you ain’t being a real whore.” The album closes with ODB offering some salient advise to the listener, “If you wanna die, you gotta drink my sperm / the other way to die, is eat a can of worms.” I guess the sensible thing to do is not to analyse what Jones is saying too closely.

This is unlike any album I have ever heard. It seems increasingly likely that ODB won’t step back into the studio and record another proper long player (his recent release, The Trials & Tribulations of Russell Jones was little more than a series of recycled verses and shoddy guest raps). If he doesn’t make another album it will be a real shame, because on Nigga Please, ODB is never anything less than 100% entertaining. But if he doesn’t at least he has left us with one wonderfully crazy album.