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Brooklyn Honors Ol' Dirty Bastard With Street Rename

Bed-Stuy finally got its flowers for one of hip-hop's wildest, realest voices.

Putnam Avenue in Brooklyn is now officially ODB Jones Way — and yeah, that's the kind of recognition that actually means something. The Wu-Tang legend got the love he deserved when friends and family gathered to celebrate the rename in his home neighborhood of Bed-Stuy.

ODB was one of hip-hop's most unhinged talents, a dude who refused to play the game by anybody's rules but his own. From that iconic Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) verse that made people go ???, to "Brooklyn Zoo," to showing up to the Grammys in a bathrobe — he was always authentically himself, no matter how much it confused the industry or made suits uncomfortable. That kind of fearlessness doesn't come around much.

Sure, his life was messy and cut short, but the legacy is untouchable. Getting a street named after you in the place where you came up? That's real. That's how communities hold onto their heroes. Wu-Tang is forever, and now so is ODB's mark on Bed-Stuy.

This is what it looks like when a city actually remembers its own.


Read the full story at Billboard → https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/ol-dirty-bastard-bed-stuy-brooklyn-street-name-honor-wu-tang-1236303181/

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