More Than 20 Years After His Death, ODB Gets a Brooklyn Street Sign

Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s widow, Icelene Jones, second from left, holds an “ODB Jones Way” sign with members of the late rapper’s family during a street co-naming ceremony July 25, 2026, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. The honorary designation at Franklin and Putnam avenues recognizes the Wu-Tang Clan co-founder, born Russell Tyrone Jones. (Ol’ Dirty Bastard Legacy via Instagram)

Ol’ Dirty Bastard spent his career refusing to fit neatly anywhere. Brooklyn has now found a permanent place for his name.

Family members, friends and fans gathered Saturday in Bedford-Stuyvesant as the city unveiled “ODB Jones Way” at the intersection of Franklin and Putnam avenues, honoring the late Wu-Tang Clan co-founder born Russell Tyrone Jones.

The location was not selected simply because it offered an available signpost.


A mural modeled after the cover of ODB’s 1995 solo debut, “Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version,” has watched over the corner for years. His brother Ramsey Jones said their grandmother still lives on the block.

“I am very honored to be here because my grandmother’s house is on this block on Putnam Avenue,” Jones said during the ceremony.

That family connection gives the honor more weight than the usual celebrity street designation. Brooklyn placed ODB’s name where his relatives still have roots and where residents had already created a neighborhood monument to him.

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The New York City Council formally approved the intersection co-naming in December. The measure became Local Law 48 on Jan. 17, designating “ODB Jones Way” at Franklin and Putnam avenues. It adds an honorary intersection name rather than replacing either street’s legal name.

Council Member Chi Ossé, whose district includes Bedford-Stuyvesant, worked with ODB’s estate and family on the dedication. Ossé previously led the successful effort to designate Nov. 15 — Jones’ birthday — as Ol’ Dirty Bastard Day in New York City.

While presenting that resolution in 2023, Ossé called Jones “a pioneer in the world of music, and one of New York’s immortal sons.”

ODB’s immortality was built on a voice that could sound like a rap verse, a singalong, an argument and a warning — sometimes before the same record ended.

He joined cousins RZA and GZA as an original member of Wu-Tang Clan, whose 1993 debut, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers),” rewrote the possibilities for a large rap group. Where other members arrived with dense lyricism, street reportage or martial-arts discipline, ODB seemed governed by an entirely separate set of laws.

His delivery was ragged but deliberate, moving between rapping and singing without respecting the border between them. He could blow apart the structure of a song while becoming the part listeners remembered most.

That presence helped make “Protect Ya Neck,” “Shame on a N---a” and “Da Mystery of Chessboxin’” essential pieces of Wu-Tang’s early sound. Away from the group, “Brooklyn Zoo” and “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” turned his unpredictability into the center of the record rather than something producers needed to contain.

“Return to the 36 Chambers” received a Grammy nomination and established ODB as the first Wu-Tang member to release a solo album after Method Man. He later reached an even wider audience through “Got Your Money,” featuring Kelis, and his appearance on the remix of Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy.”

That Carey collaboration became a model for the rap-and-R&B remix long before record labels turned the combination into a dependable chart formula. ODB did not arrive to smooth out the song. His unpolished energy was the point.

His fame also came with arrests, addiction, incarceration and public episodes that were often treated as entertainment while he was alive. The spectacle sometimes swallowed the music and reduced a complicated person to a collection of outrageous clips.

Jones died Nov. 13, 2004, two days before his 36th birthday.

More than two decades later, the parts of his work once dismissed as disorder sound increasingly influential. Generations of rappers have adopted his cracked melodies, abrupt vocal shifts and willingness to make personality as important as technical precision.

There was no father to his style, as the famous explanation of his name went, and attempts to copy him usually proved why.

New York’s recent honors have moved ODB beyond the caricature. The City Council’s 2023 resolution recognized him as a distinctive MC whose influence outlived him. The new sign places that recognition directly into the Brooklyn landscape that helped create him.

The mural had already made Franklin and Putnam a destination for Wu-Tang fans. ODB’s face, drawn from the welfare-card image used on his debut album, turned the side of a neighborhood building into an unofficial memorial.

Now the city has added its own marker.

Snoop Dogg, Death Row Pictures, Announce August 2027 Release for Life Story

Snoop Dogg will produce his own upcoming biographical film, "Snoop," through his Death Row Pictures banner. The Universal Pictures movie, starring Jonathan Daviss as the Long Beach rapper, is scheduled to arrive in theaters in August 2027. (Courtesy photo)

More than three decades after Death Row Records introduced Snoop Doggy Dogg to the world, Snoop Dogg is helping decide how Hollywood tells the story.

Universal Pictures will release “Snoop,” a biographical film about the Long Beach rapper’s life and career, nationwide on Aug. 6, 2027. Jonathan Daviss, best known as Pope Heyward on Netflix’s “Outer Banks,” will play Snoop in the title role.

Craig Brewer, whose films include “Hustle & Flow” and “Dolemite Is My Name,” will direct from his rewrite of a screenplay originally written by Joe Robert Cole. Cole’s credits include “Black Panther” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

Snoop will produce the film with Imagine Entertainment founder Brian Grazer and Death Row Pictures President Sara Ramaker. Universal said the movie will incorporate music from Snoop’s catalog.

That arrangement gives the project something most music biopics spend years trying to secure: the artist, the songs and the company carrying the history under the same roof.

“Snoop” will be the first film released through Death Row Pictures’ overall deal with NBCUniversal Entertainment. The project turns a label name once associated with Snoop’s turbulent rise into a vehicle for preserving — and potentially reframing — that history.

Snoop acquired the Death Row Records brand in 2022, nearly three decades after releasing his debut album through the label. He has since expanded Death Row into music, merchandise, gaming and visual entertainment rather than attempting to operate it solely as a replica of its 1990s incarnation.

“We’re building Death Row into avenues that didn’t exist,” Snoop told The Associated Press in 2024.

A theatrical film about his life may be the clearest example yet.

The movie was initially announced in 2022 with Allen Hughes attached to direct. Brewer later took over the project and revised Cole’s script. Snoop previously appeared in Brewer’s “Dolemite Is My Name,” the 2019 Eddie Murphy film about comedian and independent filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore.

NBCUniversal introduced Daviss and Snoop together at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April. The studio said filming was expected to begin in Los Angeles this summer.

Snoop framed the movie as a continuation of the story Universal began telling with its 2015 N.W.A film, “Straight Outta Compton.”

“After my brothers got to tell their story with ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ now it’s my turn,” he told the CinemaCon audience.

Snoop appeared briefly in “Straight Outta Compton,” where LaKeith Stanfield portrayed him as a young rapper entering Dr. Dre’s orbit. “Snoop” will be the first major studio movie centered on his full life rather than treating him as part of someone else’s rise.

The challenge will not be finding enough story.

Born Calvin Broadus Jr., Snoop first reached a national audience in 1992 through Dr. Dre’s “Deep Cover” and “The Chronic.” His voice — laid-back, melodic and immediately recognizable — cut through Dre’s production without needing to compete with it.

His 1993 debut, “Doggystyle,” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and became a defining release of the G-funk era. The Recording Industry Association of America has certified the album quadruple platinum.

At the same time, Snoop was facing a murder charge that threatened to reduce the career to a brief and violent chapter. A Los Angeles jury acquitted Snoop and his bodyguard, McKinley Lee, of murder charges in 1996. Both men also were acquitted of conspiracy to commit assault.

Snoop later described the verdict as a turning point. He told the AP that the experience pushed him to separate himself from people and behavior that could have sent him back to prison or ended his life.

What followed was one of hip-hop’s most unusual reinventions.

Snoop outlasted Death Row’s original collapse, recorded for Master P’s No Limit Records and moved through multiple generations of rap without losing the voice or mannerisms that made him famous. His public life eventually expanded into acting, youth football, cooking television, Olympic coverage, commercials and “The Voice.”

That range makes the eventual shape of “Snoop” an open question.

Universal has not announced the supporting cast or disclosed how much of Snoop’s life the film will cover. The studio also has not said whether the story will remain focused on his Long Beach and Death Row years or follow him through No Limit, his mainstream reinvention and his eventual return as Death Row’s owner.

Snoop’s involvement gives the filmmakers access to his memories and music. It does not yet answer the question that follows every artist-authorized biography: how much of the difficult history will make it to the screen.

The film’s current team suggests that music will not be treated as background decoration. Brewer built “Hustle & Flow” around the process of making a rap record and directed Murphy in “Dolemite Is My Name,” a story about a Black entertainer financing and protecting his own vision when the established industry had little interest in it.

Grazer produced “8 Mile,” while Universal released “Straight Outta Compton.” NBCUniversal Chair Donna Langley has described “Snoop” as a spiritual cousin to the N.W.A film.

This time, however, the artist is not waiting for a studio to decide that his history has value.

Plas Johnson, Saxophonist Who Gave ‘The Pink Panther Theme’ Its Voice, Dies at 94

The cover of Plas Johnson’s Capitol Records album “Mood for the Blues.” Johnson, whose tenor saxophone gave Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” its unmistakable sound, died July 15 at 94. (Courtesy Photo: Capitol Records)

Most people heard Plas Johnson long before they knew his name.

His tenor saxophone slides into Henry Mancini’s “The Pink Panther Theme” with a low, bluesy prowl, giving the animated cat in the film’s opening credits its cool, its mischief and its unmistakable strut.

The melody became part of popular culture. The musician behind it spent much of his career outside the spotlight.

Johnson died July 15 at his Los Angeles home, his children, Eric Johnson and Stephanie Oliver, told The New York Times. He was 94. A cause of death was not announced.

He died six days before his 95th birthday. His children said he had performed at his retirement community about a month earlier.

“The Pink Panther Theme” was Johnson’s most famous performance, but it accounted for less than three minutes in a recording career that crossed jump blues, jazz, R&B, soul, rock, pop, television and film.

His saxophone appeared on recordings by the Platters, Larry Williams, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Nancy Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Dr. John, the Beach Boys and scores of others. He played tenor on the Platters’ “The Great Pretender” and piccolo on Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin.”

 

Johnson was part of a generation of Black studio musicians whose work moved across genres more freely than the music industry’s marketing categories did.

A record might be sold as pop, rock, easy listening or a Hollywood soundtrack. Johnson brought to it the phrasing he had developed in Louisiana dance halls, blues bands, jazz clubs and Los Angeles recording rooms.

Other musicians knew what his name meant.

Louisiana arranger and producer Harold Battiste recalled that when producers could not hire Johnson, they looked for someone who sounded like him. Harmonica player and producer Bob Corritore remembered him after his death as a “musician’s musician.”

Mancini did not want an imitation.

He composed “The Pink Panther Theme” with Johnson’s tenor in mind after watching David Niven play the sophisticated jewel thief at the center of Blake Edwards’ comedy.

“Plas has the sound and the style I wanted,” Mancini wrote in his autobiography.

The theme was recorded in 1963 for the film, which opened in the United States in 1964. Johnson played during the introduction, returned for the central solo and closed the piece.

He later recalled that the arrangement felt special from the first run-through. When the musicians finished, the string section joined the rest of the room in applauding — an unusual response during a professional studio session.

Mancini’s music from “The Pink Panther” won three Grammy Awards, while the score received an Academy Award nomination. The American Film Institute later ranked it No. 20 on its list of the 25 greatest American film scores.

Johnson’s identity remained less familiar than the solo.

He sometimes met listeners who told him that his performance sounded exactly like the musician heard in the movie. Johnson would explain that they were listening to the same man.

He returned to the theme decades later, rerecording it for the 2004 tribute album “Ultimate Mancini” and the 2006 remake of “The Pink Panther” starring Steve Martin.

Johnson was born July 21, 1931, in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, and grew up in a family of professional musicians. His mother played piano, while his father played saxophone and banjo.

The family later moved to Thibodaux and then New Orleans. Johnson began as a singer before his father gave him a soprano saxophone. He switched to tenor at 15 and formed the Johnson Brothers Combo with his older brother, pianist Ray Johnson.

The brothers played dances around the New Orleans area, mixing the popular music of Louis Jordan, Dinah Washington and Charles Brown with the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

The crowd did not always ask for bebop. The brothers played it anyway.

In 1951, singer and pianist Charles Brown heard Johnson perform at the Dew Drop Café in New Orleans and hired him. The job lasted about six months before Johnson was drafted into the Army, where he continued playing in a military band.

Johnson moved to Los Angeles with his siblings in 1954. Jam sessions led to recording dates, and his blues-touched sound proved valuable as rock and roll expanded the market for musicians who could combine Black musical language with the precision demanded by commercial studios.

A session with Johnny Otis brought him to the attention of Capitol Records executive Dave Cavanaugh. Johnson soon found himself recording behind Cole, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee and other major stars.

He could bring personality to a record without crowding the singer or arrangement.

“You just have to know when to start and when to stop,” Johnson said in a 2005 interview.

That judgment kept him working through decades of changes in recording technology and popular taste.

Johnson remained active in jazz while handling commercial studio work. He released albums under his own name, including “This Must Be the Plas!” and “Mood for the Blues,” and maintained a long association with trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison.

In 1970, he joined the studio band for “The Merv Griffin Show,” beginning a 15-year run that placed a working jazz ensemble inside a five-day-a-week television production. He continued accepting outside recording dates during the show’s run.

Johnson later appeared in Denny Tedesco’s documentary “The Wrecking Crew,” which brought wider attention to the Los Angeles session musicians behind generations of familiar records. The film also featured New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer, with whom Johnson had worked frequently.

By then, Johnson had spent more than half a century demonstrating how much identity a musician could fit into an introduction, a background fill or a few measures between a singer’s lines.