NOT DIRTY.(The Talk of the Town)

Russell Jones is a forty-four-year-old art director who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In the early winter of 1996, he and his wife began to receive some unusual phone calls late at night. They would pick up the receiver and a voice would shout "Yo, Dirty!" or just "Dirteee!" and then hang up. Jones was mystified; he thought that maybe his number had been written down in a bathroom stall somewhere. A few weeks later, Jones's young cousin, who was conversant in hip-hop, stopped by.

"You know that rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard?"

"Uh, not really."

"His real name is Russell Jones. That's why you get those calls."

"No way. It can't be."

It was. Russell Jones, a.k.a. Ol' Dirty Bastard, had just left the group Wu-Tang Clan and had a hit song called "Brooklyn Zoo." He called himself Ol' Dirty Bastard because "there ain't no father to his style"--a distinctive combination of song and rap. Something of a folk hero, O.D.B. would occasionally return to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, East New York, and hand out money on the streets. He also got into a lot of trouble--an assault charge, a bullet in the stomach. His fans would dial information and ask for the number of Russell Jones in Brooklyn. They'd get the wrong Russell Jones, the one who describes himself as "meek" and "white."

The conversations often unfolded this way: