Ol' Dirty Bastard, aka Russell Jones. Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP
An amusing tale from the New Yorker of a man who shared the same name as the late rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. Russell Jones was not a rapper, not in the music business even, but having a name and New York neighbourhood in common with the former Wu-Tang Clan star meant people who wanted to talk to Jones the rapper often looked up Jones the illustrator in the phone book. He started off explaining he was not the Jones they were looking for but then played along and discovered his and ODB's life intersected in quite remarkable ways – the two belonged to the same video store, for example. ODB is now dead and presumably Jones's phone a lot quieter. On reflection the illustrator believes he was luckier than his brother Tom. "His life in the seventies was a living hell," he tells the magazine. Well worth a read.
