Ol’ Dirty’s old manager falls on hard times

Jarred Weisfeld, the guy who used to manage Ol' Dirty Bastard, couldn't make any money from Ol' Dirty's music, so now he's gonna try to sue a girl who wrote a book about him. Er, that's what I took from an article in Heeb magazine (I'm a subscriber) about the lawsuit.

Weisfeld claims that Jaime Lowe, author of Digging for Dirt, purposely set out to defame him, because she was pissed that he wouldn't agree to be interviewed for the book. The book began as a profile she did on Ol' Dirty for Rolling Stone that ended up being shelved. Then, when they didn't bother running it when Ol' Dirty died, she sold it to the Village Voice. Weisfeld read the story in the Village Voice and was like, "What the fuck is this shit? I never agreed to a story in the Village Voice." As if it was necessary for him to sign a release for his name to appear in the Village Voice. Then he called Rolling Stone, and they said she never worked there, which he took to mean she lied when she approached him in the first place.

As a blogger, i.e. not even a legit writer, I can sympathize with Lowe for a couple of reasons. First of all, no one really works for these magazines, other than the editor in chief and the janitor. I don't really work for XXL, I've just written the bulk of the articles on this site. If some douche were to call XXL, especially on some lawsuit shit, of course they're gonna be like, "Byron Crawford? Never heard of him." That's probably one of the reasons it's set up that way. (The other reason? More money for the TIs.) And the truth of the matter is that XXL really has no idea where I am. Otherwise, Kay Slay probably would've shown up to my door a long time ago.

Also, artists, executives, etc. stay complaining about how you said some shit about them that wasn't true, as if there's no way they can contact you to tell their side of the story. Meanwhile, my personal email address is listed on my own site for everyone and their grandma to use and abuse. It's not like I have some other secret email address. And in the case of the Ol' Dirty book, Weisfeld was approached for comment. If he didn't want to participate, probably because there was no money in it for him, then he sacrificed his right to complain. (Keep in mind, I was pre-med. That line of reasoning might not hold up in court.) If only Lowe would have thought to have done what Jeff Chang did when he couldn't get Kool Herc to submit to an interview without getting paid. Weisfeld could have penned the foreword for a fee, and this wouldn't have been an issue.

Jews may be crafty, but they're no match for an Asian.

Speaking of which, Weisfeld claims this broad Lowe is an antisemite, even though she's a Jew herself. Even if she is, I'm not sure if it would have any bearing on the lawsuit. A girl can be an antisemite, right? What ever happened to freedom of speech? If I had to guess, I'd say this isn't part of the lawsuit per se, but the readership of Heeb probably prefers there be some sort of antisemitism angle. It's a wonder Adolf Hitler wasn't mentioned, though I guess the case has yet to go to trial.

Here's the part of the article where Weisfeld explains how Lowe is an antisemite:

[Weisfeld] reads from the ripped pages of the book, anger tightening the edges of his voice: “It says, ‘Jarred slinked onstage looking like he had just been bar mitzvahed.’ So now she’s telling everybody I’m Jewish. And you go down another couple of lines and I’m ‘a hungry 23-year-old manager who is now financially invested in [ODB’s] very being. [ODB’s] breath is 20 percent Jarred’s.’ The only reference that comes to mind immediately is The Merchant of Venice’s Shylock.”

Oh, really?

Elsewhere in the article, we learn how Weisfeld came to manage Ol' Dirty in the first place. He was working for VH1, and he somehow managed to sell them a reality series starring Ol' Dirty, despite the fact that he didn't know Ol' Dirty. He tried contacting Ol' Dirty in prison, but Ol' Dirty wouldn't respond. So, he looked up Ol' Dirty's mother, and he got her to take him to visit Ol' Dirty in prison, where he became Ol' Dirty's manager. Just like that time Suge Knight visited 2Pac in prison and got him to sign a contract written on a sheet of toilet. Ol' Dirty's mother says that she considers Weisfeld like a son, and he calls her "Mom." Which I took to mean that Weisfeld basically bought Ol' Dirty from her.

One of Ol' Dirty's many babies' mothers, a woman named Icelene Jones, has control of his estate, and probably spent whatever money he had left on elaborate acrylic nails a long time ago. Weisfeld gave up on rap music and became a literary agent, once the album Ol' Dirty recorded for Roc-A-Fella, A Son Unique, leaked to the Internets. That was probably his last good chance to make any money from Ol' Dirty, except for this bullshit lawsuit.