D major · Camelot 10B · 92 BPM
Brooklyn Zoo
by Ol' Dirty Bastard
- 92
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 71
- Danceability
- 55
- Acousticness
Ol' Dirty Bastard reportedly wrote "Brooklyn Zoo" in the middle of a shouting match. According to Brooklyn Zu member Buddha Monk, Russell Jones and the members of Brooklyn Zu, a group closely affiliated with him, were having an aggressive argument for unknown reasons. Jones walked into the sound booth and began recording a track, using the energy and anger from the argument to inspire his lyrics, and Buddha Monk claims he borrowed words and sentences straight from the fight itself. Some of the first verse had already appeared in earlier freestyles.
The song became the debut single from Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, released in 1995, and made Ol' Dirty Bastard the second Wu-Tang Clan member to put out a solo effort behind Method Man. Structurally it ran an intro into a single long verse, closing with a repeated hook that interpolated a line he had rapped on "Protect Ya Neck". The lyrics took the form of a tirade against an unnamed adversary, and halfway through, a line repeated in a crescendo that built to a scream. The title pointed both to the zoological park in Brooklyn's Prospect Park and to Brooklyn Zu.
Two videos were made. The first, a subtitled crime story following a character called Pimp Daddy, was rejected by most cable networks for its subject matter. The second showed Ol' Dirty Bastard lip-synching through a dank apartment building surrounded by Wu-Tang Clan members, including his cousins RZA and GZA, and received the most airplay.
Brooklyn Zoo runs at 92 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.61 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 652 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.