Bushwick Bill has a penchant for turning his perceived shortcomings into double-edged swords.
News that Bushwick Bill was battling pancreatic cancer certainly had the sobering effect creating a standstill the moment it was announced. Despite ranking among the all-time greats the “pre-expansion” era Southern Rap, Bushwick’s true identity ten goes misrepresented by an insufficient nod the head. Take the four-city tour they prepared then ultimately canceled due to Bushwick Bill’s unavailability: Willie D and Scarface forsook those plans without a second thought, and never spoke them again.
A farewell tour at less than full-strength: unimaginable. Bushwick’s illness prompted “the boys” to re-examine their relationship with their 52-year old cohort, with respect to his basic need for dignity. This is the same group that scrapped a reunion album in 2015 when they couldn’t generate the necessary funding to bring it up to a “Geto Boys” standard excellence.
It doesn’t matter that Bushwick’s whole persona is wholly inspired dysfunction. Within the acceptable limits a self-similarity complex, Bill reserves the right to human decency in light his recent struggles. With those boundaries accounted for, I’m sure Bushwick would be more than accepting his fan’s wishes to explore the macabre side his personality.
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The other Geto Boys seem demure in comparison. Willie D has always been the most brand-conscious the lot. Scarface, while similarly-disposed, is consumed by his singular legacy, at least 50% the time. Then you’ve got Big Mike to account for. He was added to the fold in 1993 at the onset the Till Death Do Us Part project, only to be discarded once Willie D was done flirting with singledom. For the record, Big Mike is himself an important member the Rap-A-Lot fold – it’s just that, he never fit within the Geto Boys’ peculiar mindset or their subsistence on low-brow sinfulness.
During this period, Bushwick Bill found himself, in some parts, exhibiting the zombie-like reflexes an individual facing his or her own mortality. In 2014, Bushwick Bill spoke these hysterics as he recounted the domestic dispute that left him without an eye. The ill-fated encounter also culminated in Bill’s premature death. He would later auto-resuscitate while the coroner was in the process issuing his post-mortem examination.
“I died June 19th, 1991,” Bill explained on The Murder Master Music Show. “I was in the morgue for two hours and 45 minutes before I came to. My toe was tagged and they were pushing me in the drawer and I looked both ways and I saw frozen people to the left and frozen people to the right. I thought I was dreaming, then I saw people in front me pushing the door closed and I was like, ‘Yo!’ And everybody stopped and I said, ‘I have to pee’ and I jumped up and pulled the catheter out and the security for the morgue stood there and I ended up peeing on his leg and he took f running and said] ‘He’s alive somebody help!’ They ran back in there and shot me up with a big needle and I woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed.”
This indelible moment, as outlined in “Ever So Clear” (f Little Big Man), is what caused the mortification his flesh. During the song’s proceedings, Bill spares absolutely no detail in outing his domestic partner, his and her complicity in the violence, as well as a complete rundown every substance that he ingested, and how they impaired his judgment.
“I said: you better grab the motherfucking gun or I’mma drop him
She snatched the baby out my hands
We started fighting, punching, scratching, and biting
When we fell on the bed, check this shit
All kinds crazy shit was going through my head
So I ran and got the gun and came back to her
Loaded it up and handed the gat to her
I grabbed her hand and placed the gun to my eye muscle
She screamed stop and then we broke into another tussle
Yo, during the fight the gun went f quick
Damn! Aw shit, I’m hit.”– Bushwick Bill on “Ever So Clear” (1992).
A year prior to releasing “Ever So Clear,” Bushwick Bill’s battered self-image appeared on the cover We Can’t Be Stopped. Standing at 3 feet 8 inches tall and sporting a pirated-eye, Bushwick could feel the gaze a predominantly ableist crowd. Short exposing society’s voyeuristic tendencies in a pointed manner, Bill continued to ridicule himself to the point undue hardship.
On “Skitso” f the same Little Big Man LP, Bushwick labels himself the “Geto Boy executioner.” Then before the commencement “Call Me Crazy” an impudent voice enters the trapdoor. The voice insinuates that Bill lacks the “girth” to occupy a booster seat all to himself. Without the infamous glare his postmortem experience in 1991, the Ghetto Boys don’t evolve into the “Geto Boys” we know and love – perhaps Scarface goes the way solo gratification, and Bushwick Bill certainly doesn’t gain the upper hand in making us all feel like insolent characters, does he now?