BUSHWICK BILL, LAUGHING UNDER IT ALL
‘Gotta always keep ’em guessing,’ rapper said.
Bushwick Bill, the Houston rap star who died last week, occupies an outsized place in my mind.
I met him in 1990. I wrote about music for the Houston Press, and he was in the Geto Boys, who had recently finished a self-titled album with starmaking producer Rick Rubin. Rubin’s remix made the group riveting — insane, cartoonish violence, misogyny, misanthropy and all.
Bushwick, who stood 3 feet, 8 inches tall, was the visual signature of the group that included his bandmates Willie D., Scarface and Reddy Red (now DJ Ready Red). In the music world, everyone
seemed sure the local guys were about to blow up nationally.
Rap-a-Lot Records, the Geto Boys’ label, invited me to hang out with the crew. I drove to the apartment Bill shared with Scarface — an address on South Gessner, far from the Fifth Ward that they famously referenced as home. The complex was perfectly ordinary: not fancy, not a dump.
When I knocked, Bill opened the door and invited me to wait on an old sofa while he and Scarface finished getting ready for the night. In the sparsely furnished living room, an old TV in the corner was playing a rerun of “The Andy Griffith Show,” a 1960s touchstone of wholesomeness and white, small-town values.
Bill paused to take in a scene of Mayberry’s lovable stumbling drunk, Otis, being gently guided to his cell by kindly lawmen Andy and Barney. Bill hooted: Otis, he said, was his favorite character.
Neither Bill nor Scarface had a car at his disposal, so we waited for a Rap-a-Lot honcho to give them a ride. At a Fifth
Ward dance club, we met Reddy Red and Willie D., and ended up at an after-hours bar in Sunnyside.
Shooting the dozens, Bill slayed his opponents, slamming them with biting, funny insults with unbelievable speed. I was shocked how fresh and funny he could make a “yo momma” joke.
Reporting that story, I spent more time with the Geto Boys over the next few days but didn’t get another chance to talk much with Bill. I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear from him again.
The call, when it came, stunned me. He was at Ben Taub Hospital being treated for a gunshot wound. He wanted me to come down, see him, write the story.
I found him there in his room, in good spirits, despite a big plastic bandage over his eye where the bullet had hit him. Sometimes he flirted with the nurses; sometimes he harassed them.
He told me several versions of the shooting. The basic outline didn’t change: At the apartment where I’d first met him,