The Geto Boys put Houston on rap’s map back when L.A. and NYC were really the only cities being repped, and effectively birthed a Southern style of gangsta rap that was rife with corporeal violence, death, and paranoia. The group’s sundry controversies—their bleak lyrics—put them in crosshairs for hip-hop culture wars. The group rose to infamy when Bushwick Bill (né Richard Shaw) lost an eye after being shot by a girlfriend (a shot of him in the ER following the incident appears on the cover of We Can’t Be Stopped) and woke up in the morgue after being declared dead. A forthcoming documentary, Bushwick Bill: Geto Boy, delves into it all, and attempts to separate lore from the real, storied life of Bushwick Bill.
-=-=-=-Filmmaker Greg Roman has now spent three years with Shaw, capturing his life and times. "It’s difficult to find him sometimes," explains Roman. When he does, the outcomes are unpredictable. Roman tells a story of them meeting with Mike Judge at small bar in Santa Monica. "There’s an open mic and Bill goes up and talks to the guitar player and got him to play a beat, then performed ‘Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta’ in front of him, half the cast of TV show "Silicon Valley", some tourists, and me." He’s done the same thing in Texas dive bars, too. "If one person recognizes him, Bill nods and gets onstage and the guy plays a beat and he’ll rap. One song they all know that he’ll sing is ‘Gangsta of Love.’ That’s happened like three times. Producer Kyra Kowasic calls it Bill’s version of 'stage-bombing.'"
The filmmakers have a full-length rough cut and are now crowdfunding to help pay for the music rights and archival footage needed in order to finish production. Before Shaw signed his life-rights contract for the film, he drew up what he termed a "hood rider" for Roman. "Bill’s not afraid of anybody making him look bad," he laughs. "But this basically says if I put something in there that could hurt him and is not true, there’s all kinds of crazy things he can do to me. If you know his lyrics, you can imagine some of what he listed."
Pitchfork: What’s it been like having cameras follow you for a few years now?)
Richard Shaw: It’s pretty interesting. It’s just supposed to show my everyday life. Some things are happy, some are not.
Pitchfork: Is anything off-limits?
RS: It’d be hard for anyone to get into your life one hundred percent because a majority of your life is in your mind and your heart—the things you refuse not to say or do. It’s hard for a camera to capture what’s going on, on the inside.
Pitchfork: The director said you get recognized in country bars—everywhere. What’s fame like? Do you enjoy it?
RS: I’ve never had a big personality. I’m an introvert unless I’ve been drinking or something. Being short, I believe people looked and stared at me my whole life before I ever got on stage and rapped. If I was someone of "normal height" I would probably be like those people in Marvel Comic movies where they’re obscure and no one notices them until they have some kind of power, which I guess is what music does. Now it’s not "look at the short guy," it’s "It’s Bushwick Bill!"
Pitchfork: Do you like that better?
RS: Either way it’s notoriety.
Pitchfork: How is Scarface doing since the hospitalization?
RS: I don’t know… he’s had weight issues for years and I think that comes with blood pressure and all kinds of situations. He actually did a show in Rochester a week after he went in the hospital. I know he’s going on tour in September. I called him and that’s when he told me about what he said about on his Facebook, saying he wasn’t going to do any Geto Boys stuff right now but do his own thing. He believes it should be all fair, split three ways.
Pitchfork: Did you get a new eye? It looked like you had something in last time I saw you.
RS: I have a conformer. I had a prosthetic but that broke. I’ve got to get another. My mom asked me about that before she died—she wished I’d get another one.
Pitchfork: Has having one eye changed your life in any way?
RS: I was born with 20/20 vision. The only thing that changes is like a person who loses a limb has that phantom limb movement… they feel they’re doing things with two members of their body. If I’ve been in a room before when I had two eyes, my mind actually sees the whole room from memory. I might turn into the wall and bump into something because my mind is seeing it wrong—I’m not. That’s the part that gets me sometimes. I walk in somewhere and end up turning into a wall and getting knots on my head.
Pitchfork: What did you think of Straight Outta Compton?
RS: It gives the depth of what’s going on. We’re just people and the music business is a business. As much as you think this person or that is screwing you out of your money… it’s same for 2 Live Crew, it’s the same in R&B, rock'n'roll—any genre. While you’re on stage and signing autographs and seeing people like something that you thought of and how they’re enjoying it as a living thing, it gives you great joy. You’re not really thinking of it like business. Distribution, retail sales, manufacturers have to get paid, how things are taxed—after everyone is paid then the money goes back to the label 90 days later, the label has to pay for the video, tour, et cetera, then how much is left for me?
Pitchfork: Art and commerce are two different things.
RS: Right! When you see the part where Eazy-E is sitting there going over contracts, all he knows is this dude keeps giving him papers to sign at parties—never in the setting when they’re eating and drinking. It’s brought when he’s distracted by everything going on around him. That by itself let me know something shyster is about to be revealed.
What the N.W.A movie revealed is there’s also people who can pay your lawyers and your accountants off to make everything look right to you, to keep you happy. Look at the movie The Rose or the show "Empire". Business has always been cutthroat, no matter what the business is.
Pitchfork: Could you relate to that? Would you say there are similarities in your stories?
RS: As an artist I could relate to the Ice Cube vision, wanting to know what’s going on when an interviewer asks you what it’s like not having money and you’re thinking about the paperwork and what you for this, that and the other. Your mind is on making music—you’re not a businessman. You’re just somebody who had a great idea. How do you learn that unless you go to business school instead of being born with the gift of being creative? It’s hard to be judgmental either way. You’re in the studio and you say, "Hey, why don’t you say this line?" No one told you that means you’re a co-writer. You think you’re just being helpful in the creative mode, breaking bread. It’s complicated.
We ran across [N.W.A] a lot of different times or they just left and we just got there on tour. They came to Houston on Too $hort—when he had music being played from a reel-to-reel. It sounded just like the studio because there was no compression.
I like the way the movie ended because everyone realized at the end of the day, we started with nothing just making music for the ‘hood.
Pitchfork: When will Habeas Corpus be out? What happened with the fundraiser?
RS: I had my doubts about it but I figured if the money came in properly, at what point is someone going to talk to Rap-A-Lot to say "When you hired us as Geto Boys to do these songs the name was already there, you just hired voices… how do we take the name associated with us and do things without including you?" My whole thing is if there’s people out there who feel they got screwed by a record label or person, how do you turn around and do something wrong back? That’s an opportunity to show how to do it right. 'Face left the label, Will left the label. I walked away in disagreement with the group members and the label because I knew my importance. We were frustrating each other. At the end of the day you grow up and put your ego in check. None of us is on the label.
Pitchfork: So the label owns the name?
RS: Yeah and the fans believe the title. Do we be fair and ask permission and share a percentage? I believe anything done right, goes right. The [label] owner does not have a bad heart. I never understood what Willie D was trying to do. If the fans want it, it’s cool. At the end of the day, Geto Boys is a brand and that’s acceptable but the value of everything has to be in the respect for each other. When I read that Rolling Stone article, I didn’t get that line about "we wished we were on three separate stages." I don’t know where that came from. I never felt that way. That was controversy to make things sell or whatever the thought pattern was.
Pitchfork: Are you still friends?
RS: Oh, I’m cool with everybody. You gotta remember I was a Geto Boy from '84. The faces always changed. I’ve never once called to say, "I need money, let’s do a show." I was always called and said, "We’re doing shows. Are you with it or not with it?" Willie D’s trying to keep the brand alive but it’s going to take more than love to keep it alive. It’s gonna take bread being broken fairly where everyone is happy. If anyone’s ever gotten made at a label, I guess when they try to run shows for themselves and see what costs and overhead is like… At the end of the day, right beats might all the time.
Pitchfork: But you guys are the Geto Boys. The label can’t do much with the name without you three.
RS: That’s not true. Look at what’s happened before. I met Scarface and Willie D in the studio in '85. The name changed from Ghettto to Geto when Rick Rubin produced it. In '84 there was Raheem, Slim Jukebox, and Sir Rap-A-Lot. Those were the first three members of the Geto Boys with DJ Ready Red. By '85 it was Prince Johnny C, Slim Jukebox, Bushwick Bill, and DJ Ready Red. By '89 it was Scarface, Willie D, Bushwick Bill, and Ready Red. By We Can’t Be Stopped it was Scarface, Willie D, Bushwick Bill, and Ready Red, on the regrouping album, it was us. By the Til Death Do Us Part album, it was Scarface, Willie D, Big Mike, and Bushwick Bill—DJ Ready Red wasn’t even there. If any true Geto Boys fan is out there they’d see the label believed in the name even when the artists thought it couldn’t continue. The same thing happened with the Temptations and the Four Tops.
Pitchfork: So are you writing your own stuff now?
RS: I’ve got some new material. I’m collaborating with people. It’s mostly inspirational but I also want to go back to some of the gutter-mix stuff because I want to show the change, the growth, and the transformation. I want to explain why I was feeling that way back then and I view things this way now.
Pitchfork: What have you been listening to lately?
RS: I really like Kendrick Lamar. I’m still a Talib Kweli fan, Lupe Fiasco, Mos Def, Common Sense—people who say things that are relevant to everyday life. I don’t pay attention to artists that talk about throwing money away and the car that they drive.
