The Legend of Bushwick Bill

 Richard William Shaw was born December 8 1966 in Kingston Jamaica. Bill was born with dwarfism, and would only grow to 3 foot 8 as an adult. 

His family moved to the US and settled in Houston Texas. He became a famous local breakdancer, going by the name Little Billy, and would join the hip hop group Geto Boys, originally as a dancer, before taking the microphone and adopting his Bushwick Bill monicker. 

The Geto Boys would be pioneers in the horrorcore genre, mixing rap music with horror and supernatural themes. 

In 1991, while high on PCP and drinking grain alcohol, Bill got into a “tussle” with his girlfriend and got shot in the eye. There are conflicting reports of it being an attempted suicide, or some insurance scam…PCP and Everclear will cause bad decisions. 

The day after the shooting, band mates Scarface and Willie D checked Bill out of the hospital for a photo shoot for their next album cover, We Can’t Be Stopped

This would prove to be the group’s high water mark, going platinum. 

Bushwick Bill would continue to be a tiny menace onstage until cancer took his life in 2019.