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Bushwick Bill
Richard Shaw was born in Jamaica, stood 3 ft 8 in, joined the Geto Boys as a dancer, and became the most volatile and least predictable presence in one of rap's most disturbing groups.
Early life and origins
He was born Richard William Stephen Shaw in Kingston, Jamaica, on 8 December 1966, and moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn, as a child — the source of his stage name. He relocated to Houston and joined the Geto Boys in 1986 as a breakdancer billed as Little Billy, before moving to the microphone.
The Geto Boys
He completed the Scarface, Willie D and Bushwick Bill line-up on Grip It! On That Other Level in 1989. His verses were the group's most unhinged — horror-movie imagery delivered with theatrical relish — and provided the contrast that made Scarface's interiority land.
The 1991 shooting
On 19 June 1991, during an argument with his girlfriend, he was shot in the face and lost his right eye. Accounts of who fired the weapon vary, as both parties had hands on it. The photograph of him on a hospital gurney, taken that night, became the cover of We Can't Be Stopped and is one of the most notorious images in the history of the genre.
Solo albums
Little Big Man (1992), Phantom of the Rapra (1995), No Surrender... No Retreat (1998) and later independent releases. He became a born-again Christian in 2006 and his subsequent work reflected it.
Death
He died of pancreatic cancer on 9 June 2019, aged 52, in Denver, Colorado.
What he is remembered for
Being genuinely unpredictable in a genre full of performed unpredictability. His verses on "Chuckie" and "Mind Playing Tricks on Me" are the horror element of the group's identity, and nobody has successfully imitated the register.
Little Billy
He joined the Geto Boys as a dancer in 1986, billed as Little Billy, before the group's line-up settled. Moving from dancer to MC in a group that became nationally notorious within three years is not a common trajectory.
Size and stage presence
His dwarfism was central to how he was marketed and how he presented himself, and he used it deliberately — Little Big Man, the horror imagery, the outsized theatricality. He also spoke in later interviews about the cost of that framing, and about wanting to be heard as a writer rather than seen as a spectacle.
Faith and later years
He became a born-again Christian in 2006 and his later work and public statements reflected it. He continued to perform with and apart from the Geto Boys, and remained a fixture in Houston.
Illness and death
He announced a pancreatic cancer diagnosis in May 2019 and died the following month, on 9 June, aged 52, in Denver. Tributes came from across Southern rap, and the Geto Boys' final planned tour was cancelled.