#What happened to the geto boys series

Whatever caused the residents of Tinley Park to complain about the noise from the World Music Theatre last week, it wasnвЂ™t U2. It lurks everywhere, festering and growing, and eventually appears in the damnedest of placesвЂ“even in the soul of Bushwick Bill. But we should maybe be a bit more humble in the face of the slithery, unmanageable thing we call art. I myself didnвЂ™t care at all what happened to the Geto Boys until a year ago.

I donвЂ™t think that Bushwick BillвЂ™s old records are necessarily bad for kids, any more than his new ones are necessarily good for them. But in principle this is the sort of thing that, spread throughout the country, might have effectively silenced the Geto Boys long ago.

Their kids have cars, and can make runs over the city line to get their N.W.A. What the burghers of Lake Forest do means little by itself, of course. Up in Lake Forest, the city council is preparing to prosecute record stores that sell obscene albums to kids. ItвЂ™s that you never know where a song like that is going to come from. The moral I take from вЂњEver So ClearвЂќ is slightly different. Over the picture is scrawled the legend, вЂњDonвЂ™t try this. Lest we miss the point, the videoвЂ™s last scene is of Bushwick walking on a beach, his stumpy arms dangling. Bushwick has a moral to hit us over the head with, of course: itвЂ™s the вЂњsee things clearвЂќ line, accompanied in the video by the unpleasant sight of him removing his new glass eye. ItвЂ™s all told quietly, over a very soft piano-based backing track marked only by an eerie recurring sample of a womanвЂ™s cry. He immerses himself in Everclear, the 190-proof grain alcohol, and ends up losing an eye, with shards of bullet and bone still in his head. He joins a band, makes a bunch of money, and finds that while heвЂ™s now popular he canвЂ™t trust his friends, men or women. But still you listen though itвЂ™s a very old story, itвЂ™s never been told quite like this: A four-foot-something ghetto high-school misfit is taunted by boys and ignored by girls. On one level, nothingвЂ™s changed: heвЂ™s inarticulate as ever, producing one stultifying rhyme after another and dropping cliches like bowling balls. But now, more than a year later, Bushwick Bill has resurfaced with the shocking вЂњEver So Clear.вЂќ The pathologies exhibited on the rest of the record make the song seem a fluke. The song winds you up and never lets go: itвЂ™s one of the most powerful and far-reaching rap songs ever recorded, and indeed it spawned a frightening video and put the group back on the charts. Over it, in their usual discordant, inarticulate way, rappers Scarface and Bushwick laid out two wrenching tales of drug-induced paranoia, depression, pain, and insanity. It was an understated track based on a lilting, ominous, exquisite guitar line. The album they released soon after, however, contained, amidst the usual bullshit, one song, вЂњMind Playing Tricks on Me,вЂќ that didnвЂ™t fit in. It was a pretty good sign that the Geto BoysвЂ™ life was following their art. Bushwick said heвЂ™d deserved it, even asked for it: heвЂ™d threatened to throw her kid out the window. Last summer, Bushwick Bill, high on grain alcohol, fought with his girlfriend the fight ended when she shot himвЂ“in the eye. The band even had the distinction of having a compact disc manufacturer refuse to press its record. Picked up by Rick RubinвЂ™s Def American label (the Australia of rock, where a lot of social outcasts end up), the group managed to lose Rubin his major-label distribution (Geffen, to that companyвЂ™s credit). With songs like вЂњMind of a LunaticвЂќ the band gleefully chanted scenes of rape, murder, and mayhem over unoriginal beats and a tinny production, and managed to sell more than half a million copies of their first album. Bushwick is the gnarly-voiced singer of the Geto Boys, the Houston gangster rappers who before last year had firmly established themselves as the most unredeemedly revolting rap act in-the countryвЂ“something of an achievement, I think, given the music of late. вЂњItвЂ™s fucked up that I had to lose an eye / to see things clear.вЂќ The words are those of Bushwick Bill: pornographer, dwarf, misogynist, rapper.

#What happened to the geto boys series

Sommelier Series (paid sponsored content)ДЄn Eye for a Truth: Bushwick Bill in extremis.