The Geto Boys Bushwick Bill died Sunday night of pancreatic cancer at 52. The Geto Boys were a band I didn’t much listen to when they were at their peak, although my brother was a huge fan. I was turned off by their misogynistic lyrics, which were extreme. My bro finally convinced me of how awesome they were, easing me into it with “My Mind’s Playing tricks on Me,” their best-known song. I just learned that their iconic cover for “We Can’t Be Stopped” was shot for real in the hospital when Bushwick Bill had been shot in the eye, declared dead, and then hyped up to shoot the cover. Which is insane. As a group they are kind of just nuts, honestly, but in an amazing way–and I would say this craziness helped them introduce the craziness of Southern hip-hop to the world. Not to say the South itself is crazy, ha ha fooled you, it is. My beautiful home state of South Carolina is almost incomprehensibly, baroquely crazy. When there’s one copperhead in the yard, you have to not only shoot it but wait around to shoot the other one, because they’re like Sith Lords and there’s always two of them, and they might bite one of the several pit-bull mix mutts you definitely have! Having to shoot a shark you caught off the edge of the boat because you don’t want a shark thrashing around in the bottom of the boat, and it’s a good thing you had a handgun on your damn boat! Actual voodoo! Anyhoo.
And the song from which the chorus is sampled is also awesome (strangely quiet at link liked bootlegged uploads often are, but correct speed:
People are always asking me where my hugely fluffy and dolphin-smiling Samoyed dog, Milo, is from. ‘Northamptonshire’ always gets a laugh. He’s been a great little traveler from the first, which is probably pure luck, but I put it partly down to his general ebullience. Last April, Ed and I drove a few hours north of London to get the little beastie. We stopped off first at Ed’s old prep school, where he’d been sent from Ireland at the age of eight. It was a Sunday and they now just do weekly boarding, so we walked around the school’s silent rose garden, playing field and pond. I can’t say seeing the place helped me understand its place in his psyche any better, but he was surprised and moved to remember places and things he’d forgotten, and find the new-old memories were happier than he’d thought. Then we went and plucked our white little furball from his own litter and drove three hours home with him on my lap. He didn’t wee or howl or soil himself, or even try to escape, poor little thing. Having no obvious traumas on that journey seemed to set him up to be a good car dog; well, so far so good, anyway.
Milo’s habits are simple and revolting. He is a proper South London dog. For the first couple of months there was nothing on the street he wouldn’t eat; spilt curry, vomited curry, styrofoam, plastic bags, used condoms and cigarette butts. He has absolutely no concept of gastrointestinal cause and effect. The first time he stayed overnight with Henry and his family in Ireland this summer, Milo crept out and gobbled half a gallon of gone-off shellfish that had been thrown away into a ditch down the road. When Ed is old and takes – finally – to warming up old stories for me, he’ll probably not count as a high point in our marriage the three a.m. pool of crustacean-laced dog-sick at the bottom of the bed and me under a pillow saying; ‘It’s too disgusting; you deal with it’. [click to continue…]