‘Chuckie’: How Geto Boys paid tribute to a horror icon
The Geto Boys are an undervalued and underappreciated crew in the melting pot of what we call hip-hop. First arising in the late 1980s, the collective comprised of Scarface, Willie D and Bushwick Bill were one of the mainstream hip-hop groups from the South to achieve nationwide notoriety and laid the foundations for other Southern acts to prosper in the 1990s.
With tracks such as ‘Mind Playing Tricks On Me’ and ‘Another Nigger in the Morgue’, their third studio album, We Can’t Be Stopped, was gory, gruesome and, from its artwork to its lyrics, had some relatively prominent horrorcore elements to it.
That said, one of the tracks on the project directly references and pays homage to a legendary character in the world of horror movies: Chucky. The mischief-making killer doll has been haunting people since 1988, when it first appeared in Child’s Play.
Since the release of Child’s Play, Chucky has become a cult classic, and is one of the most recognizable horror icons of all time. Furthermore, the doll is one of the most referenced films in popular culture.
However, there are a number of ways musicians manage to incorporate horror-themes into their songs and on their debut project We Can’t Be Stopped, the Geto Boys chose to sample the film to add suspense and a sense of fear to the LP’s sonics.
The collective’s track ‘Chuckie’, produced by N.O. Joe primarily samples bits and pieces of dialogue from the movie but also includes eerie rises, sweeps of wind and metallic, industrial sounds that put the fear of god into listeners.
Outside of the samples, there are many references to the doll at large, and the group deliver a morose and murderous set of rhymes that are at least crafted in the image of the killer. The group also pays homage to an array of horror movies, with the lyrics: “Friday the 13th, The Night of the Living Dead/ Vampire arms walking ’round givin n****s head/ If you didn’t die, I would say you got lucky/ All bodies found dead, f**k it, blame it on Chuckie/ But this is Child’s Play, motherf**ka!”
We Can’t Be Stopped reached number 24 on the Billboard 200 and even entered the top five of the Top R&B and Hip-hop Charts. Horror has long been something utilised by the Geto Boys. In 1989, the group released the song ‘Mind Of A Lunatic’ for their album Grip It! On That Other Level.
However, even in 1989, ‘Mind Of A Lunatic’, produced by Doug King, sees the trio explore every violent act possible on one song, from r*ape to necrophilia, mass murder and more. The lyrics explain how the trio will kill anybody aged “nine to 99” and even murder “cripples and the blind.” The group most definitely embraced the horror genre and explored the most gory themes in their tracks.