In 1999 they earned a new fan base thanks to Mike Judge’s film Office Space, which made memorable use of their songs “Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta” and “Still.” Their last studio album, 2005’s The Foundation, reached number three on the Billboard hip-hop chart, proving the group could hold its own against a new generation of rappers. The Geto Boys became one of the most respected rap groups anywhere, pioneers of Southern hip-hop who have influenced everyone from UGK to Lil Wayne. “We wanted respect for the state of Texas and the South-period.” “We wanted respect for Fifth Ward, South Park,” Willie D recently told me. The album, best known for its lead single, the hypnotic “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” went platinum and firmly dispelled the notion that the Third Coast couldn’t produce rap groups on par with Public Enemy and N.W.A. You’ve got to keep in mind that becoming a rap star was like something reserved for people that were on the East Coast or the West Coast.”Īll that changed in 1991 after the group, now calling itself The Geto Boys and with a new lineup consisting of Willie D, South Park’s Brad “Scarface” Jordan and Brooklyn transplant Richard “Bushwick Bill” Shaw, released their fourth album, We Can’t Be Stopped.

“Nobody believed in what we were doing, not even our own family members. “It was us against the world,” said Willie James “Willie D” Dennis, another Fifth Ward native, who joined the group two years later.

In 1986, hip-hop was still struggling to establish a beachhead in Texas when three rappers from the Fifth Ward formed a group called The Ghetto Boys.

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