Lichelle Laws, also known as Boss, has died aged 54, according to a post by fellow rapper Bun B.
The rapper from Houston, Texas, took to Instagram on March 11 with a picture of Laws and a tribute to his “big sis.”
“Rest in peace to my big sis Lichelle Laws AKA Boss. One of the best female MCs and a dear friend,” he captioned.
He added, “Give Rick Royal a hug for me. Long Live The Org!”
The Detroit-born rapper Boss, was the first woman ever signed to Def Jam Records.
Laws hit the charts in 1993 when her debut album Born Gangstaz reached number three on Billboard’s Top R&B/HipHop Albums chart.
No cause of death has been reported as of yet. Though in 1999, Laws had kidney failure which saw her undergo dialysis for three and a half years. She then suffered a major stroke and seizure in 2017, as The Sun reports. In 2021, a GoFundMe campaign raised money to help her get a kidney transplant.
“We are raising money for the Artist BO$$,” the page states.
“She is a Hip Hop Legend that was signed to Def Jam West. The first female artist signed to the label’s West Coast Division.”
“We are now trying to see if the family can get a specialized procedure for her,” it continued.
“The procedure is costly and we wanted to reach out to her extended family, her friends and fans, to ask for assistance with helping her to be blessed with this procedure to help her to get back to her health.
“The funds are needed as soon as possible to set her up for the procedure.
“After this procedure, she will be on the kidney list for a transplant from a donor, once we receive one.”
Updates on the page show that almost $18,000 was raised for the rapper and that Laws was able to have the necessary procedure.
The health issues Laws endured were part inherited and part hard-living related. In a 2004 Metro Times interview, Boss shared that she and her DJ partner would drink liquor as they wrote their music.
“I would smoke and drink all day — Boone’s Farm wine and Old English. Oh, my kidneys were killing me. But I was writing these raps — spittin’ these raps all day — from sunup to sundown. We was half-starved and black as hell from being in the sun all day.”
Boss was committed to making it big as a rapper even if that meant temporarily enduring the squalid side of South Central LA. It wasn’t long before Laws met with Russell Simmons to sign a Def Jam management deal in 1993 and thus her first studio album, Born Gangstaz was released.
Born Gangstaz sold hundreds of thousands of copies but it wasn’t a blockbuster like some of the other West Coast albums that were coming out in the early ’90s. Boss appeared on tracks from Spice 1 and South Central Cartel, but her career was famously hurt by a 1994 Wall Street Journal article that sought to cast doubt on her street credentials. The newspaper noted that she didn’t come from California, grew up middle class, and went to college — all things that Boss mentioned on her album. The news story slowed Boss’ momentum, and she never made another album.