Boss
Boss (born Lichelle Laws, 1969, Detroit, Michigan, United States) is an American Midwest female gangsta rapper who enjoyed brief popularity in 1993 with her debut album Born Gangstaz. Her name is sometimes spelled Bo$$. Laws relocated to Los Angeles after graduating high school. Laws was spotted by DJ Quik who stuck her on a track with AMG. Russell Simmons liked the track and promptly signed her to Def Jam West. Her debut album Born Gangstaz was released in 1993, and the singles, "Deeper" and "Recipe for a Hoe", hit number one on the Billboard Hot Rap Tracks chart. Laws' fledgling career took a major blow in 1994 when she was interviewed by a reporter from The Wall Street Journal. The reporter thought he revealed that she grew up in an upper middle-class family and attended private school. As it turned out, the reporter did not listen to the album before interviewing the artist. Further, Laws had left Detroit after high school to pursue a contract in New York, which brought on a hard survivalist mentality by the time she settled in Los Angeles. Def Jam was well aware of her background when she was signed, and she was never dropped from the label. In the mid-1990s, she moved to Dallas, Texas, and went on to be a radio DJ. In 2001, she collaborated with Krayzie Bone on his album Thug On Da Line. In 2004, she released a mixtape titled The Six Million Dollar Mixtape produced by Def Jef. It was revealed in May 2011 that Laws is in need of a kidney due to her suffering from renal disease, a disease that rendered her kidneys useless for processing toxins in her body. Laws reached out to the Facebook community for a potential donor. A donor is yet to be found.