The hip-hop community learned on Monday, March 11, that Boss, a rapper from the 1990s, had passed away. On Tuesday, March 12, her previous record label, Def Jam Recordings, posted an Instagram post confirming her passing.
Renal insufficiency claimed the life of Lichelle Laws, best known as the groundbreaking gangster rapper Boss, on Monday, March 11. The woman was 54.
Boss had been experiencing serious health problems lately. She created a GoFundMe campaign in 2021 in order to assist with her medical expenses. She had suffered from renal illness in 2011 and was looking for a replacement kidney. She experienced a stroke in 2017.
Laws was born in Detroit, the daughter of autoworker Joe Laws and Lillie, who completed her master’s program in education at Lewis College of Business in Detroit.
Lillie taught business education at Lewis College of Business before becoming a junior high and middle school teacher. Both of her parents served as church deacons.
Her two older sisters were named. After graduating from high school, Laws moved to Los Angeles with her DJ, Irene “Dee” Moore.
A Wall Street Journal reporter conducted an interview with Laws in 1994. According to the publication, she was raised in a middle-class Detroit area on the West Side.
She went to a Catholic private school where she cheered and studied ballet and music. She also attended Oakland University for two years with a business major. But there was a lot of coarseness and violence in her songs.
Boss never disclosed any details about her personal life to anyone throughout the last years of her life. Her spouse’s and kids’ identities, among other details, are concealed from the public. Before she passed away, there is no evidence that she was married or had children.
