Wesley Willis

Wesley Lawrence Willis (May 31, 1963 – August 21, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter and visual artist. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1989, Willis began a career as an underground singer-songwriter in the outsider music tradition, with songs featuring his bizarre, humorous and often obscene lyrics sung over the auto accompaniment feature on his Technics KN keyboard.Willis gained a large cult following in the 1990s, particularly after the release of his 1995 Greatest Hits album on the Alternative Tentacles label. Jello Biafra compiled the album's track list. In addition to a large body of solo musical work, Willis fronted his own punk rock band, the Wesley Willis Fiasco, during the 1990s. He was also a visual artist long before he developed an interest in music, and produced hundreds of intricate, unusual, colored ink-pen drawings, most of them of various Chicago streetscapes; he frequently sold these on the street for between $20 and $40.Despite his mainly underground career, Willis has influenced a variety of media: for example, music software company Nullsoft took their slogan "It really whips the llama's ass!" for Winamp from Willis's song "Whip the Llama's Ass".