Bushwick Bill, who helped inject vivid psychological horror and lightly morbid comedy into Southern hip-hop storytelling in becoming one of the genre’s most recognizable characters, died on Sunday at a Colorado hospital. He was 52.

His death was confirmed by his sister Ann-Marie White. No other details were provided. Last month, Bushwick Bill announced that he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Bushwick Bill — who was born with dwarfism and stood approximately 3 feet 8 inches tall — was a member of Geto Boys, the Houston trio whose work in the late 1980s and early- to mid-1990s on the Rap-A-Lot label was among the most formative in Southern rap. The group was known for its incendiary, sometimes grotesque lyrics, and also for songs that grappled with morality in stark terms.

That made Geto Boys a flash point for cultural conservatives upset about rap lyrics. Bushwick Bill alluded to their criticism on “Talkin’ Loud Ain’t Saying Nothin’,” from the 1989 album “Grip It! On That Other Level”: “You don’t want your kids to hear songs of this nature/ But you take ‘em to the movies to watch Schwarzenegger.”