11/4/2022 0 Comments Big rich town chopped and screwed![]() ![]()
I remember listening to what seemed like a 10-minute chopped and screwed version of Slim Thug’s song “Boss Hoggin’” and thinking to myself, “Life doesn’t get any better than this.” I had become a bonafide screwhead.ĭJ Screw had passed away seven years earlier, but he had created a sound that represented Houston. #BIG RICH TOWN CHOPPED AND SCREWED FULL#It took us a full 30 minutes to get to the venue and the music stretched to fill the time in the car. Typical of most young Texans back then, Dave had a huge car with a stereo that had an even bigger sound. I hopped in and we hit the slab (the highway) headed for the venue. Hobby Airport bumping his group’s latest mixtape. My friend, DJ Dirty Dave of Street Pharmacy picked me up from William P. My true epiphany happened back in the summer of 2007 when I flew to Houston for a music conference. ![]() It took me several trips to H-Town covering the city’s hip-hop scene and hearing screw music blaring out of various peoples’ cars that I came to understand and respect the genre. You can appreciate the music superficially as an outsider, but until you travel to Houston and immerse yourself in the city’s hip-hop culture, you’re not going to truly understand screw music. To someone outside of the Screw community, it seems weird to listen to music that’s been slowed to a snail’s pace exclusively, but, like sushi, screw music is an acquired taste and enjoyed best on its home turf. (Remember how tape decks used to eat tapes?) It doesn’t take long to get from one end of Jackson to the other, and the song wasn’t even finished by the time we got to where we were going. My first reaction was telling him that his tape was dragging. It was in the summer of 1998, and I was riding in a friend’s car near my home in Jackson, Mississippi, when he popped in a DJ Screw tape to get my feedback. Houston’s rap scene is rich and deep, so we decided to give a quick crash course on four albums essential for anyone looking to bask in the evolution of one of the great American music sounds.I remember the first time I ever heard a Screw tape. SCREW,” which was featured on his 2018 album Astroworld, a triple-platinum record that was nominated for an Album of the Year award at the 2019 Grammy Awards and turned Scott into a superstar. Fast-forward to recent memory, Travis Scott mixed his brand of avant-garde hip-hop styling with traditional Houston rap sonic proclivities for his song “R.I.P. #BIG RICH TOWN CHOPPED AND SCREWED REGISTRATION#Not only did he inject the classic Late Registration track with authenticity, but he also ended the song with a slowed-down version of the chorus as an apparent homage to the sound originated in Houston. When Kanye West was assembling the artists to help him convey the pitfalls of moving through life too fast on his 2005 track “Drive Slow,” burgeoning Houston star Paul Wall was included to provide the sort of metaphors you expect from an MC hailing from Houston’s car culture. ![]() When Jay-Z needed a bit more machismo maximalism on his hit single “Big Pimpin’”, he enlisted the Southern hospitality of Houston rap legends Bun B and Pimp C of UGK. These regional elements of Houston rap are what have made the sound desirable across the nation for more than 30 years. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single project from Houston rap legends like UGK, Big Moe, and DJ Screw’s Screwed Up Click posse without their collection of cars being promoted reverentially. #BIG RICH TOWN CHOPPED AND SCREWED CRACK#Houston has a rich car culture with certain custom car types, such as slabs, originating in the city in the 1980s as a way for African American men to flaunt their newfound elevation out of poverty via the crack epidemic. This sound would go on to be co-opted by generations of artists from The Geto Boys in the 1990s to Drake in the 21st century. The sound, also known as chopped and screwed or just screw, was popularized by the legendary DJ Screw and is connected with Houston’s long history with the prescription drug concoction known by many names, but often referred to as lean, that would leave people in a drowsy spell, much like DJ Screw’s slowed-down soundtracks. One of, if not the most identifiable, sounds of Houston hip-hop is “slowed music,” a style of music production where the tempo and pitch of the music are dragged down to syrupy levels with parts of the song repeated intermittingly. The Houston sound is a hodgepodge of styles bred from regional influences that makes it sound authentically Southern. ![]()
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