Lance Scott Walker

How a DJ's innovative chopped and screwed technique changed the Houston hip-hop scene.

A Life in Slow Revolution

DJ Screw

DJ Screw, a.k.a. Robert Earl Davis Jr., changed rap and hip-hop forever. In the 1990s, in a spare room of his Houston home, he developed a revolutionary mixing technique known as chopped and screwed. Spinning two copies of a record, Screw would “chop” in new rhythms, bring in local rappers to freestyle over the tracks, and slow the recording down on tape. Soon Houstonians were lining up to buy his cassettes—he could sell thousands in a single day. Fans drove around town blasting his music, a sound that came to define the city’s burgeoning and innovative rap culture. June 27 has become an unofficial city holiday, inspired by a legendary mix Screw made on that date. Lance Scott Walker has interviewed nearly everyone who knew Screw, from childhood friends to collaborators to aficionados who evangelized Screw’s tapes—millions of which made their way around the globe—as well as the New York rap moguls who honored him. Walker brings these voices together with captivating details of Screw’s craft and his world. More than the story of one man, DJ Screw is a history of the Houston scene as it came of age, full of vibrant moments and characters. But none can top Screw himself, a pioneer whose mystique has only grown in the two decades since his death.

""Screw music doesn't peak. It just grinds." DJ Screw was a Houston DJ who became famous in the 1990s for slowing down rap songs (think: playing a 45 rpm record at 33 1/3 speed), and repeating key lyrics, while local rappers sometimes freestyled over the instrumental portions of the mix. The slowed-down sound became synonymous with Houston, and was often referred to as "chopped & Screwed." It was literally homemade music; Screw recorded in his house, re-mixed the sessions to cassette tapes, and those tapes then went into cars that went booming into the same Houston streets that the local rappers were rapping about. The tapes became immensely popular, with hundreds of people lining up outside Screw's house every night. Eventually, Screwed Up Records & Tapes opened, selling nothing but Screw tapes, and it is still open, still selling nothing but Screw tapes, even though Screw died in 2000. This book blends narrative biography with oral history. Walker has talked to virtually everyone with a connection to Screw, from his immediate family and childhood friends from Smithville to his girlfriends and the rappers he worked with, and the book is rich with extended quotes from people in Screw's world"--

The neighborhoods of Fifth Ward, Fourth Ward, Third Ward, and the Southside of Houston, Texas, gave birth to Houston rap, a vibrant music scene that has produced globally recognized artists such as Geto Boys, DJ Screw, Pimp C and Bun B of UGK, Fat Pat, Big Moe, Z-Ro, Lil’ Troy, and Paul Wall. Lance Scott Walker and photographer Peter Beste spent a decade documenting Houston’s scene, interviewing and photographing the people—rappers, DJs, producers, promoters, record label owners—and places that give rap music from the Bayou City its distinctive character. Their collaboration produced the books Houston Rap and Houston Rap Tapes. This second edition of Houston Rap Tapes amplifies the city’s hip-hop history through new interviews with Scarface, Slim Thug, Lez Moné, B L A C K I E, Lil’ Keke, and Sire Jukebox of the original Ghetto Boys. Walker groups the interviews into sections that track the different eras and movements in Houston rap, with new photographs and album art that reveal the evolution of the scene from the 1970s to today’s hip-hop generation. The interviews range from the specifics of making music to the passions, regrets, memories, and hopes that give it life. While offering a view from some of Houston’s most marginalized areas, these intimate conversations lay out universal struggles and feelings. As Willie D of Geto Boys writes in the foreword, “Houston Rap Tapes flows more like a bunch of fellows who haven’t seen each other for ages, hanging out on the block reminiscing, rather than a calculated literary guide to Houston’s history.”

An Oral History of Bayou City Hip-Hop

Houston Rap Tapes

Johan Kugelberg

Peter Beste

B. Bun

The Houston, Texas, neighborhoods of Fifth Ward, Third Ward and South Park have grown to be hallowed ground for modern rap culture, populated with celebrities, entrepreneurs, support networks and a micro-economy of their own. Photographer Peter Beste (photographer of "True Norwegian Black Metal") and writer Lance Scott Walker spent nine years documenting the most influential style in twenty-first-century hip hop and the vibrant inner city culture from which it stems. "Houston Rap," edited by Johan Kugelberg, profiles noted artists such as Bun B of UGK, Z-Ro, Big Mike, K-Rino, Willie D of the Geto Boys, Lil' Troy and Paul Wall, alongside reflections on the lives of departed legends such as DJ Screw, Pimp C and Big Hawk. The book also features community leaders, rappers, producers, businessmen and family members, all providing an astonishing and important insight into a great American cultural narrative. In addition to featuring Beste's previously unseen images of the contemporary Houston rap scene, "Houston Rap" includes a detailed timeline charting the growth of rap music in Houston from its origins to the present.

Lance Scott Walker

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