Rap and Hip-Hop music are genres that pick up mixed reactions from music fans. Scratch the surface and one will be presented with a pretty fickle, image conscious bag of drivel that represents music in the loosest of senses and in a way Rap and Hip-Hop in the mainstream are like most other genre’s; derivative and a wee bit shite.
Like any other genre though, allow yourself to be sucked a little deeper and you may be surprised by what pops up to greet you. In my opinion, throughout Rap and Hip-Hop’s eventful history there has been some fantastic and awe-inspiring music projected upon the world. Listening to Public Enemies “It Takes a Nation of Millions…” reflects perfectly the raw power and sheer stamina that Rap and Hip Hop can create and it only takes a quick glance at the genre’s history and birth in the rundown streets of the Bronx to get an idea of the expression it allows.
Well, getting past the genre dissection, I always enjoy finding subcultures in music that interest me and one such subculture is the existence of ‘Chopped and Screwed’ music. ‘Chopped and Screwed’ refers to a form of remixing that takes place within the hip hop music scene and it was developed and popularised mainly by the Houston scene in the early 90s. The technique is mainly accomplished by slowing the tempo of records down to between 60 - 70 quarter-note beats per minute and applying strange techniques such as skipping beats, record scratching, stop-time, and musical treatment to make a sort of ‘chopped-up’ version of an original track.
When I first read about this I was immediately intrigued and the first thing that popped into my head was, “Man, theres bound to be some serious drug use at play here” … well … turns out there is quite a bit actually. The entire ‘Chopped and Screwed’ concept seems to have been built around the use of something known as ‘Syrup’ (Sizzurp, Purple Drank, Texas Tea… trust me I could go on). If you haven’t worked it out yet, this is basically a prescription-strength cough syrup containing codeine and promethazine and in a basic sense it slows the brain down, thus seemingly, the reason it inspired the ‘Chopped and Screwed’ genre.
The pioneer of this genre is known to be a guy who went by the moniker ‘DJ Screw’. DJ Screw fronted the ‘Screwed up Click’ and he is widely considered to be the pioneer of this genre, sometimes referred to as simply ‘Screwed Music’. Sadly, DJ Screw died in November 2000 from…. well… an overdose of codeine.
Throughout the 90’s in Houston’s ghetto area’s, such as South Park, there was a major upsurge in the use of codeine based ’syrup’ and in a somewhat strange correlation, these areas seen a huge increase in the popularity and production frequency of this so-called ‘Screwed Music’ and labels and crews like ‘Swishahouse’ and ‘South Park Coalition’ began to come together. These crews actually epitomised the ethos of Punk music in a way and renounced the intervention of corporations and record labels, choosing instead to deal in casettes and CD’s from the trunks of their tricked out cars, selling hand painted t-shirts and putting out maybe 40 records a year.
Albeit, the genre was most definately a subset of American style, so-called, ‘Gangsta Rap’ and most of the music did have this distinct feel to it. With the proliferation today in alternative scenes of new, more intelligent styles of rapping such as those seen on labels like Anticon and with artists like Dan le Sac, its hard to sometimes give a genre like this attention. This being said, for me its an extremely interesting and fresh new listen thats great for a little chill out.
I’ve linked a few mixes by DJ Screw at the bottom to give you an idea of what we’ve been talking about - its worth a listen whatever your stance on recreational drugs. Its like Mr Hicks said, drugs have done some great things for the music we love today.