Excellent Noz piece on DJ Screw over at the Pitchforks
james
chicago 1,863 Posts
I haven't seen this posted, but it's maybe the best thing of his I've read since his "Drag Rap" thing for--what was that shit? Scratch?
Even if you don't give two shits about Screw (I know you're out there), you should check it. It's a great balance of history, romance, and modern context--thorough, graceful, deeply informed, and shockingly concise. Most people have no fucking idea how hard it is to write like this:
http://pitchfork.com/features/hall-of-game/9069-dj-screw/
I do not doubt that haters, as as the kids say, gonna hate, but cot-damn, that's some good work right there. If anyone here sees noz, please tell him I said so.
Even if you don't give two shits about Screw (I know you're out there), you should check it. It's a great balance of history, romance, and modern context--thorough, graceful, deeply informed, and shockingly concise. Most people have no fucking idea how hard it is to write like this:
http://pitchfork.com/features/hall-of-game/9069-dj-screw/
I do not doubt that haters, as as the kids say, gonna hate, but cot-damn, that's some good work right there. If anyone here sees noz, please tell him I said so.
Comments
Noz's article made me not only want to go and revisit the tapes again but to dig a lot deeper this time. Really interesting article both for the information about Screw and the context it places him in within today's industry. He wrote a piece on CocaineBlunts a few years which I remember Harvey not being too enamoured with so would welcome his feedback on this.
Also, the "magic screw" is a very real thing. I first heard about it in the early 90s. Someone told me there was a screw beneath the platter of a 1200/1210 which, if removed, would allow you to double the range of the pitch control. It was a favourite hack of those techno DJs for whom +8 was never enough, so it makes perfect sense that there would be a DJ who'd take it in the other direction and make it part of his sound.
I don't believe the magic Screw theory. An old article in Texas Monthly quotes him as saying something like he would "take a screw to a record if it was wack," meaning he would gouge the grooves making the record unplayable. It would be almost impossible to mix like he does if your only option was mixing at very slow speeds. Listen to 3 N Tha Morning, it's his best work and the article fails to mention it----it's obvious he slowed his mixes down while dubbing between two cassete decks.
I've been pondedring doing a long, detailed piece on Screw. As a Texas DJ I was equally influenced by Screw and the X-Men, and while there's plenty of X-Men information out there, hardly anything about Screw is worth reading, or it's information that people who followed his career already consider to be common knowledge.
I liked how the article pointed out Screw's influence on modern rap though. As a fan of Screw, again, I like to read how his style influenced "the game." Paul Wall and Kanye would have never met had it not been for Screw.
Yeah, I was super-confused the first time I played on turntables that had been so modified.
Get out the Robin Thicke thread and chime in.
While I fully appreciate that Noz has done such a great job over the years shining a light on music marginalized from the pop spectrum, his take always leaves me on the empty side.
For instance, the backlash to the fact that Screw music was driven by smoking fry and then later sipping lean, is just that. Yes, potentially each of Screw, Big Moe, and Pimp C died from over-indulgence. But still, Screw music is drug music through and through.
It's also slab music in that 90% of the time Screw tapes are being played is in vehicles.
I mean, that's the blueprint right there. Basically dudes from the suburbs of Houston had nowhere to really congregate short of a bunch of dudes parking their cars in a group in a park or parking lot or whatnot and banging Screw as they get plastered in 5 different ways.
I don't know how much of an artsy scientific spin you can really put on that.
I mean, of course Screw was a visionary wizard. But moreso, he was a community leader, like the mayor of Missouri City.
And it's not that I fault Noz who is younger and grew up in Newark (if my memory serves me correctly) to not quite capture the essence of Screw despite obviously trying to do so. Again, his efforts are definitely appreciated.
But to try to make Screw sound appealing to the Pitchfork audience just seems like a lost cause to me. Yeah, it helps them understand where all of these slowed down punchlines in their favorite swag raps come from. And I guess that is a valid undertaking, making sure credit is given where it's actually due.
But I don't know. I'd rather read a tribute from someone who actually came up in Screw culture, at least more than I did myself.
Now for some random notes...
DJ Snake of Nemesis deserves some credit for starting the slowed down trend in Texas back in the 80's. Check the 5 minute mark on here from 1987...
And then the 1:25 mark here from 1989...
Screw of course took the mere slowed down thing to new levels with his chops and adlibs and freestyles added to the formula. But he was part of a bigger thing than just something he could have come up with all on his own.
As far as dj's that "screw and chop" since Screw passed. Michael Watts is the one to mention IMO. His version of KRIT Wuz Here was bigger than the actual album anywhere I ever frequented.
And while there are indeed a bunch of clowns out there, there are also plenty of dudes who know what they are doing on youtube. For instance, Drobitussin is a favorite of mine.
As far as Screw's supposed far-reaching taste. Again, "where I'm from that's what everybody play". West Coast gangsta rap molded what was to become the Rap-A-Lot empire. Screw came up in the g-funk era when Texas and Louisiana artists were just barely beginning to flesh out their own sounds independent from the Cali template.
While still in that same pocket, I find Screw's old school r-n-b tapes to be a more interesting topic of conversation than him liking C-Bo so much.
Last comment on the piece...never read a Screw article before that had footnotes. Ha!
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/03/21/low_info_lingo_chop_and_screw
RUSH: Okay, there you heard it, the chop and screw music style in Houston. Well, quite naturally people said, "What in the name of Sam Hill is that?" So we began to explain what the chop and screw music style is in Houston. It's a way of remixing music. And here are the roots of it. It goes back to the nineties, back in the days when people would go to clubs all overdosed and revved up on Robitussin. It's called robo-tripping. If you've taken a lot of Robitussin, before they came out with the nonalcoholic stuff, it did do weird things to you if you took enough of it. And people would go to the clubs and trip on it. And so the DJ, a guy by the name of Robert "DJ Screw" is the guy who came up with the mix. He's in Houston. He died of a Robitussin overdose, folks.
Have you ever heard of that? Robert "DJ Screw" Davis came up with the chop and screw. He mixed it based on people in clubs who were all hopped up. When you're hopped up on Robitussin you're actually slowed down. So it's a way of mixing the music, skipping beats and so forth to replicate what's happening in your body.
b/w
this is a surprisingly good video that Vice made about this topic:
There's a sentence I never, ever expected to read.
b/w
Fat Pat:
Big Moe:
Big Pokey:
Z-Ro:
It's thought-provoking at the very least. Just hope they let him keep doing it.
If he did all his mixes in normal speed then dubbed them to cassette and slowed them down, what did he do when he played live?
I'm sure he must have played live on radio and in clubs. How did he slow down his tracks live? Has anyone confirmed how he actually slowed down the records?
Magic screw vs tape dubbing?