Sippin' ain't easy
Screw: a fast survey of a slowed-down sound.

By David Larsen

THE PAST DECADE'S most colorful homegrown drug culture with connections to popular music didn't emerge from a coastal city or university town, but from the Southern industrial metropolis of Houston, Texas. How to account for the sudden popularity of codeine-based cough syrup as a Houston club drug: local mania or a ripple in the wider OxyContinization of the American South? Before settling on an answer, call to mind the enterprising recklessness of the Texan spirit, and that Houston had been one of the jumping-off points for MDMA as a party drug a decade earlier. Tablets were sold legally in bars and clubs across Texas until the summer of '85 – but if H-town's primitive ecstasy scene ever spawned a musical culture of its own, no one seems to remember it anymore.

In any case, it would be unfair to credit Houston's drug scene with the slowed-down hip-hop sound that has given it immortality. Widespread codeine use no doubt prepared the ground for screw's reception, but the sound itself had its source in a single artist's dedication to the slowed remix, and the Houston rappers that made him their city's champion: DJ Screw, born Robert Earl Davis Jr. (1971-2000). Though DJ Screw wasn't the first musician to exploit the time-warping effects of the slowed-down playback – indie rock listeners will remember its use by Texas's own Butthole Surfers – he was the first to make it his exclusive medium. Elsewhere in hip-hop, non-Houston rappers have dabbled in the slow as a disguise for the voice: think of Raekwon's "Clyde Smith" monologue (the earliest 50 Cent dis on record?) from Supreme Clientele, or Missy Elliott's sly resort to its gender-bending effects on Under Construction's "Pussycat." DJ Screw's innovation was to adopt the slow as an identity and as a leitmotif for the opiated lifestyle he championed until his early death. In this sense it would be truer to call his music an ambassador for syrup than to call it syrup's outgrowth.

Some reports claim DJ Screw died of a heart attack, while others say he succumbed to a codeine overdose; so high are the demands placed on the artist's safety that love of screw might seem to come tinged with nightshade. But Houston has had another high-profile screw representative: Kid Fresh has released three slow remix CDs (Screwed Out Volumes 1 and 2 and an all-Tupac disc called Screwed Up Inc.). Many think of him as a mere biter of the DJ Screw sound, which is too bad, because he brings a smooth flow to the game and a keen ear for tunes that open when screwed into wistful explorations of the no-man's-land between wakefulness and coma. Kid Fresh mixes of Goodie Mob's "They Don't Dance No More" and Bone Thugs 'n' Harmony's "Look into My Eyes" are deserving of anthem status, but he seems fated to interest future historians of music primarily as a point of contrast to the genius of DJ Screw.

And it's an instructive contrast, in that Kid Fresh exemplifies the screw "formula" more plainly than does DJ Screw. Outwardly the form is simple: vocal-heavy hip-hop tracks slowed to a nodding shuffle, with an additional blending of beats, samples, and scratches. Of these, some are slowed and some not, but no voice is heard that isn't slowed down. The effect is only comical at first. Quickly the ear retunes itself to find that the emotional content has expanded with the slowing of the voices, rather than being distorted or diminished. Another development is that the lyrics become much easier to understand on a first hearing, a virtue Houston's screwheads tout as a point of regional pride. (And if contemporary country and western music is any indicator, a preference for song lyrics that are easy to understand is a Southern cultural trait that spans the colors.) As to whether one needs codeine to enjoy the effect, the answer is not really. Screw and codeine have similar effects in that both increase the listener's patience for the next beat, word, and breath, but screw would seem above all to commemorate the syrup buzz, and it's no doubt a great consolation when there's no syrup to be had.

The ways in which DJ Screw will forever be separated from all who follow in his footsteps are difficult to number. It's no exaggeration to say that he called his own audience into being and that he did so using those materials that lay closest at hand: namely, the talented underground rappers of greater Houston who gathered around him to form the Screwed Up Click. DJ Screw combined the work of producer and DJ to arrive at an utterly new Southern signature sound, taking a lo-fi approach that seems the defiantly calculated antithesis of mainstream hip-hop sensibilities. A DJ Screw jam can be loose and brawling in one passage and achingly tender or bell-like in the next. His voice is heard on nearly every track, shouting out woozy words of encouragement to friends and neighborhoods all over Houston. If asked to name his musical predecessor, one might suggest Charlie Parker. Like Bird, DJ Screw developed his chops in a woodshed environment, which, thanks to the huge informal market for his tapes, he was never forced to leave. The titles of his mixes read like nothing so much as a 1990s' update of Parker's own back catalog: "Crawfish Festival," "Dancin' with Candy," "Only Rollin' Red," "Blue 22," "Southside Riders," "Leanin' on a Switch," "Plots and Schemes," and "Who's Next wit Plex" all date from his productive '95-to-'98 period. And indeed, screw may turn out to be as pivotal a revolution in hip-hop as bebop was in jazz.

What's more, it's a sound that's readily exportable to other genres. If they can screw R. Kelly, in other words, they can screw J. Timberlake, which could lead anywhere from Linkin Park to Charlie Daniels. As DJ Screw pointed out to one interviewer, music played at regular speed sounds laughably Chipmunk-like to the screw-acclimated listener, and once screwed versions of mainstream favorites become commonplace, it's doubtful the originals will remain as credible. Of the potential barriers to screw's universal acceptance, none loom greater than its avoidance of the female voice. It must be said that Missy shines on Kid Fresh's remix of "Up Jumps da Boogie," by Timbaland and Magoo: in fact she stands uncannily revealed as Biggie's double. Which is fine for Missy, but vocalists praised for their high notes have so far been resistant to the screw treatment. I'd love to be proved wrong on this point (for a test case, may I suggest Da Brat?), not least for the gender fluidity it might help usher in. But for now, the exclusion of female vocalists from the screw sound is all but total.

The years since DJ Screw's passing have seen several developments in the genre and techniques that bear his name. One is the turn (led by Michael "Swishahouse" Watts of Houston's Northside) from the mix-tape format to "screwed'n'chopped" versions of entire albums. (For the most part, these are better described as collaborations between DJ and record label than between DJ and musician, a shift DJ Screw would probably have deplored.) Another is the irresistible rise of youngest Screwed Up Click member Lil' Flip, whose latest album, U Gotta Feel Me, debuted last month at number four on the Billboard top 200 chart; the "screwed'n'chopped" version set to drop May 11 stands a chance of becoming the best-selling screwed recording to date. Meanwhile, Bay Area listeners are left without a single screw night in any of the city's nightclubs and must satisfy their habits in isolation, via Internet mail-order. Of DJ Screw's vast output, frustratingly little is available outside Houston, but collectors will at least find that CDs by Kid Fresh are plentiful. Their cover photos all show him rocking the same San Jose Sharks jersey and looking quite fit and strong.