Lance Scott Walker - DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution

AMERICAN MUSIC SERIES

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Lance Scott Walker

DJ Screw

A Life in Slow Revolution

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

AUSTIN

Copyright 2022 by Lance Scott Walker

All rights reserved

First edition, 2022

Requests for permission to reproduce material from

this work should be sent to:

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University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

Austin, TX 78713-7819

utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Walker, Lance Scott, author.

Title: DJ Screw : a life in slow revolution / Lance Scott Walker.

Other titles: American music series (Austin, Tex.)

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2022. | Series: American music series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021040676

ISBN 978-1-4773-2513-1 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2117-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2514-8 (PDF)

ISBN 978-1-4773-2515-5 (ePub)

Subjects: LCSH: DJ Screw, 19712000. | DJ Screw, 19712000Homes and haunts. | African American disc jockeysTexasHoustonBiography. | Rap musiciansTexasHoustonBiography. | Chopped and screwed (Music)History and criticism.

Classification: LCC ML429.D548 W35 2022 | DDC 782.421649092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040676

doi:10.7560/321171

For Red

The Screw sound is when I mix tapes with songs that people can relax to. Slower tempos, to feel the music and so you can hear what the rapper is saying. When I am mixing, I might run across something a rappers saying which is important. I may run it back two or three times to let you hear what he sayingso you can wake up and listen, because they are telling you something. I make my tapes so everyone can feel them.

DJ Screw, as told to Bilal Allah for Rap Pages, November 1995

Contents

Preface

This is folklore. DJ Screw is a Texas legend. He is bona fide hip-hop royalty and a pioneer of his discipline who left us with a rich archive of music that both documented and shaped a culture, remaking the fabric of Houston itself in the process. Robert Earl Davis Jr. has been gone for two decades now, but the sound of his chopped and screwed mixing technique has left an indelible mark on contemporary music. His Screw tapes continue to sell and get sampled by other artists, and unearthed volumes of his recordings still materialize each year, adding to the mystique of the underground cassettes that have sold into the millions all over the world.

When I moved to Houston in 1992, Geto Boys were local heroes, breaking nationally the summer before. Shortly thereafter, it was DJ Screw who would emerge to define the sound of the city. You heard it first in the streets, and it was heavy. It was enchanting. It was mystical. It made Houston feel different from anywhere else on the planet. By the mid-1990s, you couldnt open a window in the big, hot city without hearing a car drive by playing slowed down hip-hop. You still cant.

A decade later, I was years into working on a book chronicling Houston rap music with photographer Peter Beste, and DJ Screws name was omnipresent in nearly every interview I conducted. The stories people told about him were larger than life, more than just posthumous remembrances. He was the lifeblood of a huge swath of the city, and it was clear that his innovation, wisdom, and love for the people of Houston and Smithville forged a legacy deserving of its own book.

This is part of a greater library, an expanding fount of knowledge about an independent artist who came from nothing and dreamed up something bigger than his city. To tell the story of DJ Screw is to illuminate the history of Houston, a place that still reverberates with his vibe a full generation after his time. The artists who collaborated with him on that huge catalog are still at workthe same voices who crafted timeless stories from rounds of the ranking game The Dozens, from freestyles recounting their lives, or from the magic they created in the room with those turntables spinningtheir testimony filling in the puzzle that is the life of Robert Earl Davis Jr.

No matter how many interviews I do with the people who knew him, Ill still be an outsider in DJ Screws life. I didnt know him personally; Im a white punk rocker from Galveston Island. This hybrid oral history format is intended to open the aperture past my own eyes, ears, and experience, centering on the recollections of those who knew him, loved him, and drew inspiration from his work. Beyond my own research, I called on the reporting and scholarship of the authors and journalists who preceded me, so that DJ Screw and those who lived alongside him are the ones retelling this epic story.

I am eternally grateful to Screws family and friends for blessing this project and for their commitment, cooperation, and help throughout, and to the 153 people who have given their time and attention through multiple interviews since 2005. Recollections open old wounds; the candor and confidences of our conversations over the years have been invaluable in gathering material for this project. For all of you, on and off the record, I hope you are reminded of Screw in these pages. This is your book.

A traditional biography this is not, but none of us live traditional biographies anymore. The future is behind us before we can ever live it. No one can keep up. But DJ Screw slowed down the world, and over the years his music has continued to grow and prove more relevant and influential across generations. Screw set off a wave. May that wave circle the world forever.

Lance Scott Walker

NEW YORK

1. Screw York City

1999

If ever there were a moment under the lights, it was in December of 99, on a cold Tuesday night in Midtown Manhattan. Folks had packed themselves eight hundred deep into Club Downtimes three levels for Justo Faisons Fourth Annual Mixtape Awards, where DJ Screw was an honored guest. The Justos were a big deal for DJs, and in the house were New York luminaries like mixtape king Mister Cee, Tony Touch of the Rock Steady Crew, DJ Clue, and Yonkers rapper DMX (who released his third album that day)all of them present when Harlem native Kool DJ Red Alert, one of hip-hops founding fathers, called Screw up to the microphone to present him with a diamond-studded ring recognizing his work on the homemade mixes he called Screw tapes.