Chopped & Screwed
| Chopped and screwed | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | Southern hip hop, Half speed/33rpm, Codeine effect |
| Cultural origins | Early 1990s, Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Typical instruments | |
| Derivative forms | Witch house, seapunk, vaporwave, Cloud rap |
| Regional scenes | |
| Houston • San Antonio • Dallas • Longview | |
| Other topics | |
| Purple drank • Codeine | |
Chopped and screwed (sometimes called screwed and chopped or slowed and throwed) is a technique of remixing hip hop music which developed in the Houston hip hop scene in the early 1990s. This is accomplished by slowing the tempo down to between 60 and 70 quarter-note beats per minute and applying techniques such as skipping beats, record scratching, stop-time, and affecting portions of the music to make a "chopped-up" version of the original.
DJ Screw is largely recognized as the innovator behind the chopped and screwed genre. DJ Screw's key technique involved playing the same record on both turntables with a delay between them of one beat and quickly moving the crossfader side to side. This created an effect where the words or beats in a song were repeated without interrupting its tempo.
Today it is still common to see screwed and chopped versions of mixtapes and albums released alongside the regular speed versions, sometimes in a double disc format with one disc screwed and the other regular speed.
Preceding the early 1990s, most Southern hip hop was upbeat and fast, like Miami bass which was inspired by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force with their groundbreaking "Planet Rock". DJ Money B from Tampa, Florida created slowing down music in 1985 and in Central and Southern Florida DJ's such as Jam Pony Express from Fort Lauderdale and Rock It Rod DJ's from Tampa started slowing down music in the mid and late 80's.
In Houston, a different approach of slowing music down, rather than speeding it up, developed. It is unknown when DJ Screw definitively created "screwed and chopped" music: Screw said he started slowing music down in 1990 and also in Tulsa Oklahoma Dj Dinero And Dj Z-Nasty helped popularize chopped and screwed music in the Mid South. There is no debate, however, that DJ Screw invented the music style." He discovered that dramatically reducing the pitch of a record gave a mellow, heavy sound that emphasized lyrics to the point of almost storytelling. After messing around with the sound for a while Screw started making full length "Screw Tapes". At first the music was only referred to as "screw music", was limited to the South Side of Houston, and was seen as laid-back driving music. As Screw's tapes started to gain popularity he started selling his tapes for around $10. Screw was known to feature some of Houston's most renowned rappers from the South Side. This eventually led to the formation of the Screwed Up Click.
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