Switched on Pop - Big Floyd And The Influence Of Houston Chopped N Screwed Music

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

In a Rolling Stone article titled “He Shook The World: George Floyd’s Legendary Houston Legacy”, writer Charles Holmes reveals the musical past of the man who has become an international symbol for justice since his murder. Known as “Big Floyd” in his Houston community, he was part of the city’s Screwed Up Click, a hip-hop collective centered around the now-legendary producer DJ Screw. This underground scene created a style of slowed-down “chopped and screwed” hip-hop that seeped into mainstream hip-hop, and has even been appropriated by bubblegum Top 40. In this episode we unpack how this chopped and screwed sound took over pop and shine a light on George Floyd’s involvement with the Screwed Up Click. MORE Read Charles Holmes’ Rolling Stone article: '”He Shook the World': George Floyd's Legendary Houston Legacy” SONGS DISCUSSED DJ Screw - Sittin On Top Of The World ft. Big Floyd Mike Jones - Still Tippin’ Mikes Jones - Back Then Chamillionaire - Ridin Chamillionaire - Roll Call Paul Wall - Sittin Sidewayz Nelly - Grillz ft Paul Wall Kanye West, Paul Wall - Drive Slow Drake - November 18th A$AP Rocky - Purple Swag The Weeknd - Initiation Beyoncé - Bow Down THE SCOTTS - THE SCOTTS Travis Scott - Sicko Mode Travis Scott - R.I.P. Screw DJ Screw - In The Air Tonight E.S.G. DJ Screw - Swangin and Bangin DJ Screw - Screwed Up Click - Red pt 2 DJ Screw - 3 In The Morning DJ Screw - June 27th Freestyle DJ Screw and Lil’ Keke - Pimpin Tha Pen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Over the past few days, musicians have been remembering George Floyd. He was also known as Big Floyd for his contributions to an underground Houston hip-hop scene called The Screwed Up Click, who made music that ended up reaching the whole world. You can hear Floyd freestyling on a track called Sitting on the Top of the World.

world. Today, we call it's a low-d, watch me raise up in my drop top C, bouncing down the bull's board, watch me just grow. Young dick like to just lift the dollars fold. Today, we call that slowdown sound, chopped and screwed, and it comes from Houston, where Floyd grew up. Over the years, this chopped and screwed style is seeped into all of hip-hop and even bubble gum top 40. We're going to shine a light. from Big Floyd's involvement with the screwed up click in the second part of our conversation today. But first, we're going to talk about the rise of chopped and screwed in mainstream pop and where the sound came from.

We first learned about Floyd's connection to this scene in an article titled, He Shook the World, George Floyd's legendary Houston legacy, and we're excited to welcome the author of that piece to the show. Hey, guys, my name is Charles Holmes, and I'm a staff writer at Rolling Stone. Charles, thanks so much for being here. To kick things off, Where would most listeners outside of Houston have first encountered this woozy, chopped and screwed sound? It depends how old you are. I would say for, I'm 27. So the first time I really heard

chopped and screwed was Swisha House. It was this record label and collective that was really popping around like 2005 to mid-2000s. And if you were on MTV, B, T, VH1, I guarantee you were we're hearing and seeing Mike Jones. Slim Thug. Slim Thug. Slim Thug. A rock. Hey G of the game.

LeBron James. You niggas must don't know my name. I'm slim thugger motherfucker the big boss of the side. And this was like a second generation of Houston rap. who were basically becoming more commercially successful than their predecessors. And part of that was they were using this chopped and screwed effect.

Is there one song from the Swisha House output that might exemplify the sound? One that immediately comes to mind. It's not the most popular song that they released, but I would say it was one of the first is Mike Jones' still tipping. It features all of those Swisha House guys that would go on to be stars only a few weeks or months later. I'm Mike Jones, Mike Jones, the one and only you can't clone.

Got a lot of haters and a lot of homies, some friends and some phony. It's power wild, I'm the people's champ. My chain light up like a lamp because now I'm back with the camp. I got it made the big boss of the north. Ain't shit change, I still represent with your house. Ha. Yeah, this is a great track. It's amazing.

But this isn't the only version of that song, right? No. So the funny thing about Still Tipping is a lot of people technically would not call that chopped and screwed. They would probably call it Chopped Not Slop, which is something like a guy like O.G. Ron C. was doing and really helped bring that sound effect back in popularity. But yeah, back in those days, albums would have two versions. You would have the regular version, and then you would have the Chop Not Slop version, which would be. that really bassy, slowed down voice, slowed down beat,

bass-booming type of sound. That is sluggish. Amazing. For people living on the coaster in the suburbs across America, Swisha House, everything about them was really, really different. From their grills, the diamond-crusted teeth that they're wearing, the slang, the cars in the videos, the beats, their voices. To me, every city has a certain sound when it comes to rap.

When you think of New York, it's that boom bap. It's the vinyl sampled crackle. Chicago, it's like the sped-up solo sample. And in Houston, it was this slowed-down, syrupy, lean codeine-inspired music. I love how you said, like, there's this particular sound that is very Houston. Is there a song that bursts through the broad popular consciousness around this time with Switcha House? Yeah, so the song that really, really burst through, like I said, on all of these channels like MTV and BT, was Mike Jones' back then. Back then, a whole kidd woman, now I'm hot holes all on me.

Back then, a whole kidd woman, now I'm hot holes, all lonely. Before I came up in the candy, hold and show no love, they see me in the club and used to treat me. That was the first, to me, really big hit. It really infiltrated suburban America. It's the classic phone number line that I would say anybody under 30 could, like, tell you, like, right off jump. Classic track. So the funny thing about Mike Jones is that he really burst through was still tipping back then. And then what you start to see is that all of these other guys on.

Swish a House in Houston have the really big hits. Because basically all of the major labels were running to Houston, trying to sign these guys, trying to get a little bit of this magic that was coming out at the time. Because when you think of the big cities that dominate hip-hop, especially back then, it's still New York, it's still Chicago, it's still L.A., Atlanta is coming, and Houston is kind of this outlier that they had had, stars before, but I wouldn't say they ever really broke nationally in the way Mike Jones is. So then you start hearing Paul Wall sit inside ways.

Paul Wall was the white rapper of the crew, and yeah, he was immediately scooped up in pop. He starts appearing on different songs, so he starts appearing on Kanye songs. And then it really shows you, and then it really shows you, they're in the major label. All about the scrella riding something candy-coated crowding like a caterpillar. I'm tipping on them foes. I'm jimming on this group. I'm looking for them.

And then it really shows you they're in the major label system now. And now everybody wants a little bit of this magic for themselves. You write about another big hit to come out of this scene. It's by Camillionaire. Oh, Camillionaire riding. This was popping at the eighth grade dances. This is probably the biggest hit that would come out of Swisha House, in my opinion. They see me rolling.

They hate it. But trolling and trying to kiss me riding dirty. Trying to kiss me riding dirty. Trying to kiss me riding dirty. I don't think that there is a suburban mom alive who wasn't singing, Camillionaire's Riding. So at this point, I feel like. I would love to know more about each of these terms,

like chopped, screwed, chopped but not slopped. How are we hearing the manifestation of these techniques in these tracks? To me, when I was talking to Paul Wall for this piece, he was very, very deferential to basically the generation that came before him. We were saying as the chopped and screwed comes from another underground scene that's also happening,

in Houston and predates Swisha House. Where does this Chopton Screwd sound actually originate? The originator of Chopton Screwed is DJ Screw. He was this Houston DJ that realized that if he played with the pitch adjusters on his turntables, that he could slow down these records. What he, in essence, created was this sound that makes it seem like when a rapper is rapping and a beat is playing, that it's just,

everything is in slow motion. If you ain't getting paper, I don't understand. I tried to paint a pitch you need a better cab. From my understanding, when you're chopping that record, it's like a mix show.

When he's playing a song and a rapper is saying something, he's going back and slowing it down, reversing. Doing what a real fool, I'm a lot back. Doing what a dude. DJ does to basically show you this is the important line. This is the hottest line of the track.

Okay, so that's the chop part. So not only is he chopping it so you can hear the hottest line of the song. He's also slowing it down. And that's what I meant when I was talking about, like the methodical way that Swisha House wrapped. Before the ice was in my grill. Before I got my major deal, the house wouldn't give a damn if I was here. I said before the ice was in my grill.

Before I got my major deal, these hoes would give a damn if I was here. Because those were songs that they were recording in the studio, they might have not been necessarily doing it like a DJ, but it's so repetitive. And it's so, like their flow is so exacting because it comes from that tradition of DJ screws saying, hey, I'm going to make sure that the listener, when they're riding in their car, can hear every word.

And it booms and it's slow. And you don't miss a second. Yeah, I mean, you can feel, when everything's slow, down, the bass is emphasized. The vocal also kind of pops out in a new way. Like you can really tune into the lyric. And thinking about this piece just before hopping on together, I had read that DJ Screw did more than,

he's not just working with turntables here. The turntable was actually like a limitation. It wouldn't go slow enough. And so he would send the output of his turntables into cassette decks that he could slow down even further. So he's kind of like this mad genius combined, like misappropriating all these different technologies to create the sound that otherwise would never have been made.

These tools were not meant to work this way. And I can understand why people like naturally wanted to gather around him because he had this wholly creative way of thinking about production that both sounded great but was also probably really fun to make. I think it's also just important to note that, why so many people in Texas are so just hold him in such high regard when I was talking to Bun B. He was saying just by being next to DJ screwed during those times, you're considered a legend. Because the way he was chopping and screwing these records, people really couldn't duplicate it.

People didn't even really know what he was doing. This is before, like, everyone had fruity loops and logic and all of these different songs. So people were really like, they looked at him like a wizard. So it was almost like, back then they're like, oh, he really is, this is something that we can only call chopped and screwed because it comes from DJ Screw. Now that we've gotten acquainted with the Chopped and Screwed sound, the screwed up click surrounding DJ Screw, we can maybe start to trace how this music infiltrated the sound of pop writ large. And maybe we could start with a track by a non-Huston artist, Nelly, from St. Louis, and his song, Grills, featuring Paul Wall. My teeth of mind blowing, giving everybody chills, call me joys, call me, because I'm selling everybody grills. What you're looking at?

Let me see a grill. Let you see my wife. Rob, the jurist going, tell him to make me a grill. Oh, what another, what another middle school classic. I think it's amazing because in 2005, this is when Swisha House, people like Paul Wall, Mike Jones, Camillionaire, are getting big, and you can hear on the hook that they're using that chopped and screwed effect. But the beat now is different.

The beat's not slowed. It's still Nellie's pop up. bright type of music, this is the first instance where you're starting to see chopped and screwed being taken out of its original context and going further into the pop landscape. Where does it go from there? So in the same year, you had Kanye West's Drive Slow, which featured Paul Wall and GLC, and that was a little bit more in the Chopton Screw vein. Drive Slow. But Kanye, as Connie was doing back in the day on late registration, makes it a kind of conscious record.

So he even kind of mutates it a little bit more. And then fast forward four years later, you have Drake from Toronto. He releases so far gone. And at this point, Drake is not who we know him as today. He's this kid from a teen soap opera, Degrazy. And he makes this record that pulls from Houston, pulls from Atlanta, But he's from Toronto, and he's trying to give Toronto a sound. And because Toronto is such a melting pot, and Drake had family in the South, you start to see that he is learning how to take things that he's hearing from Houston and influences.

And then almost sandpaper the edges down. Let's take a listen to Drake's November 18th, which references DJ screws June 27th. I even when I'm coming down, just met a girl says she front of age time. I say my name is Drezy, and ain't nobody real her. Cup inside a cup smoking ghost face killer. And here's DJ Screws, June 27th. Oh, go and hit that photo. The boys need studied doing it, knocking off the unit.

Hit that big bay, we ain't different and fluid. Dipped and we draped out. No wood on top of mine. You don't see my diamonds because the boy Jeeb is coming out. I would say when the gates absolutely flooded with the Chapton Screwed sound was in 2011, two years later, with ASAP Rocky's purple swag. Swag. Super swag. I'm in the zone.

I'm getting throw. That purple swag. Purple swag. That purple smoke up in my clothes, that big booty. So then from there, you just start hearing chopped and screwed and everything. Everybody's pitching down their voice. It's so far removed from Houston. I don't think you can even call it chopped and screwed.

The collective consciousness of what rappers and pop stars are now doing. Right. It makes me think that by 2013, we get Miley Cyrus and her song, We Can't Stop. She was rarely criticized for appropriating the sound from hip-hop and beyond that from the screwed up click. It was getting to the point where, when a record would come out, you know, in 2011, like you would get like a chop not slap version of it. And I think it all went full circle

because now on Beyonce's bow down, she's from Houston. And now Beyonce's rapping and chopped and screwed. Not only does she have her voice chopped and screwed, she also shouts out a number of legends of this Houston seat. Shout out to Pipsy. You know, we used to sneak and listen to that UGK. It's probably not a coincidence that some of the more recent artists who are trying to reconnect this chopped and screwed sound with its Houston roots are those who hail from the city of Houston. No, absolutely.

I remember when that song dropped, that was the first thing that people noticed. It's Beyonce. She's one of, if not the biggest artist in the world. And I think it was a moment of reclaiming this chopped and screwed legacy and bringing it back to where it all started. So how about after our break, we come back around to exactly this question. How did this all get started? And how did George Floyd participate in this music?

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in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the... the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States

at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I feel like one of the most notable uses of Chopped and Screwed music today comes from the Houston rapper Travis Scott, who I think is a really great case study in the sound because he brings the music full circle back to its original creator, right? Before there was, which house, there was DJ Screw and the screwed up click. So how does Travis Scott get us back to the beginning of this story? Travis Scott, he would chop and screw records and do all this stuff or use those vocals. He was always a mass rap manipulating his voice. But it wasn't until AstroWorld, which is

named after a Texas theme park, where you see all across that album, him shouting out, screwed up click. Big Hawk is on the bridge of Second mode. Then you hear something like RIP Screw. It's right in the name. It's right in the title. That's what I think is funny about this, where it's like we're over 20 years removed from DJ Screw's death. still, his mark on the world is happening.

I don't know many DJs who you can say created a vocal technique that's arguably more popular 20 years removed from their death. You don't see that happening, you know? I hear in that we get a shout out to the screwed up click. So who is the screwed up click? The screwed up click was this massive collection. Like just think about how many weeks. Teng affiliates there are, that's the screwed up click.

You add people like Big Floyd, Big Hawk, Big Mo, Fat Pat, Mokiki, and DJ Screw, what was great about him is that he would just let people come and rap. They would literally just rap and freestyle. It would be like a cipher. Everybody's just coming through, whether it's a living room, whether it's a studio. DJ Screw was playing like a popular beat, and he's just letting people, like, get on the mic and rap. Another thing that when I was talking to Paul Wall, he would tell me was that basically in Houston at that time, there were full-time rappers.

There were full-time local rappers who were doing it and doing it big. And then the other people that would show up on these tapes would just be people with regular jobs. They would just be, you know, slice of life. Like, hey, like, for my birthday, let me come and let me rap, get on this freestyle. So when you're seeing all of these mixtapes back in the day that he put out, there's like, 30-minute freestyles that he's chopping and screwing and people are just like hopping back and forth on the mic. And I think that's what made screwed up click special because you can definitely see they're creating something as they go. And one of the people that was a part of it, even if it was just an affiliation,

was Big Floyd or George Floyd. This was such a down the pull-a-board, watch me just grow. Young nigger like the just-pid the dollars' bowl. This was such an incredible revelation for us, and I'm sure a lot of readers, as you and others have reported, George Floyd was pretty intimately involved in this Houston scene. What was his role in the screwed-up click? From what I can tell, Big Floyd, as he was called,

wasn't like a full-time rapper. How Paul Wall would describe it to me is he said, Big Floyd would rap on tapes, but you would also hear other rappers say his name, like Big Poki would say his name, then Lo Kiki would say his name, and then Big Floyd would say their names. And one thing that Paul Wall told me

was that the nature of the screwed up click, because it was pre-internet, because it was pre-social media, a lot of the stories are basically past word of mouth. So he sat down with, like, Lo Kiki and all these people, and they said, basically for Ballin' in the Mall, That's one of the ones where there's a legend behind the mixtape.

He said supposedly Big Floyd worked at Foot Locker, him and some other people. It was one of their birthdays. I think it was Big Floyd's birthday. And they come and they said, what you want to do for your birthday? I want to do a screw tape. So they ended up doing a screw tape. And on Chapter 07, Ballin and in the Mall, you can hear Big Floyd rapping. And he sounds just as good as any of his peers on that song.

Let's take a listen to George Floyd as Big Floyd, rapping on DJ screws, bawling in DeMall. You know, we're going slow when we're fucking with the screws. So, what's up to the blues? Welcome to everybody. And your brother, ALDI, because the food are flicked. The Omega Dr. Big Florida hurt in the industry.

Wine beer over go. People all over the world are more. George Floyd's killing and demanding justice. But what have you heard from the people who knew him, who rapped with him in Houston? Everybody was hurt in Houston, obviously. Everyone across the country is hurting. And when I did this piece,

I originally reached out to Trey the Truth. Trey the Truth is a legend in Texas. And he was somebody that had affiliations with screwed up, Click, swish a house. And what was special about him was he told me that he actually had a protege called Cal Wayne who grew up with Floyd. And Floyd was one of the people that believed in Cal Wayne. Cal Wayne is a rapper till this day. And Trey the Truth was like, people don't understand what type of man he was, not only for taking care of Cal Wayne and inspiring him, but also in Trey the Truth's life.

10 years ago, in fact, Trey the Truth was banned from Houston Radio. And in a video that Trey posted to Instagram, he showed Floyd defending him. Because Trey the Truth did so much for his community, does all of these givebacks and charities to help the people, Texas. And Floyd was defending him and saying at a time where everybody kind of left Trey for dead, you need to support this man. And I think that is why so many. people after I talked to Trey were so willing to hop on the phone with me. Paul Wall, the whole time I was on the phone with him, was just talking about how legendary screwed up click was and what it means that people were yelling out Big Floyd's name. Even if he wasn't one of the central figures of it,

maybe if he only had a handful of freestyles, the fact that he even got into those rooms and was able to do that speaks volumes about him. Bunby personally did not know him, But he's another Texas legend that was just like, people really need to understand that if DJ Screw let you on his tape, that means something. And I think that's why it was such a pleasure and an honor to do this because so much of the screwed up clique's legacy is not in writing. They never hit big enough where I think they were given that chance. But now, especially, people can go back and people can listen to Big Floyd, but they can also listen to a little Kiki. They can also listen to Big Hawk. They can listen to these people and see that this is where number one songs in the Billboard charts get their influence from.

Sometimes the music that's being made in people's living rooms in a super DIY way, they might not know it at the time because they're having a good time serving music to their own community. They might actually be later on reaching the entire world. And I think what was the emotional part about writing this article about George Floyd was not only thinking about him, but thinking about everyone who touched the screwed up click. A lot of those men aren't here anymore. A lot of them have died or passed away. There's not much writing about them. Like, there's a lot of writing after the fact about who DJ Screw was.

But in the moment, it wasn't like they were getting national attention. And I think the reason that people were. so amazed that George Floyd was part of the screwed up click is because it gave them a moment, and it gave me a moment, to honor him past him just being another victim of police brutality and police killing. Like, this is a man who contributed to a legacy that's still affecting pop today, and this is a direct, tangible loss. Charles, this is an incredibly moving story and an important,

part of George Floyd's legacy and the history of hip hop too. Thank you so much for sharing this from your article, which we'll link to in our show notes. And thank you for telling the story to us and our listeners today. We really appreciate it. Switch on Pop is produced by Bridget Armistrong, Megan Lubin, Nate Sloan, and me Charlie Harding. Redd McFarlane edits, mixes, and masters this show. Iris Gottlie makes gorgeous illustrations, and Abby Barr is on social media. Nishat Kerwa and Liz Nelson are our executive producers,

or a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thanks again to Charles Holmes for joining us. We'll link to his article in Rolling Stone in our show notes. And if you want to continue this conversation, please chat with us on Twitter and Instagram at Switched on Pop. We'll be back again next Tuesday, and until then, thanks for listening.