What Do You Consider Screw?

Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love Screwed and Chopped (from DJ Screw - Dead End Representative 1998)

Of course I love my slowed down music, and I've explained before I'm interested in all aspects of pitch retardation. Cumbia Rebajada is the recent favorite, but I stay banging my screw on a pretty regular basis. I love Ron C's Fuck Action series like any other romantic, but not many of the post-Robert Davis DJs really do it for me. You could think of DJ Screw as the Lee Perry of Southern Hip Hop, and the mud of those old Screw tapes is an essential element not unlike the dirt on the reel to reels from the old Black Ark Studio. Those recordings of the Upsetters might have sounded better if Perry wasn't busy drinking the cleaning alcohol, but luckily atleast half his time was spent expelling duppies from them. I'm no lo-fi purist and I don't even own that many cassettes, but I'm a sucker for the sizzurp-caked goodness. When I find some weird not-so-Houston joint Screwed and Chopped, it's usually just some kind of Youtube Novelty (not to talk down on the Screwed Up Oldies mixtape, among others). When I find something as eyecatching as this Talking Heads spin-off classic on an actual Screw tape, I'm reminded of how much DJ Screw actually enjoyed music. He gives such a fucked up life to the non-rap tracks thoughout his discography, from the Reggae joints to the R&B so slow rendered nearly impossible to fuck to. Tom Tom Club's flirtations with Hip-Hop make it's context in this case very believeable, and proof of the south's alliance to the same roots of its northern neighbors.

Screwed Odditties mix vol 2 is on it's way, gimme about a week.