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Chopped and Screwed

Hip Hop as a lifestyle/movement/genre encompasses a lot of things. Like a proud mother, her children ( genre's) come in all different styles. From Christian rap to Dub-Step. Yet one in particular does catch a lot of flack. That would be Chopped and Screwed music.

It first started when the famous Dj Screw (rip) was used to hearing the Miami bass music and how up tempo and fast it was. He then took upon himself to do something new, he decided to slow the tempo down. He started mixing down songs in the very early 90's. He is officially the creator of the genre. This became a huge success and with this success, came another part of the genre which was and still is "Purple Drank." Other names include, Purple stuff, lean, purple sprite, etc. Drank as it is called is usually a mix of promethazine, sprite and some sort of candy like Jolly Ranchers or Lifesavers. This became a big and very large part of the culture the problem was it was easy to over dose on and cause health problems. The plus of drinking this stuff was that it supposedly increased the overall experience of listening to "Screw," music. This Drank did do something no one saw coming, it was the cause of Dj Screw's Death, he overdosed on it. After this tragic death dj's like Micheal "5000" Watts and OG Ron C took to the helm and exposed the world to this new style of remixing music of sorts.

What the flack from the genre is some people state that you are just slowing down a perfectly good song. Yet what the listeners fail to realize is that the chopping is actually a hard thing to do. Finding the perfect beat to enhance and copy is hard. You must be able to count your beats, and learn when to and not to chop the song up. Screwing a song is pretty easy thats just slowing it down.

With the big use of Peer to peer sharing, chopped and screwed music spread very fast and gained a whole worlds eye to it. From chopping and screwing hip hop, r&b, to even pop and rock. It shows the depth of a genre to show how good it actually is. So the next time you look at Chopped and Screwed music as a waste of time and dj skills think about the actual technique that they use and the originator who helped get this movement started.