Founded in Houston in 2007 by OG Ron C, DJ Candlestick, DJ Hollygrove and DJ Lil Steve, The Chopstars are dedicated to the memory of DJ Screw. They've chopped everyone from Drake and Frank Ocean to Beyoncé and SZA, and Houston named July 1 "The Chopstars Day."

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OG Ron CFounder & CEO · Swishahouse original · ChopNotSlop Radio
DJ CandlestickFounding Chopstar
DJ HollygroveFounding Chopstar · President
DJ Lil SteveFounding Chopstar

THE ORIGIN

BORN IN HOUSTON.
SLOWED DOWN ON PURPOSE.

Before it was a filter on a phone app, chopped and screwed was one man, two turntables, and a house full of gray cassette tapes in Houston's South Park. This is how the sound was made, and how it spread from one side of the city to the whole world.

Screwed

The record is slowed way down, often to around 60–70 beats per minute. Pitch drops with it, so voices go deep and heavy and every bassline hangs in the air. Nothing is rushed.

Chopped

Two copies of the same record run on two turntables, one a beat behind the other. Working the crossfader, the DJ stutters words, repeats a line, skips the beat, and cuts a phrase so it lands twice. That's the chop.

Made live, by hand

No software. DJ Screw mixed live to tape, then ran the recording back through the pitch control on a four-track to pull it down even further. Every tape was a performance. That's what "chopped, not slopped" means.

1971–1989
A kid with a screw

Robert Earl Davis Jr. was born July 20, 1971, and spent much of his childhood in Smithville, a small town on the Colorado River in Central Texas, with stretches in Los Angeles and Houston. He was collecting records by five. After seeing the 1984 breakdancing movie Breakin', he started experimenting on his mother's turntable, first on her blues records and then on anything else he could get. The name came from what he did to records he didn't like: he dragged a screw across the grooves. The stories differ on who first called him "DJ Screw," but the nickname stuck. By the late '80s he was DJing in Houston.
1990–1992
The sound slows down

Around 1990, Screw began making mixtapes with the tempo pulled way down. Houston DJ Darryl Scott had played with slowed records before him, and Screw learned from that, but he took it much further. By 1991–92 the style was set: slow, heavy, with words chopped and repeated so you felt every line. Friends and customers started asking for "screw tapes."
1990s
The gray tapes

Screw recorded on 100-minute gray Maxell cassettes and sold them out of his house on the South Side, around $10 apiece. People lined up in cars in the evening waiting to buy. Some tapes were custom-made: you brought a list of songs and he screwed them for you. Over his life he made more than 350 tapes. They were copied, dubbed and passed hand to hand across Houston and then the whole South, with no label, no radio and no marketing.
Mid-1990s
The Screwed Up Click

Screw's tapes weren't just remixes. Local rappers came to his house to freestyle over the slowed beats, live, straight onto the tape. That crew became the Screwed Up Click (S.U.C.): Fat Pat, Big Hawk, Lil' Keke, E.S.G., Big Pokey, Big Moe, Z-Ro, Lil' Flip, Trae, Lil' O, the Botany Boyz, the Southside Playaz and more. Screw never locked anyone into a contract. The tapes were where Houston's next generation of rappers made their names. June 27th (1996), a birthday tape with a now-legendary freestyle run, is one of the most famous tapes ever made.
1995–1998
From the underground to the shelves

In 1995, Bigtyme Recordz released official Screw albums, including 3 'N the Mornin'. Screw then opened his own shop, Screwed Up Records & Tapes, on Cullen Boulevard, so fans had a real storefront instead of a line outside his house. The sound was now a Houston institution.
1994–1997
The North Side answers: Swishahouse

Houston's North and South Sides had their own scenes. As the story goes, screw tapes first reached the North Side because a car stolen on the South Side still had one in the deck. That's a legend, but the sound really did cross town. On the North Side, DJ Michael "5000" Watts had been DJing and making mixtapes since he was a teenager. In 1994 he met OG Ron C at radio station 97.9 The Box, and Ron C started selling and hyping Watts' tapes. In 1997 Watts turned his home into the Swishahouse and launched the label. Swishahouse's slowed and chopped tapes, like the Choppin' Em Up and Northside series, gave the North Side its own voice and put Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, Mike Jones and others on. Hear Swishahouse: Spotify ↗ Apple Music ↗ iHeart ↗ Amazon Music ↗ SoundCloud ↗ YouTube Music ↗ Audiomack ↗ Android app ↗Rep Swishahouse: Official store ↗ Instagram ↗
November 16, 2000
Losing Screw

DJ Screw died in his Houston studio at 29. The medical examiner ruled it mixed drug intoxication, including codeine cough syrup. Lean had become tied to the sound, and it went on to take other members of the culture far too young. Screw himself said you didn't need lean to feel the music. He was buried in Smithville. Fat Pat had already been killed in 1998, and Big Hawk would be killed in 2006. The loss hit Houston hard. It also made people realize how much one DJ had built.
2000s
Houston takes over

Screw's influence exploded after he was gone. On the North Side, Watts brought "slowed and chopped" to FM radio in 2002 with a show on Party 104.9. Mike Jones' "Still Tippin'", featuring Slim Thug and Paul Wall, came off a Swishahouse compilation and caught fire in 2004. That year Swishahouse signed a national distribution deal with Asylum Records. In September 2005, Paul Wall's The Peoples Champ debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Mainstream artists started asking for official chopped and screwed versions of their albums.
2007–2022
The Chopstars keep Screw alive

In 2007, OG Ron C formed The Chopstars with DJ Lil Steve, DJ Candlestick and DJ Hollygrove. The crew is dedicated to DJ Screw's memory under the motto "Keeping DJ Screw alive since 2001." In 2008 Ron C launched ChopNotSlop Radio, billed as the world's first chopped and screwed radio station. Their official ChopNotSlop remixes took the Houston technique to the biggest names in music: Drake's Take Care became Chop Care (2011), Frank Ocean's Channel Orange became Channel Purple (2012), and there were chopped versions of Metro Boomin, 21 Savage, Brent Faiyaz and more. Director Barry Jenkins, a member of the collective, brought the sound to the Oscar-winning film Moonlight with a chopped and screwed take on its soundtrack (2017). On November 4, 2022, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner proclaimed July 1 "The Chopstars Day."
Today
The whole world slowed down

Drake, A$AP Rocky, Travis Scott and experimental electronic artists all carry Houston's slowed-down DNA. Around 2017, "slowed + reverb" edits took off on YouTube and then TikTok, a generation that may never have heard a gray tape. The University of Houston Libraries now preserves more than 1,500 of Screw's own records, donated by his family, and held a major exhibit on him in 2012. The State of Texas named him a Texas Music Pioneer. The sound started on a turntable in South Houston. It still belongs to those who built it.

Sources

Some details, like where Screw was born and who first gave him his name, differ between sources. Where they do, this page says so or sticks to what they agree on.

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THE CHOPSTARS

Screwed

Chopped

Made live, by hand

A kid with a screw

The sound slows down

The gray tapes

The Screwed Up Click

From the underground to the shelves

The North Side answers: Swishahouse

Losing Screw

Houston takes over

The Chopstars keep Screw alive

The whole world slowed down

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NOT SLOPPED.COM