DJ Screw

Robert Earl Davis Jr., known as DJ Screw, was born in Bastrop, Texas, in 1971 and developed his career in Houston. By manually slowing records, blending them across long tape sides and recording local rappers freestyling over the results, he created the sound commonly called screwed or chopped-and-screwed music. The method was not simply a tempo effect: Screw used sequencing, repetition, pacing and social chemistry to build recordings that documented a local scene in real time.

His house sessions and tapes helped organize the Screwed Up Click, a network that included artists such as Fat Pat, Big Hawk, Lil' Keke and Big Moe. Screw opened Screwed Up Records & Tapes in Houston in 1996 and distributed hundreds of tapes directly to listeners. He died in Houston in 2000. The University of Houston later acquired the DJ Screw collection and has used it to document both his production work and the wider rise of Houston hip-hop.

DJ Screw created a production vocabulary rather than a novelty effect. His manipulation of speed and repetition changed how listeners heard familiar records and gave Houston artists a homegrown format outside the major-label system.

His archival importance is unusually strong for a regional hip-hop figure: the University of Houston's collection preserves tapes, photographs and working materials that let the scene be studied as Houston cultural history rather than only music-industry history.