Houston culture is loud, slow and proud at the same time. It is a slowed-down mixtape bumping out of a candy-painted Cadillac with the trunk open and a neon sign in the lid. It is blues on Dowling Street, zydeco in Frenchtown, Tejano on the East Side and a Juneteenth tradition that started a few miles away in Galveston. If you want to understand this city, start with the music.
DJ Screw and the Birth of Screwed and Chopped
Screwed and chopped music started with one man in South Houston. DJ Screw, born Robert Earl Davis Jr., grew up between Smithville, a small town outside Austin, and Houston. By the early nineties he was making mixtapes at his house on the South Side, and he did something nobody else was doing: he slowed the records way down.
Screw would take a song, drop the pitch and tempo until the voices went deep and syrupy, and then layer, scratch and repeat parts of it so a single line rolled over and over. That repetition is the "chop." The slow-down is the "screw." Put together, the music feels heavy and hypnotic, like the humidity turned into sound. It was built for riding slow through the city with the windows down.
His tapes became the soundtrack of Houston. People lined up outside his house to buy them. Each one was custom, often with local rappers freestyling over the top, and they got copied and passed around the whole South. The plain gray cassettes, known as gray tapes, are collector items now.
The Screwed Up Click
The rappers who rocked on Screw's tapes became known as the Screwed Up Click. The list is a who's who of Houston rap: Big Hawk, Fat Pat, Lil' Keke, E.S.G., Big Moe, Lil' O, Big Pokey, Z-Ro and plenty more. Their freestyles about the South Side, slabs, candy paint and the city itself built a whole vocabulary. If you have ever heard someone say "comin' down" about a car, that is them.
Losing Screw
DJ Screw died in 2000. He was 29. His death was tied to a codeine overdose, and the slowed-down sound has been tangled up with promethazine and codeine syrup ever since. That part of the story is real and it is sad. It cost Houston a lot of people, Screw included, and later Pimp C of UGK. We tell it here because it is part of the history, not because there is anything to romanticize about it. The music never needed it.
Screw's legacy is everywhere. His shop, Screwed Up Records and Tapes, became a Houston landmark, and you can hear his influence in hip hop, R&B, electronic music and every "slowed and reverb" upload on the internet. Every time someone slows a song down to make it hit harder, that is Screw.
Swishahouse and the Northside
While the South Side had Screw, the Northside had Swishahouse. DJ Michael "5000" Watts and OG Ron C built their own slowed-down tapes and a label around them, with the Northside crew of rappers on top. Their style became known as "chopped and screwed," a slight reshuffle of the name that still starts friendly arguments about which side did what. Swishahouse is the house behind a lot of the mid-2000s Houston explosion.
When Houston Took Over
For years Houston rap was a regional thing, huge in the South, mostly ignored in New York and Los Angeles. Then, in the mid-2000s, the rest of the country caught up all at once. "Still Tippin'" with Mike Jones, Slim Thug and Paul Wall took the slab culture vocabulary national. Paul Wall made grills famous. Chamillionaire won a Grammy for "Ridin'." For a while it felt like every radio station in America was playing something from the 713.
The foundations
That moment was built on decades of work. The Geto Boys, out of Houston's Fifth Ward, put out some of the rawest, most influential Southern rap ever recorded, and Scarface is on any honest list of the best rappers alive. Rap-A-Lot Records, founded in Houston by J. Prince in the eighties, gave the city an independent machine that did not wait for permission from the coasts.
UGK
Down the road in Port Arthur, Pimp C and Bun B formed UGK, Underground Kingz, and made country rap tunes that defined the sound of the whole Texas Gulf Coast. "Int'l Players Anthem" with OutKast is one of the great rap songs of its era. Bun B has become something like Houston's unofficial ambassador, a rapper, teacher and community figure people of every age recognize on sight.
Today
The city never stopped producing. Travis Scott came out of Missouri City. Megan Thee Stallion came up on the South Side and went to Texas Southern. Beyoncé is from Houston, and she has never stopped shouting the city out in her music. Don Toliver, Maxo Kream, Sauce Walka and a long list of others carry the sound forward, each in their own lane.
Slab Culture
A slab is a Houston custom car, and the word itself is said to stand for Slow, Loud And Bangin'. It is the most Houston thing there is.
What makes a slab
- The car. Usually a big American sedan or coupe, often an older Cadillac, Lincoln Town Car, Buick or Oldsmobile. Long, wide and built for cruising.
- Candy paint. Deep, glossy, layered paint jobs that look wet in the sun. Purple, red, blue, green, gold, sometimes changing color with the light.
- Swangas. Also called elbows or "84s," these are wire wheels with spokes that poke way out past the body of the car. They are the signature. You see them and you know you are in Houston.
- The fifth wheel. A spare tire mounted on the trunk, often with a chrome ring and a light.
- The pop trunk. A trunk that rises open while the car rolls, revealing neon lettering, custom messages or tributes inside the lid, and usually some serious speakers.
- Wood grain. Wood grain steering wheels and interior trim. Classic.
Slab culture is about pride, craftsmanship and community. People spend years and a lot of money building a car. Slabs roll together in long, slow processions on special occasions, and when a beloved community figure passes, a line of slabs is one of the most moving tributes you will ever see in this city. Our purple accent color on this site is a nod to that candy paint.
One honest note: "comin' down" slow is about style, not speed, and none of it works if you are impaired behind the wheel. The best slab drivers in the city are stone sober and completely in control of a very heavy, very expensive car.
Third Ward: The Heart of Black Houston
Third Ward is one of the original wards of Houston, and it has been the cultural heart of Black Houston for well over a century. Our full Third Ward guide goes deep, but here is why it matters to the culture.
- Emancipation Park was purchased in 1872 by formerly enslaved people, led by Reverend Jack Yates and others, so the community would have a place to celebrate Juneteenth. It is one of the most important parks in Texas, and it looks beautiful today.
- Texas Southern University, one of the largest historically Black universities in the country, sits here along with the University of Houston. TSU's band and homecoming are institutions.
- Dowling Street, now Emancipation Avenue, was a blues corridor. Lightnin' Hopkins, one of the great Texas bluesmen, played the bars and porches here for decades.
- The Eldorado Ballroom, opened in the late 1930s, was one of the great Black music venues in the South, a spot for jazz, blues and R&B.
- Project Row Houses, founded in 1993 by artist Rick Lowe and others, turned a row of shotgun houses into an art and community project that the whole art world studies.
Third Ward is also changing fast, with new development pushing in from every side. Go with respect, spend money at long-standing local businesses, and listen more than you talk.
Beyond Rap: Blues, Zydeco and Tejano
Houston music is bigger than one genre. The Fifth Ward neighborhood known as Frenchtown was settled by Creole families from Louisiana in the early twentieth century, and it became a birthplace of zydeco in Texas, accordions and rubboards and all. Houston's blues history runs from Lightnin' Hopkins to Don Robey's Duke and Peacock Records, a Black-owned label in Fifth Ward that put out huge records for Big Mama Thornton and Bobby "Blue" Bland. On the East Side, Tejano and conjunto music have been the soundtrack of family parties and dance halls for generations.
How to Soak It Up
- Listen to the classics. Start with DJ Screw tapes, Geto Boys, UGK, the Swishahouse era and the mid-2000s run, then work forward. Do it in the car. That is how it was meant to be heard.
- Visit Third Ward. Walk Emancipation Park, stop by Project Row Houses, eat something local. See the Third Ward guide.
- Hunt for records. Houston has a solid crop of independent record stores in Montrose, the Heights and around town. Dig through the local section. See our things to do guide.
- Catch live music. The city has venues for every size of crowd, from small rooms to big halls downtown and in the Near Northside. Check their own listings, because shows change constantly.
- Look for the murals. Murals of DJ Screw, Pimp C and other Houston legends show up across the city, especially in the South Side, Third Ward and EaDo. See the EaDo guide.
