DJ Screw €? 9 Fo Shit (Chapter 051)
Heli Whetzel
Davis began buying records of his own and would spin with his friend Trey Adkins, who would rhyme. According to Adkins, "Screw had a jam box and he hooked up two turntables to it and made a fader out of the radio tuner so he could deejay." Adkins said if Robert Earl didn't like a record, he would deface it with a screw. One day Adkins asked him, "Who do you think you are, DJ Screw?" Robert Earl liked the sound of that and, in turn, gave his long-time friend a new name: Shorty Mac.[2]
The genre shown by DJ Screw has since evolved into a Houston-based subculture that is associated with the recreational consumption of codeine, opulent jewelry and elaborate vintage vehicles. Screw has also left behind a cult following of listeners who self-identify as "screwheads". A music festival and car show in honor of DJ Screw was set up in 2006. The inaugural DJ Screwfest featured 200 vehicles and a set list featuring notable Houston hip-hop acts like Trae and Chingo Bling. The first festival took place at the Pasadena County Fairgrounds. The 2007 documentary film Screwed In Houston, produced by VBS/Vice Magazine, details the history of the Houston hip hop scene and the influence of the chopped and screwed sub-culture on Houston hip hop. The 5-part series devotes one full episode to DJ Screw and includes video footage of him days before his death. The University of Houston Libraries Houston Hip Hop Research Collection [11] houses the DJ Screw Papers,[12] including approximately 1500 vinyl records owned by DJ Screw, original DJ Screw recordings, photographs, handwritten track lists, and more. Some of these materials have been digitized.
The mixtapes were re-released after his death in 2000 and given "Diary of the Originator: Chapter" titles.Despite this, they were not re-released chronologically. The works date between 1993 and 2000.New chapters continued to be released.
A young DJ Screw had aspirations of being a truck driver like his father, but seeing the 1984 hit break dancing movie Breakin' and discovering his mother's turntable permanently derailed those dreams. He would take her B. B. King and Johnnie Taylor records and scratch them on the turntable the way deejays did, slowing the spinning disc and then allowing it to speed back up, playing with sound. Robert Earl began buying records of his own and playing deejay with his distant cousin Trey Adkins, who would rap. "Screw had a jam box," Adkins told Texas Monthly, "and he hooked up two turntables to it and made a fader out of the radio tuner so he could deejay." Adkins said if Robert Earl didn't like a record, he would deface it with a screw. One day Adkins asked him, "Who do you think you are, DJ Screw?" Robert Earl liked the sound of that and in turn gave his cousin a new name: Shorty Mac.
When the Houston hip-hop scene became nationally prominent in 2004, many of the biggest acts could be traced to DJ Screw's crew, the Screwed Up Click. The expansive crew, which featured more than 15 rappers, were featured prominently on his mixtapes and often spent nights with him recording. Some of the more famous rappers to come out of the Screwed Up Click include Big Hawk, Lil' Keke, and Fat Pat. While many of the S.U.C. rappers enjoyed major-label success, DJ Screw himself remained largely underground. He was uncomfortable with mainstream business practices like bank accounts and copyrights. He would allow members of the S.U.C. to rap on his mixtapes free of charge, despite the large amount of exposure a screw tape feature could provide. A single tape could have reached 100,000 listeners according to some estimates; they often led to further success, including recording contracts.
Gabe: You were eleven years old! You were eleven years old. You were a kid, Alex. Let it go. People leave. Life gets hard. Sometimes it's just a big shit sandwich. Make it better. Be angry at Dad. Miss Mom. Hell, be angry at me. But don't give up. No one gets to tell you what you're worth. And no one can take your life away. Fight!
Charlotte: What are you trying to do? Take down Typhon? That won't bring him back. All I know is everything falls to shit when you're involved. There's something wrong with you, Alex. And now there's something wrong with me. I can't help you. I'm sorry.
Steph: What you did at the council meeting-- it was the bravest thing I've ever seen. And it made me want to be brave too. So here it goes: I want to be with you. I don't give a shit about playing music. Or seeing the world. I mean, I do. But only if it's with you. And if you'd rather stay here instead, then--
Off the codeine, razorblading Swishers at Screw house, Pat and Keke with Dave and Boo doing backup offers a general lesson on the aesthetic of the Screw tape freestyle, the formula of routines and constructions: The "I'm comin' down" shit, the North-South rivalry, the yellowbones-in-Yellowstone, the starchy clothes and sipping pints, dropping tops, rolling out on 84s.
This isn't grimy Keke freestyles or Screw devotedly chopping up Pac. Just a personal tape for Screw's boy Randy, who was down from 1992. A classic for the atmosphere, Screw's diligent mixing (of a sort that would go missing on later tapes). You can picture Bird and Mike D leaning over the tables. You can picture Screw letting the beat ride on "Swangin and Bangin," lifting a fat hand off the record to wipe sweat off his forehead, pausing to let Randy give shoutouts, "All these boys got their Nikes on. This ain't the flea market shit. We all real up in here."
"We interrupt this Screwed Up broadcast to bring you a very important news bulletin. Mr. Fat Pat has been in the news again today. He has been spotted on MLK and he has been hated by a hundred more motherfuckin' folks. When will this shit ever stop? We'll see if we can get an interview with Mr. Fat Pat. Mr. Fat Pat, are you taking any interviews?"
I played the demo on Steam which includes the first 3 chapters. I got through half of chapter 2 and it wasn't really "fun" to play but I found the story and premise really interesting. The black bars really bothered me and the game itself would shift dramatically from looking pretty good to looking pretty bad, although I attribute that to all the weird filters going on. Overall I wasn't too eager to continue. The story seemed interesting, I want to know more about that resonance machine or whatever, but man the gameplay just wasn't doing it for me. Also I'm really tired of the haunted asylum, european village, castle motif in horror games. The reason I loved Dead Space so much was because they perfectly framed their unique type of horror with a sci-fi setting and it worked. For a while there I was really on the verge of buying this game but after the demo I'm glad that I didn't. This more old-school, rigid type of survival horror really isn't my cup of tea.
I actually really enjoyed most of the game. I did however stop playing when I got to the boss battle at the end of chapter 10. I had my fill and everything I'd heard come after that wasn't great. I don't know if it'll end up on my top 10, but I did have fun.
I find myself noticing that people who didn't like this game tend to be people who just aren't that great at videogames. I'm not trying to be condescending here but I'm a fucking god at videogames to put it bluntly. I never had any issue with ammo and I died a handful of times in the game. I'll admit things like checkpoints were pretty unforgiving on those occasions I did bite it, yet, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying the game and I feel like it's literally just RE4 but better. I've seen people like Patrick play the game and can see how he, as well as others, may not like it as much due to just getting shit on from being sort of mediocre. Me, on the other hand, it was refreshing to get some difficulty in a game for once without having to automatically set it to a harder difficulty.
For me it's best described as "completely and utterly forgettable". I found the game much too easy to build any sort of tension (outside of chapter 9). I think my death count at the end was 16 or something, every single one being either some boss fight that didn't explain itself or a one hit kill that came out of nowhere. I thought some chapters had fantastic atmosphere (chapter 3, 4 and 9 specifically), and the sound design was really solid, but it just wasn't enough for me to enjoy it. Too many chapters I just wanted to be done with. That's another thing, the game was way too fuckin' long for my taste. I think I finished it at close to 17 hours, so it has the same problem that Alien: Isolation has. The game would very much benefit from having chapters 6, 11 and 12 completely cut from the game.
I also don't understand the comment about the stealth. The game relies on stealth for, uh, 90% of it. There are sequences that are mostly action(Chapter 6's "Action House", Chapter 12's filler chapter of nothing but shooting shit and then running it over in a bus). I had no problem with the difficulty even though it could get hairy in some places, but I would stealth my way around all the time or else I'd never have any ammo whatsoever.
For this part, allow me to "break kayfabe" and point out that I'm not giving you shit or anything. You are not wrong for feeling the way you are feeling, and I'm not trying to "shit on you" here. I need to point this out because it's hard to convey tone in text and I'm basically just discussing this game right now. But the idea I get is that you maybe didn't give it a chance. You heard about the mixed reviews, rented it instead of buying it and already had a preconceived notion about what to expect, and maybe didn't look any deeper. I only say this because the fundamentals of the game mesh really well and "reward" you for playing crafty.
0aad45d008