SONG OF THE DAY: The One Who's Hurting Is You (kudzu'd)

Been listening to a lot of DJ Screw lately, probably a symptom of swimming through so much mental mud. But then also I thought about how "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd is such an absolutely perfect song for certain feelings like when you are swimming through mental mud all the time but also living in a poorly-run dystopia during the dying era of a self-important empire. And then I remember string theory and know that somewhere, an alien version of myself is driving an old shitbox while bumping a DJ Screw tape where he's done a 14-minute extended chop of "Wish You Were Here" that blends into Master P's "Miss My Homies", with Lil Randy somehow shouting out DJ Screw and giving him an RIP on DJ Screw's own mixtape. I wish I could download that grey tape, but I lost my dial-up connection to the Space Archives, so I can't currently get shit out of the multiverse. And you can forget about finding anything like that on a bullshit ass streaming service. Streaming of conscious will always be stronger than streaming service. And the only cost of the former is being forced to focus on your own fucked-up thinking.

SONG OF THE DAY: Riding High (kudzu'd)

This track was a Top Ten R&B track in 1978, and the title song off Faze-O’s debut album, and came to my consciousness because it was one of them old school funk songs that DJ Screw loved to throw on a grey tape from time to time. As the internet digitized all those old grey tapes, it got mistakenly labeled as Rick James, not Faze-O, so for years, when I bumped this on an old eyephone turned into retro eyepod due to it being obsolete as a smart phone already, the yakubian data contained therein always acted like it was Rick James playing this song. At some point somewhere over the past decade of my life, I came across a 45 copy of the Faze-O original, I grabbed the fuck out of it. A clean copy, too. Since then, Galaxy Sound issued an “edit” which is new-fangled talk for bootleg, and I got that too, but I still play the original whenever I’m doing a slowed down set of Screw’s favorite old funk jams, like this, “Don’t Stop the Music” by Yarborough & Peoples, “I’m Comin’ Out” by Diana Ross, and others I ain’t thinking about right now, I go with the old dusty original, always. I’m pretty old and dusty myself, and ain’t nobody making no edits of me. But this song is such a sweet banger of a track slowed down.
FYI, whenever I write about one of these 45s I’ve ripped, I find some old ass footage somewhere to make a video for the background, rather than using automated bullshit. This is just some old history cartoon I found on archive.org, and I always pink/purple neon out the color aesthetic, and throw that Southern Gothicc Futurism tag at the bottom. Layers upon layers of nonsense processes, that nobody ever sees or knows about, just like Screw slowing down his 4-track recordings into a Maxell dub deck. I love a good chaos agent of creative bullshit. And even in the age of artificial intelligence, us chaos agents will always keep riding on a higher vibration than the minimalist predictable output that comes out one of those things. To create fucked up shit is to be godly; to type prompts into a computer is to be a reactionary dullard. You might love how some of the shit you’re throwing at the wall is sticking, but you’re still just throwing shit at the wall.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ring My Bell (screwed & chopped)

Love too hear Screw just get dialed in and work a classic groove all the way down to the bone gristle. All the old grey tapes are at the Internet Archive, and you ought to put them on an external hard drive. Don’t count on the internet to have shit forever. Forever ain’t ever happening with anything manmade, so get it while you can.

SONG OF THE DAY: Don't Stop The Music (screwed & chopped)

I HAVE A DJ GIG ON JUNE 27TH, WHICH IS UNOFFICIALLY DJ SCREW DAY, AT GUAJIROS IN CHARLOTTESVILLE. I HAD BEGUN RECENTLY TO QUESTION MYSELF, AND MAYBE NOT PLAY SLOWED 45S, TO PRESENT MUSIC MORE NORMALLY, MORE LIKE A FRIDAY EVENING’S VERSION OF A SUNDAY BRUNCH CROWD WOULD LIKE. IT’S SO HARD TO GET FOLKS TO GO DO ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF THEIR DIGITAL BUBBLES, OTHER THAN GO TO WORK. AND LIKE ANYBODY PERFORMING, YOU WANT FOLKS TO ENJOY WHAT YOU DO. BUT TO BE HONEST, I CAN’T COMPROMISE THE VISION, EVEN IF NOT EVERYBODY UNDERSTANDS IT OR FEELS IT. SLOWED MUSIC IS COMMITMENT TO THE SLOWED LIFE, AND HUSTLE AND GRIND MENTALITY IS KILLING US ALL. WE ARE NOT GEARS IN A MACHINE; WE ARE BEINGS IN A BLESSED ORGANIC ASS FIELD OF CHAOS MEANT TO LACKADAISICALLY ENJOY OUR TIME. THAT TIME IS NOT MEANT TO BE A CALENDAR FULL OF PRISON BOXES, WHERE WE “KEEP APPOINTMENTS” LIKE A FUCKIN’ DOCTOR OF UNLOUNGE. TIME IS ARBITRARY, AND NO MATTER HOW MUCH OF IT YOU GET, IF YOU MAKE THE GOOD OUT OF AS MUCH OF IT AS POSSIBLE, THEN YOU DIDN’T WASTE IT. I MEAN LOOK, WE GOT A MISERABLE ASS 84 YEAR OLD WANNABE KING RIGHT NOW, WHO’S WASTED HIS LIFE IN PURSUIT OF GOLD PLATED DELUSIONS. I AM GOING TO DIG THROUGH THE IMMENSE AND EXTENSIVE STACKS, PULL OUT A FEW BOXES OF THE FUNKIEST BOOGIEFIED G-BODY ASS LITTLE RECORDS I GOT, AND COME FUCK IT UP FOR 3 HOURS. WORD IS BOND. DON’T STOP THE MUSIC.

SONG OF THE DAY: The Girls They Love Me (screwed & chopped)

Syrup & Soda is my absolute favorite DJ Screw tape. Nothing else even comes close, to be honest. He’s in such a zone on this one (Chapter 046 in the anti-chronological Screw discography), with a heavy old school set on Side A. But he’s not just playing the tracks, he’s fuckin’ it up on the tables, juggling “The Girls They Love Me” and “Love’s Gonna Get You” to his heart’s content. And even on Side B, when it gets to that west coast gangsta funk Screw tapes are more known for, he still sprinkles in a Slick Rick track, and fills out the end of the second side of the tape (remember, these were all originally 100-minute Maxell mixtapes) with “Juicy”. Just an absolute classic, and whenever somebody wants me to tell them where to start, I go to this one. Of course, who the fuck is gonna listen to a whole ass 100-minute mixtape, in the order it was originally released? You. You should at least. Most all his tapes are the Internet Archive.

SONG OF THE DAY: Runnin' The Underground (screwed & chopped)

I have been inactive on this site, but not in real life. Despite my inactivity, site stats continue to be through the roof. The internet is just a vast wasteland of bots scanning bots and creating statistics for other bots. Somewhere in there, one or two of us might actually connect, all the while they’re scooping data from our interactions to beam neurologically triggering ads straight to us wherever possible. It’s fucked.
All these systems are working very well, because they’re designed to break us. What’s happening with The Secret Police conducting masked kidnappings of working people from their jobs is no different. It’s those poisoned by the algorithm moving into action. At this point, the digital propaganda is like Lyme disease… it’s jumped the fence and moving unchecked. It’s hard to know if the tyrants in charge are controlling it or just suffering from it (or both). Either way, consent is being manufactured and the fog machines are rolling on high, and Chief Bromden was always right.
I suggest to you to create. But fuck shit up with what you create. Fuck monetizing your creations. Break shit with your creations. Stab devils in the eyeballs with your creations. It feels good actually. The moral high-grounders are beating the “non-violence is the only way” drum right now, but those people are boring. They have shitty taste in music, and put raisins in potato salad. Fuck them. They are the cousins to the devils (on the devils’ father’s side, too).
I hope you are alive. And if you are alive, even more than that, I hope you feel alive. And if you don’t, go fuck something up that is making you feel less than alive, and see if that relieves some of the pressure. Burn bridges where you can see the other side is full of shit. Be difficult to those who demand their lives be easy at everybody else’s expense. And keep it underground. Don’t get lost in aspirations or ambitions or a desire to monetize your creations. There’s a lot of tricks in this goddamn carnival, so don’t get conned too easily. Be fuckin’ difficult.

SONG OF THE DAY: Sunny Day (slowed & throwed)

It has been raining most the week, including a bit of that super heavy rain from atmospheric rivers that the surface of the Earth ain’t really known for too long (climate a changin’), so parts of roads got washed out but I’m on high ground. Still though, the roof took a testing, and wherever that leak was last year that I think was from overflowing gutters (since that seemed to fix it) is always looming overhead, and I gotta replace a couple little pieces of siding that fell off, but I stepped on one in my slides (the green and white ones) and took a nail into my foot, so when it’s nice outside, I’m mad at those pieces. And when it rains, and I worry about it, I ain’t going out there to fix it. Nonetheless, had a brief blast of sunshine, and it’ll be back this weekend, and it’s gonna be hot (all that wet baking back out the Earth) and that sticky ass humid, but I’m alive, and well. That’s all one can ask, on a daily basis, and you don’t even have to have the “well” to see tomorrow. My advice, as we trickle through our Friday afternoon on the bipolarizing Earth being managed mostly by delusional dipshits, is to take it slow. Every day is a blessing and every lazy hour is a double of that, and I pray that life is not crushing you, wherever you are out there.

SONG OF THE DAY: Country Rap Tune (screwed and chopped)

Tow Down is a wild anomaly in the world of white rappers. “Country Rap Tune” is a certified all-time banger, featuring Big Hawk and Big Pokey, and getting the screwed and chopped treatment with a voiceover from DJ Screw himself that probably done got more plays than the original album version, by a lot. The video is hilariously of the era, with Tow Down driving a little ass car painted up like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard, and set in all the normal “I’m mixing country and rap together” locales you’d expect from that time – a farm and barn and farmer’s daughter getting tow down in the hay loft, and an overall poor dental hygience redneck chasing him with a shotgun. The whole video is basically an episode of Dukes of Hazzard, with Hawk rapping in the barn and Pokey sitting on a Boss Hogg Cadillac outside a drinking hole. Tow Down’s verse is hot, and up to snuff with the two Screwed Up Click heavyweights on this one. I still think that “I’m not Garth Brooks, but I got friends in low places,” line weekly in my head.
The wild shit is you never really heard nothing else come from Tow Down. But that first CD he had featured a slew of Houston legends. Looks like he did a little stint with his brother for a marijuana bust a decade back, but he’s still chasing those hip hop dreams, with his own record label, promoting shows, and flipping houses maybe (according to a linkedin account). But the phrase “country rap tune” ended up describing a whole genre, which after that initial wave of guys like Bubba Sparxxx and Haystak, has steadily declined into some weird ass reverse psychology rural minstrel show. And a lot of those old southern white rappers are making money off paid features, to stay semi-relevant in this country rap genre.
I find it weird, because a lot of Prolo’s releases over the years would fit this genre, before it was a genre, but I’d be embarrassed if a lot of these newer dudes ever asked me to spit on a track. I’d take that shit is a sign of my own inherent wackness. But to Tow Down’s credit, he’s not in that realm, and he’s putting out music by new Houston rappers, and keeping it multicultural (as it should be) instead of disappearing into the weird “whites only” hip hop lane some of these guys shifted into.
But the most amazing thing, to me, is back then, when this song dropped, Tow Down had his own signature hairstyle. And I’m not really even sure how to describe it. When he’s wearing a ballcap, it looks kinda like he’s got Willie Nelson braids, but in four instead of just two. But what he actually was rocking was these four super curls styled to come off his head in quadrants. It’s a wild style, even for back then. But get this… HE’S STILL GOT THAT SHIT. Except now he’s 25 years older, got a grey fox beard going on, and those four super curls are super long. It’s like a whiteboy was all of a sudden hanging out with DJ Quik and Suga Free in that imitating Michael McDonald clip.
Anyways, this song is still an all-time banger. Don’t get it twisted (like Tow Down’s hair).

SONG OF THE DAY: Diamond in the Back (chopped and screwed)

It’s pretty simple… be thankful for what you got, and then slow it down even further. About to take a four hour ride 15 minutes away, window down, and the screwed slow jams blasting.
I considered putting the actual song title up on the heading there, but one thing I love about the chaos that has come from digitally archiving old Screw tapes is all the data ain't right. This one's been labelled the wrong thing for decades now, which might make it the right thing by now. Who am I to judge (or jury)?

SONG OF THE DAY: Crees Que Soy Sexy?

I shall always appreciate people gyrating sexually who don’t look like HBO Max prestige TV ready characters visually. Ugly people are immensely beautiful, and not the true uglies. We all only have one body we are imprisoned inside of upon our Earthly existence, thus it is a good idea to maximize your serotonin induction. Fuck the haters (but not literally).

SONG OF THE DAY: So Real (slowed and throwed)

Been listening to a lot of DJ Screw lately. That’s just how it is sometimes.

SONG OF THE DAY: Five Minutes of Funk (screwed & chopped)

I always look forward to the redbud blossoms in the spring, even though I love all the daffodils and tulips and forsythia and blackberry blossoms and phlox spreading further as well. But there’s something about the redbuds once they pop, the days are getting warmer, I can sleep with the windows open at night, and I know I survived another year. Yesterday, I went back in the woods and got a handful to eat, and need to go back out and get more today, too. Such a satisfying crispy flavor full of life and raw energy.
And inevitably, once redbuds season hit, I always think in my mind that it’s proof that Allah loved DJ Screw, because the redbuds are such a lovely purple pink shade, and since my windows are down on the car because it’s warm again, and the roads have all these redbuds showing themselves like a magical mist this time of year, brightening the sides of the human paths and edges of the woods, mystical corpus callosum bridges between nature and man, I end up also starting to bump DJ Screw mixes again. His body of work was immense in his lifetime, having made far more redbud blossoms worth of mixtapes than having lived for less than three decades would suggest. And since my ancient iMac died, killing with it over a decade of musical data, which can’t be reimported because I’ve got too much shit for an internal hard drive, and it has to travel between eras as external vagabond of audio, I’ve been revisiting them Screw tapes afresh, finding myself drawn to some stuff I’d always loved for a while now, and discovering new segments of tapes I never bumped all that much as well. One of my favorites, both old and new exploration, is the tinkering with “Five Minutes of Funk”, originally by Whodini.
One of the great things about Screw becoming so famous is all he did was make mixtapes constantly, for immediate sale, to people who bumped his shit. He did it prolifically and as regular as the sunrise. Eventually he got a shop, to avoid cops harassing him at home for the long lines, and they put out tapes as they could. When you go online, they’re laid out in “chapters” with three-digit numbers, but those aren’t in any chronological order. It’s just how they got reissued or released at the Screwed Up Records Shop, or who the fuck knows. They still keep finding some. The track data for this song on my hard drive claims it’s Leanin’ n The Leans, but that doesn’t match what shows up online now, for Chapter 219 by that name. And it’s a pretty amazing example of DJ Screw’s actual DJ skills, juggling the song, mixing and scratching, working from instrumental and vocal versions, and just generally fucking it up like only he could. Screw was an outsider artist in hip hop, just doing what he did without thinking it needed to be cataloged or categorized. So now, decades later, when the University of Houston has a DJ Screw archive, and is trying to do just that, it’s impossible work. It’s like when Han Shan aka Cold Mountain, the T’ang era poet, was discovered by a bureaucrat, so they sent folks out into the woods to gather what poems of his they could find written on stones and inside caves, and that became what we know now as Cold Mountain’s poetry. I actually emailed the archivist in charge of the Screw collection at Houston, asking her about the chronology of all the tapes, because I was thinking about trying to do that, and she said as far she knew, it hadn’t been done. Folks had rough year ideas for many of the Screw tapes, but no hard dates whatsoever, not even months.
I didn’t follow through with it, because it was more work than I cared to do. I’d rather just be riding down a back road, soaking up another spring’s redbud ambiance, and blasting Screw myself, rather than trying to dissect and analyze and categorize and pin it down further like poking a butterfly to a piece of cardboard to prove how beautiful the wings were, killing the creature in the process. Just ride with it.
And the great lesson of Screw, the great Saint of Southern Gothicc Futurism, is that by slowing it down, you extend the beauty. Five minutes of funk becomes almost nine minutes, thus we extend the goodness of our life, but slowing the fuck down, and letting the good parts ride a little extra, and letting the regular parts, and even the occasional mistakes, just pass on by without calling attention to it. Goddamn, I love me some Screw.

SONG OF THE DAY: She's Looking Like a Hobo (kudzu'd)

I love hobo songs, always have, so I’m trying to learn this old school beat on the banjo, because it’s a banger. Plus, practice the scratches with two part harmony, so one of us is doing the "ohh.... ohhh...." but a second voice chimes in on the "looking like a hobo" to give it real flair.

SONG OF THE DAY: Is It Because I'm Black (kudzu'd)

Just another slowed down old school 45 reissue, because that’s what we do.

SONG OF THE DAY: Get Thy Bearings (kudzu'd)

Bearings being gotten, on a daily basis, except I don’t go by the calendar, I go by seeing the moon in the sky. Much easier to get your bearings when you go about it looking up towards space (which also reflect inwardly, towards equal space). My crown’s been feeling a little extra stardusted lately… the beneficial effects of sitting my ass outside watching the lighting bugs create aura arrow doodads to better focus my visions of the future. Shout out to the lightning bugs, and the moon. Shout out to the future.

SONG OF THE DAY: Summer (kudzu'd)

Summertime means slow down. Any time means slow down. Time needs to slow down. Time is a social construct. Slow down and live longer. On one hand, I may be older than I once was. But on the other, fuck it, I like this side of the dirt better. I think I’ll stomp around on it a little longer.

SONG OF THE DAY: Ring My Bell (12" version)

This is one of my favorite 45s to play slow… the beat just gets so thick and crazy. Then I started bumping this download of the long ass 12-inch disco version, where the crazy beat just gets all the room it needs to stretch its legs and flail its arms. True break beat shit. And a few months ago, that reminded me that during the late disco/early hip hop era, a lot of stuff got released on 12-inch records at 45 speed for singles. Including this. So I copped a nice little stack of 45 rpm 12-inch singles, and been meaning to make a new DJ Honeysuckle Vines mix with them, most likely coming out the gate with this as the opening track. And it’s an 8 minute 10 second song, that slowed down will be like nearly 12 minutes. I know that’s a “simple” calculation if you’re a white guy who loves ska music and keeps your shirt tucked in all the time, but I’m not like that so my brain can’t just calculate that shit all willy nilly; I have to let the beat ride and see where it goes. And whether I make that 12-inch mix later tonight, or later this week, or four years from now, I will let this fuckin’ “Ring My Bell” beat ride as long as it wants. In fact, maybe I need a second 12-inch copy and just juggle this beat for the whole 2 hour mixtape. Fuck it.

SONG OF THE DAY: Imperio de Traficantes (chopped and skrewed)

Any time somebody tries to convince me streaming services are chill and not a complete and total rip-off to both the artists (who don’t get paid) and the listener (who has limited selection which can change without your realizing), I remember there’s no chopped and screwed norteño music on streaming services for the most part. In fact, streaming minded music listeners are more likely to think “slowed and reverb” is an actual thing. We never know what we have until it’s gone. RIP good internet.
Shout out to the Skrewed Up Meskins blog, which is nothing but dead links at this point, abandoned into internet purgatory until the blogspot servers purge inactive sites eventually as a cost-cutting measure. So much great shit buried into those dead links. I'm thankful I got a bunch of it on an external hard drive still. Once it's gone, it's gone. I still wonder about once a month, "Whatever happened to DJ Dreemz?"

SONG OF THE DAY: Poison (kudzu'd)

When I was a kid, they fed us poison through a garden hose then offered their cures in the bed of a pick-up truck with no seat belts. And even though it flipped over because drunk driving was still legal or at least acceptable or at least neither but got did anyways, I turned out okay, because I was wearing my standard issue country boy overalls, with one strap flopped sexily off my shoulder, and "yung dirtgod" airbrushed on the left leg. I never would've gotten that airbrushed on the right leg. I mean, no offense to people who airbrush nicknames on their right leg, I'm open minded and know times have changed. But I never would've done that. Just wasn't raised that way I guess.

SONG OF THE DAY: It Really Doesn't Matter (kudzu'd)

Every time I listen to Zapp, I think, “wow, I don’t listen to enough Zapp.” And I listen to a lot of Zapp.