>> Betsy Peterson: Hello, everyone. I'm Betsy Peterson, the director of the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress. And on behalf of all of the staff, I want to welcome you today to the latest entry in our Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series. The Botkin Series allows the American Folklife Center to highlight the work of leading scholars in folklife, ethnomusicology, oral history and cultural heritage. It also allows us to enhance our collections here at the Folklife Center. For the center and the Library, this is also a part of our acquisitions' activities. Each lecture is videotaped, as you can see, and becomes part of the permanent collections here at the American Folklife Center. In addition, these lectures will also be prepared for eventual webcast on the Library's website, so it can be shared around the world and preserved for posterity. So with that said, if you do have a cell phone turned on or any electronic device, I'd appreciate it if you'd turn it off now at this point. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing a folklorist ethnomusicologist, Langston Collin Wilkins. Dr. Wilkins was recently appointed the director of the Statewide Center for Washington Cultural Traditions, it is based in Seattle. And the CWCT is an innovative collaboration between Humanities Washington and the Washington State Arts Commission, which is an alliance you don't always see. Dr. Wilkins also joined CWCT after working as the traditional arts specialist at the Tennessee Arts Commission and as a program officer for Humanities Tennessee, where he led a Latino and new immigrant folklife fieldwork initiative, managed folklife grants and directed writing workshops for youth. Dr. Wilkins received his Ph.D. in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University in 2016. And he also holds a master's degree in African-American and African diasporic studies from Indiana University. And in addition to his academic work, Langston has also been very active in the public sector. He is a longtime contributor to the archives of African-American music and culture, and has held a joint fellowship with the Houston Arts Alliance and the Houston Museum of African Culture to document folkways of traditional performers in Houston's African diasporic communities. And most relevant to today's talk, Langston is also the founder of the Houston Slab Parade and Family Festival, a street-based cultural event in his hometown of Houston, Texas, highlighted in the city's distinctive car culture and hip hop scene. I guess many people -- just as a final note, many people inaccurately think of folklife I think often as rural and historic. And, certainly, some of it is. But folklife is also continually emergent. It is continually in the process of being born dynamic. And some of the most interesting expressions of folklife today I think are found in urban America. Dr. Wilkins researches document -- research documents this. Sorry about that. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Langston Wilkins for today's Botkin Lecture on Street Folk: -- with a colon -- Hip Hop, Car Culture and Black Life in Houston, Texas. [ Applause ] >> Langston Wilkins: Thank you for that introduction, and thank you for having me here. This talk is based on years of fieldwork and research, but kind of more so growing up in Houston and just being a long-time, obsessive hip hop head, and wanting to document and present that culture. So I'm excited to be here to do this. And, again, thank you. So, again, the title of my talk is Street Folk: Hip Hop, Car Culture and Black Life in Houston, Texas. So hip hop culture has historically been a medium through which individuals negotiate their complex relationships with their surrounding environments. Due to racial and economic oppression, hip hop's earliest participants experienced a type of social isolation that rendered them virtually voiceless within New York's mainstream culture. In response, these young black and Puerto Rican youth found inventive ways to make their voices heard and humanity recognized. In the mid-1970s, these youth, including early DJ's such as Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa took rhythm and blues, funk and soul records, combined them, and used them to create a new form of up-tempo dance music. Soon thereafter, the earliest MCs put words to these sounds, using rhythmic rhyming lines to represent the neighborhoods, and get the party hot. This new musical genre and soon-to-be tradition happened alongside a new movement in visual arts. Right there in the Bronx, graffiti writers began marking up public spaces with tags comprised of individual aliases and street names. So hip hop culture was a channel to which these socially and politically muted communities could join the public conversation. Through this outlaw public art, these artists, and audiences as well, seized control of their physical and social environments. Now, in Houston's local hip hop scene, young black men facing similar social strife also use music and vehicles to express themselves there with a radically different sound. And, look, instead of energetic and dance oriented beats their music is slow, muddy and haunting. And it's a sound that they call screw. And instead of subway cars, their canvases are old American luxury cars enhanced by explosive paint jobs, booming sound systems and various body modifications. And they call this automotive culture slab. Now, growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood in South Houston, hearing screw and seeing slabs was common for me. Even as a cultural outsider, I knew that screw and slabs represented something special. I knew that their history and meaning was much deeper than their sonic or material components. What I witnessed when I was a kid and through ethnographic research as an adult was the development of a street-based folk culture that has documented, affirmed and empowered working-class black Houstonians across several decades. Right? So what is screw and what are slabs? All right. So screw is Houston, Texas' local hip hop sound and tradition. The screwed and chopped DJ technique is a central component of the screw sound, and it involves two separate practices, screwing and chopping. To screw, DJs slow the tempo of a record between 30 and 50% creating a muddy, bass-heavy sound accompanied by haunting vocals. And chopping is a localism for the common DJ practice of repeating certain words or phrases in a song creating a percussive effect. The combination of these practices creates a psychedelic and atmospheric hip hop sound. And local producers have turned the screwed and chopped technique into a dragging, trippy and bass-heavy production style. So screw bass instrumentals feature slower tempos, ranging between 60 and 70 beats per minute. And these tempos are much slower than the music produced in other southern centers, like Atlanta or New Orleans, which can be between 100 and 140 beats per minute. And in addition, screw-based rappers commonly perform in a smooth, melodic manner which accentuates the musical instrumentation. Their lyrics are grounded in the acute particulars of Houston street life. These screw lyrics are hyper local, as artists make explicit references to people, places and activities that comprise the Houston landscape. And furthermore, the practice of freestyling or extemporaneous rap performance is central to the screw tradition. And just to give you a sense of what screw sounds like, I have a quick example. This is DJ Slim K and rapper EDF's "Brandy Wine" from I think two years ago. [ Music ] [inaudible] all right. Okay. So that's screw. And we'll talk a bit more about it and hear it a bit more throughout this presentation [inaudible]. All right. Now, slabs are typically older models, large-bodied American sedans, such as models produced by Cadillac, Lincoln, Oldsmobile and Chevrolet that have been tricked out with explosive paint jobs and various types of vehicle adornment. The term slab, s, l, a, b, refers to the slabs of concrete that make up a street or paved road. The term emerged in the early days of the culture, when the act of driving the modified car was known as hitting the slab. Others suggest that the term comes from the fact that with all the additional modifications the car sits lower to the ground or lower to the -- or closer to the concrete slabs of the street. And today, slab is also expressed in acronym form, as slow, loud and banging, which kind of makes sense. All right. [inaudible] go in there? >> Yeah. >> Langston Wilkins: Now, most slab cars feature multi-layered, iridescent paint jobs known as candy paint. They give them a wet look when hit by light. I hope you can see that here. Yeah. Slab interiors include leather seats, woodgrain steering wheels and dashboards -- As well as explosive, bass-heavy stereo systems that are powered by multiple batteries. And the goal of these slab stereo systems is to make the trunk rattle, so that others can see, hear and feel your presence. And I have kind of an example of a slab stereo system. And you can kind of see in the video how the trunks are rattling. And they're kind of competing with each other. So here's an example. [ Music ] All right. Sorry about the poor videography. The bass was making me rattle a bit as well so. But you get the sense. All right. The chrome grill and woman, or hood ornament, structures the front end of a slab, as pictured here. And the centerpiece of the back end is a fifth wheel, which is a rim or wheel that's cut in half and enclosed in a fiberglass casing. It sits in what's called a bumper kit that allows it to be connected or attached to the trunk. Actuators allow slab riders to remotely raise or pop their trunks to reveal the elaborate neon LED displays positioned inside. And sometimes these displays are in glass as well. These trunk displays feature references to neighborhoods, social groups and fallen friends. And these trunk displays allow slab riders to communicate explicit messages to those within and outside of their communities. Now, that being said, the most important distinguishing aesthetic component of a slab, so what separates them from other urban car cultures, are their rims or wheels, called swangas, also called elbows or 84s. They have a few names. Swangas refer to two styles of rims that the Cragar Wheel Company produced for Cadillac models in the early 1980s, the 83s and 84s. The 83 version of the swangas are a 30-spoke chrome rim produced for Cadillac Eldorado models beginning in 1979 and ending in 1983. The much more popular and much more valuable 84 version are a modified version of the 83s. The 84s feature a reduced lip, more space between the outer ten spokes and the spokes poke out much further than the 83. And that's the most important part. And also vogue tires are a tire marked by its distinctive whitewall and yellow stripe as another core component, and also common to other car cultures in the American South, and also on the west coast. All right. Now, slabs do not come prepackaged. They are not mass produced or able to be acquired from a local dealership. A car is transformed into a slab. So a slab rider will purchase a car that's in a state of disrepair or beat up, and over the course of several months or years, they piece by piece create their slabs, spending sometimes thousands of dollars in the process. Now, while slab riders often employ their own handiwork in the creation of their vehicles, they also use the services of community craftsmen for the more intricate components. So in this sense, like most folk arts, a finished slab is the result of both individual and community development. And relatedly, community is central to slab culture. I already mentioned trunk displays, but in a similar vein of slab lines, and these are informal car clubs comprised of cars with the same paint color, and typically originating from the same neighborhoods. And while swanging, a type of processional play whereby the cars weave from lane to lane in a slow manner, slab lines operate as a unit in a show of community strength. And I'll show an example of swanging in a second. The same is true for social events such as block parties or car shows. So these slab lines proceed into an event in a single line. They position themselves as a unit. And they exit in the same manner. So, again, like other forms of folklore or folklife, they are products of an actively reinforced bond between the individual and his or her community. Okay. And I mentioned swanging a second ago. Again, it's a type of processional play or a game where drivers just weave from -- weave in and out of the lane. And let me show you an example of that. [ Music ] So that goes on and on, but you get the sense. All right. That's swanging. All right. So a little bit of history of both screw and slab. The story of slab and screw as well begins in the southside of Houston, Texas, which is a colloquialism for the collective of interconnected black neighborhoods situated southeast of downtown Houston. The southside includes historic black neighborhoods, like Third Ward, Sunnyside, South Park, Cloveland and, where I grew up, Hiram Clarke. Its counterpart is the northside, which is a similar collective of black neighborhoods northeast and northwest of downtown Houston. A large portion of Houston's black population live in either the southside or the northside, along with a few pockets in southwest Houston. Now, because of Houston's geographic landscape and infrastructure, the northside and southside are in some ways socially isolated from one another. And as a result, there are social networks for black residents, as well as social identities. The southside and northside in a sense are residential spaces that black Houstonians embody and discursively represent. All right. Now, structural and economic changes at the national and local levels decimated the economic and social stability of the southside in the 1980s, leaving it as a desolate shell of its former self. Sociologist Robert Bullard notes that by 1986, black unemployment in Houston stood at 12.5%, which was compared to 5.7% for white residents. And further during this period, over 20% of Houston's black population live below the poverty line. Now, facing a dearth of legitimate employment opportunities, some young black men in Houston began to engage in underground economy. In particular, the crack cocaine trade became a pathway for relative economic stability in the mid-1980s. Now, while most hand-to-hand crack dealers barely earned enough to survive, some were able to attain relative wealth. Now, one of these former drug dealers told me that at one point in the mid-1980s and into the 1990s, he earned upwards of $2,500 a night dealing right out of his garage in the Cloverland neighborhood. Now, while illicit in nature, crack created a new economy in working-class black spaces in Houston, and brought the possibility of upward mobility to formerly disenfranchised and despondent young men. Now, with all these excess funds, the southside streets became one of vanity or lavishness, and car culture emerged as a way for dealers to visually mark their success in the drug game. Now, slab is one of several urban car cultures to emerge in the 1980s. Others includes donks, bubbles and boxes that are popular in the southeast United States. In fact, these car cultures share a common ancestor in the pimp ride or a pimpmobile. 1970s-era pimps often modified Cadillacs with any number of bodily adornments, including custom grills, goddess hood ornaments, vinyl roofs, white-wall tires, spokes, chrome wheels and high-end stereo systems. And the exploits of these pimps were documented in black popular culture at the time, namely in the film "Super Fly," "The Mack" and "Willie Dynamite." And these are among the numerous '70s films that featured pimp themes. So the earliest slab riders grew up seeing pimps and other assorted hustlers in the neighborhoods, and they watched them on screen. And as they ascended into their own version of street success, they, too, used custom vehicles to symbolize and boost their social influence. A slab culture was solidified in 1984 with the arrival of the swangas. Again, also known as elbows, 84s, these rims came standard on 1984 model Cadillac Eldorados. They were deemed a road hazard, however, and were only produced for a single year for obvious reasons. So they were road hazards, only produced for a single year, which made them rare and highly valuable in the streets. And, naturally, this made them popular with industries as well, as they were a symbol of exclusivity. All right. So slab represented a means towards increasing one's respect in the southside streets in the late 1980s and into the 1990s. They served as the perfect medium for acquiring respect for a couple of key reasons. First, back then constructing a slab required a large amount of discretionary funds, between $10,000 and $50,000 to build a complete slab. And, second, even if the funds are available, information on how to buy parts and customizing was not easily accessible. The rims or swangas, for instance, were essentially sold under black market by dealers who operated inconspicuously. And these customizers moved in the same fashion. They built slabs in their private residences, and rarely publicized their services. So slab was an underground practice. And it was understood that a slab rider must have high levels of cultural competency to successfully put one together. As such, southside drug dealers, like Toast pictured here, Corie Blount and the Bubba Twins pictured here as well, used the car as a status symbol or ways to increase their influence in the hood. And as rapper E.S.G. once told me, quote, "We all looked up to the D boys or the drug dealers because they had the freshest slabs." All right. So in the mid-1990s, the slab scene and the hip hop scene became inextricably tied, fused together by artists who were as deep in the streets as they were in the rap game. One such artist was the aforementioned E.S.G., who was born Cedric Hill in Bogalusa, Louisiana, but E.S.G. moved to the southside of Houston as a teenager. At the time, according to E.S.G., quote, "The southside was [inaudible]." So E.S.G. sought to record a song that included everything pertaining to the culture and place that he was living in. And that song became 1994's "Swangin' and Bangin'." This was a documentation of and dedication to southside slab life. Produced by Sean "Solo" Jemison, "Swangin' and Bangin'" offers a vivid despiction [sic] -- excuse me, description of the slab scene. The [inaudible] chorus, swangin' and bangin', refers to the practices of swanging and banging, or playing a stereo at high volumes. Throughout the song, E.S.G. details core elements of slab aesthetics, including the 84s, vogue tires, bubble headlights, fifth wheel, grills and candy paint. In the music video, which was released as a remixed version in 1995, reconstructs a typical slab gathering. Lots of cars, lots of people and much music. So let's take a brief look at I guess the first minute of the "Swangin' and Bangin'" video. [ Music ] So that was E.S.G.'s "Swangin' and Bangin'" from 1994. And the song was released on E.S.G's 1994 album "Ocean of Funk," which was released on local Perrion Records, regionally distributed through local-based Southwest Wholesale, "Ocean of Funk" went on to sell 100,000 copies in Houston and throughout the south. And the immense popularity of "Swangin' and Bangin'" and later slab anthems like Big Mello's "We Gonna Funk Witcha Mind" and Fat Pat's "Tops Drop" helped cement slab as a core part of Houston's hip hop identity, both in and outside the city. Oh, and that's the "Ocean of Funk" album cover. You see E.S.G. driving a slab through I guess the ocean. [ Laughter ] Anyway, now, E.S.G. was not able to enjoy the success of "Swangin' and Bangin'." He ended up going to prison for three years right after the song and album was released. But prior to going away, however, he became a member of the Screwed Up Click, which was a southside crew that was shaping local hip hop identity and culture to a series of slow down mixed tapes, which were eventually called screw tapes. These screw tapes offered local listeners a new sound, and lyrics that were grounded in local street life. Now, the foundation of the Screwed Up Click was DJ Screw, pictured here, was born Robert Earl Davis. He was a southside resident who helped develop Houston's sonic identity by creating down-tempo, low-five mixed tapes that reflected Houston's humidity inspired unhurried atmosphere. So we moved slow, so the music's slow, essentially. In the early 1990s, DJ Screw began selling custom slowdown mixes to his southside neighbors. So buyers would give Screw a list of 20 songs, which he would then mix together using a variety of DJ techniques, including his trademark chopping. He would then employ a four-track recorder to slow down the mixes, and then transfer them to 90-minute cassette tapes. Oh, and here's an example of DJ Screw's performance style. This is his remix of Mack 10's "Foe Life" from 1996. Oh, let me see, do I have this? [ Music ] All right. So DJ Screw's "Foe Life" from 1996. And it may be hard to tell what's going on there. But he's actually using four records and four [inaudible] -- excuse me, four turntables to make that single recording. So it's really an incredible talent. All right. Now, as the mixed tapes grew in popularity, DJ Screw began to invite friends and customers to vocally perform on his mixed tapes. These vocal performances came in the form of spoken introductions, shout outs to neighborhoods, and most often impromptu rap performances, again, known as freestyles within hip hop culture. The earliest screw tape freestylers did not dream of becoming professional rap stars. These burgeoning MCs, like C-Note, Fat Pat, Lil Keke and others, were southside youth who simply wanted to represent themselves and their neighborhoods through rap. And eventually these MCs coalesced into a loose-knit performing group called the Screwed Up Click with DJ Screw as its head. This crew also included many members who did not rap at all. So the Screwed Up Click was less a rap group, and more so a loose-knit social group from the southside streets. This is a list of -- a small list of the members of Screwed Up Click. But here's a short clip that offers a staged, but a good example of what those freestyle sessions or those DJ Screw recording sessions looked like. This is a recording of the Screwed Up Click freestyling from the late 1990s. [ Music ] All right. So that was Will-Lean of the Botany Boyz performing there. Now, the screw tapes were, in the words of Screwed Up Click member Lil Randy, a type of hood radio station. So along with DJ Screw's mixing and freestyle performances, there were monologues and dialogues about people, events and places within the southside. There were birthday tapes. There were memorial tapes. There were graduation tapes and more. And so, in a sense, it was an informal and creative communication and documentation system, along with being entertainment. All right. Now, as the Screwed Up Click organically emerged out of the local street culture, the screw tapes became sort of inscribed with slab life. As E.S.G. once told me, quote, "At the time, Screw music was saturated in areas where slab was popular." And these slab riders would go to Screw's house and make screw tapes. So slab riders, like C-Note, this is his car pictured here, Stick One, Fat Pat and Corey Blount, became Screwed Up Click's earliest members. And Corey Blount was actually known as sort of the slab king in the early 1990s, because it's rumored that he had I think about 12 completed slabs at one point. So, yeah, king indeed. All right. Now, Screw music was a perfect match for slab culture. The slow music acted as a pace setter which allowed slab riders to showcase their cars when riding around the neighborhood. The rich based of the screw tape accentuated the powerful slab subwoofers enabling riders to sonically mark their presence on the surrounding environment. And, also, the Screwed Up Click's music helped expand slab practice within the southside. In particular, their music helped make red the most relevant slab culture -- excuse me, color in the area. So essentially after hearing Screwed Up Click members, like Pat Lemon, Lil Randy, his brother Rono [assumed spelling] and Cory Blount, talk about red slabs on mixed tapes, southsiders began painting their cars red as a grand display of community identity. All right. Yeah, so -- Now, slab and screw at their core are about community building and celebration. But in the mid-1990s, they were the sources of intense division and violent conflict between the southside and northside. And this conflict was negotiated and mediated through local hip hop music through these screw tapes. Let's go back. Now, while slab had a presence in the northside, the southside was a center of the culture. This was due to the fact that the culture coalesced in this area, and the rims were only available via southside dealers or sellers. Now, seeking to gain access to the prized and expensive rims, and also likely inspired by long-standing tensions, northsiders began stealing the red slabs from the southside. It happened. As E.S.G. once told me, quote, "The northside felt like them little cats from the southside riding slab I'm going to take them up off the slabs. So that's when the tension became real big, because a car would get stolen on the southside and would get found stripped on the northside." So, again, remember that the rims of the swangas were only produced for about five years ending in 1994. So by the mid-1990s, they were in scarce supply, and, naturally, really valuable. I think they had a market of about $10,000 for a set of four in the early 1990s. So this was a quick financial windfall if you were able to acquire a set. Yeah. So a friend of mine, P Izm, The Mack, who was one of the earliest slab riders and still rides slab, offers a first-hand account that seems to suggest that the violence between northside and the southside was as much about emotions as it was economics. So let's listen to him. [ Inaudible Speaker ] All right. So essentially folks that P Izm thinks were from the northside tried to destroy or shoot up a slab, so he had to return fire essentially. Now, Screwed Up Click, as slab riders and street cats that were directly affected by the carjacking, they used a screw tape to discursively intervene in the violent conflict. The first of such interventions was made on DJ Screw's "Wineberry Over Gold" tape in 1995 by Fat Pat, who was highly respected in both the street and hip hop communities. And let's listen to his freestyle from "Wineberry Over Gold." [ Music ] All right. So that was Fat Pat's freestyle from "Wineberry Over Gold" in 1995. And so here we find Fat Pat kind of positioning himself as a vocal leader within the southside. His verse is kind of a manifesto of sorts, both an attempt to mobilize his fellow southsiders to defend the neighborhood honor, as well as sending messages to the northside that their violent offenses would not go without response. Now, Fat Pat's freestyle was just an initial thrust into what became a string of verbal threats from the Screwed Up Click and other southside rappers to the northside. Now, for a while, because the northside lacked street voices, these disses went unchallenged. Eventually, however, a crew of northside-based DJs and MCs arose to the surface and released slowed down tapes that countered the Screwed Up Click's verbal assaults. These artists included DJ Michael Watts, rapper Slim Thug, pictured here, and J-Dawg, and recorded under the banner Swishahouse. So Swishahouse became the anchor for the northside rap community. So just as Screwed Up Click promoted red slabs, Swishahouse artists rapped about blue slabs. And just as the Screwed Up Click shouted out the southside, Swishahouse represented the north. For example, here is Swishahouse's northside anthem from 1998. [ Music ] All right. So that was Swishahouse's "Northside Anthem" from 1998. And just a quick note, Swishahouse's Slim Thug on the song "Swishahouse" of Slim Thug and J-Dawg are rapping over the instrumental of a song called "Southside" recorded by Screwed Up Click member Lil Keke. All right. So Swishahouse's emergence only intensified the conflict between the northside and the southside. So for the southside not only did the northsiders steal cars, they'd also stolen their musical style, because in their eyes DJ Screw was the only person who could legitimately produce screw tapes or slowdown tapes. Their hostility between the Screwed Up Click and Swishahouse intensified after DJ Screw died of a codeine overdose in 2000. And Michael Watts became the public face of Screw music. So for several years, Houston's rap community was just as divided as the streets, with one centered production in the southside and a wholly separate one in the northside. All right. But, thankfully, by the mid-2000s, this northside/southside conflict had all but ended. In 2000, a California company called Texan Wire Wheels, for some reason, began mass manufacturing the rims or the swangas, which reduced their retail price from 10,000 to I think below 2,000 for a set of four. So this decrease in price and exclusiveness made them less attractive to carjackers to some extent. And in addition, Screwed Up Click rappers and Swishahouse rappers began to collaborate with the hopes that such partnerships would help unite the streets. And, for example, E.S.G. and Slim Thug collaborated on an album called "Boss Hogg Outlaws," which was popular in both sides of town. All right. So moving ahead, prior to the mid-2000s, the Houston hip hop scene had a fickle relationship with the mainstream hip hop landscape. Every so often particular records would bubble up out of the city, make a mark in the south, and then get fairly respectable radio play around the country. But they changed for a moment in the mid-2000s when the hip hop -- Houston's hip hop scene managed to break through these cultural limitations and become the center for hip hop -- become the center of the hip hop landscape between 2005 and 2007. Music by artists such as Paul Wall, Chamillionaire and Lil Flip dominated the airwaves, charts and television. And so sort of like Compton in 1989, the Houston hip hop scene was in vogue. And it all started with the screw-based musical dedication to slab culture called "Still Tippin'" by Mike Jones, Paul wall and Slim Thug. Now, "Still Tippin'"'s success didn't occur by happenstance, nor was it purely due to musical appeal. Rather a perfect storm of hip hop and pop cultural shifts laid the groundwork for Houston's mid-2000 rise into the mainstream. First, was the ascendancy of southern hip hop as a major cultural force -- excuse me, commercial force in the late 1990s through labels like No Limit and Cash Money in New Orleans, as well as the whole Atlanta hip hop scene. But also notable was the appearance of MTV's "Pimp My Ride" in 2004, around the same time "Still Tippin'" was released. The show offered middle America a look, although somewhat extreme, into the world of urban car modification. All right. Now, on "Still Tippin," rapper Slim Thug, Paul Wall and Mike Jones, along with producer Salih Williams, sort of synthesized screw and slab into a coherent and tangible commercial product. The [inaudible] hook which framed the song was taken from an old Slim Thug freestyle and slowed by Michael Watts. "Still Tippin'" off [inaudible] wrapped in [inaudible] vogues is a direct reference to slab aesthetics, four 84s which are wrapped in four vogue tires. So as noted, music journalist Sasha Frere-Jones wrote, "'Still Tippin' is an elegant primer on Houston hip hop." And so essentially "Still Tippin" is a compiled and curated manifestation of Houston hip hop identity dressed in slab culture. "Still Tippin'" took the world by storm. The song reached number 26 on Billboard's Hot Hip Hop and R&B chart, and peaked high on its Hot 100 Pop chart. And it eventually went platinum. The video received constant rotation on MTV and BT. So for the first time in years, national media began paying attention to hip hop in Houston. Houston rappers like Paul Wall, Chamillionaire and others were featured in national music publications, like The Source and Vibe. And national press, like The New York Times and New Yorker ran pieces related to Houston hip hop. So essentially for Houston artists, screw and slab proved to be the perfect mix of the exotic and the familiar. It created a workable space for them within the popular culture. And they actively used it to release several platinum and multi-platinum albums over a two-year span. Let's skip that. All right. So I wrap up a bit tradition. Today, Houston's black neighborhoods do not look much different than they did in the 1980s. Take South Park in the southside for example. At 28,951, the neighborhoods and median household income is among the lowest in the city. This is driven by rampant unemployment, as 55% of adults 16 and over are out of work. Such poverty and unemployment, naturally, has led to continued proliferation of drug markets in these neighborhoods. And last year, two southside neighborhoods, one stretch of Third Ward and Sunnyside, were named two of the most violent neighborhoods in America. Okay. These systemic issues are reflected in the plight of the Screwed Up Click who have suffered from the untimely deaths of several members to either murder, drug abuse or even suicide over the last 20 years. As I mentioned, most notably, DJ Screw died in the 2000s -- or in 2000, reportedly as a result of a codeine overdose. And, most recently, Mr. 3-2, who was from my neighborhood in Hiram Clarke, was fatally shot in the head after an argument at a gas station in November of 2016. I must also note that several members have experienced periods of incarceration over the last few years as well. Okay. But in a grand display of resiliency, black artists and audiences in Houston have embraced screw and slabs as part of their cultural heritage. Musically, the screw sound aesthetic continues to define Houston hip hop, both within and outside of the city. Despite sonic changes within the larger hip hop landscape, Houston artists continue to embrace their trademark sound. As rapper Big B of the Block Boys once told me, quote, "You have a whole generation of artists that rap a certain way because of the screw tapes. The rhyme schemes, the patterns, the lingo, et cetera, all because of these screw tapes." In fact. you can point to every single characteristic of Houston now and trace it back to those tapes. More interestingly, however, at least to me, is the fact that DJ Screw has been exalted to godlike status within the hip hop scene. There are multiple DJ Screw murals in the city. DJ Screw tattoos are common. And locals flock to Screwed Up Records and Tapes in Hiram Clarke, a second version of the record store that DJ Screw opened, just to symbolically feel his presence. And, also, with every passing year comes a slew of new DJ Screw and screw music tributes to [inaudible] artists within the city. One of my favorites is "What Would Screw Do?", by an artist named EDF, a name that was inspired by the aforementioned E.S.G. And let's listen to a brief clip of screw history, "What Would Screw Do?" [ Music ] All right. So essentially on "What Would Screw Do?" we see EDF. His verse kind of reflects the deification of screw among Houston hip hop artists and audiences. So for EDF and other local artists, DJ Screw was a mark of local excellence. He's a symbol of the genius and prowess that can emerge out of Houston streets. And as such, they celebrate him at every turn. All right. Also, the slab community has begun to establish formal slab-related events in effort to cultivate community. But despite these efforts, slab culture was relatively unknown outside of its community of origin during my time in the field. And I found this exceptionally unfortunate. Slab's marginalization truly troubled me. And it began to conceptualize the culture on a grand scale. And considering that slab is a car culture, and that processionals were already a core practice within the scene, a parade seemed like a logical and promising endeavor. So along with the Houston Museum of African Culture and the Folk and Traditional Art Program of the Houston Arts Alliance, which was then ran by folklorist Pat Jasper, I helped organize the Houston Slab Parade and the Family Festival, an event that took place in Houston's historic McGregor Park on October 20th, 2013. Collectively, parade organizers sought to offer attendees a curated, but realistic, exhibitionist slab culture. The processional was essentially a more elaborate slab line. Participants were organized by paint color, as they inherently swerved in and out of lanes along the parade route. And upon arriving at McGregor Park, which was a popular slab gathering for several generations, they parked by color, and then a formal car show commenced. The park then became a site of a festival featuring food, street art and musical performances by local rap artists. And that day, a multi-ethnic and multi-generational crowd of thousands piled into the park to admire, engage and celebrate this dynamic and complex culture. All right. Oops. Yeah. So in the wake of the slap parade, slab and screw have taken on a larger space in the Houston cultural landscape. In 2015, the Travel Channel's Booze Traveler, which is an alcoholic-based -- alcoholic-beverage-based travel show, let me correct that, featured slab culture in their segment on Houston. So show host, Jack Maxwell, rode in the slab belonging to P Ism, The Mack, during his tour of Houston. And in a similar vein, in 2016, CNN's Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown, included slab in their profile of Houston culture. Each of these things reflect slab's increasing movement from the margins into this mainstream. And this is actually a picture of the mayor of Houston and [inaudible] Parker in 2015 riding in a slab during our annual slab -- art car parade, excuse me. All right. Now, screw and slab began as a small group practice, and quickly became Houston's local hip hop identity, both within the city and around the country. Now, local artists and private citizens are actively working to define both as civic traditions, hoping to ensure their cultural vitality in preceding generations. And thank you. That's what I've got. [ Applause ]