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March 5, 2009

PURPLE DRANK: Know what I'm sayin? WASN'T 'PD' MADE DJ Screw, 'Screw it!' ~ Know what I'm sayin? [5-PART 'VBS' SERIES: PURPLE DRANK, HOUSTON, TX]

http://vice.typepad.com/vbs/images/2007/03/28/syrupsig.jpg
'The dreamy syrup held me,
and I realized it was perfect company.'

P
URPLE DRANK

Know what I'm sayin?

'One hand on da syrup. One hand on da 'lean on.'
Know what I'm sayin?
KooBo's prep-ritual is slow, fastly deliberate.
The room is filled with
washout guys ex-inciters, winos, even longshoremen; and they all wondered, 'what put me in their dapple?' would a white whatsit, DRANK?


Know what I'm sayin?


Codeine syrup all difficult to obtain and expensive.
So what?

Warn Hitler! I'm hotter than fresh- fucked sheep to get PURPLE!
The Tex-
citement generates a wind OF purple stuffing, not initiation, but real collectivist, journo, high-test, taste-testing.

No anything
brutalized everybody, is what my brain wants me to remember. Every drug-thin, gummy, backcombin' superhero's hoping for a cupful.
Same as me.


The fuel COMES on
slow but pleasant, LIKE a camisole. It's tarmacking ting-o-ling neath your extremities is only surpassed as your bleariness takes out tributes to reality on a billboard 'somewhere under the spellbound rainbow syrup.'

Now,
i'm all bespectacled and in a solid lamppost alleyway, but I drink as every like-thing...

Waiter?
Finished mine quick.


Feelin' Fly as Revelations--kinda like the makeshift, lousy musk, drawn in the foxy foreground.

presto!

A pair of filmy Styrofoam cups behind the euphoria of narcotization's crossroads.

Sold my sore soul to the devil long ago.

How far can I push the Experience down?
shh... Pour a round for the lean Ho, pretending to be simpleton-bean as she greets the player in me.





Know what I'm sayin?
1



Know what I'm sayin?
2


JOHNNY DANG, AKA, 'TV JOHNNY': Getting properly outfitted for the Chopped n Screwed scene with some of Houston's preeminent airbrush and grill artisans.
Know what I'm sayin?
3


The tireless self-promotion, "Houston hustle."


Know what I'm sayin?
4



Know what I'm sayin?

5


Know what I'm sayin?
Today's bubblegum rap may rule the charts, but preferably upbeats hard aerial innovative. Follow along as we head south to the Third Coast to groove on one of the most original rap scenes ever realized. Houston is a city defined by its geography--low and slow, hot and hard, bayous and parking lots spreading for endless flat suburban miles. But a lack of citywide zoning creates pockets of distinct communities within Houston's sprawl, and in these unofficially cordoned-off neighborhoods, Dirty Southern rap was born.

Initially characterized by the hard-charging Veto Boys, Houston's style was based on life in the 3rd and 5th Wards as well as South Park. When DJ Screw emerged from the shadows, his Screwed and Chopped sound created a sub-genre of rap music that would soon take the music world by storm. Bundled with DJ Screw's sound was the controversial romanticizing of syrup, a drug almost solely associated with Houston rap. The Bayou City has since blown up as a Mecca of the new southern style, and the slow sticky sound of Screwed and Chopped has come to dominate the public's perception of the Houston scene. VB gambled that the story of Houston Rap was more fascinating than mainstream media's simplistic version, so I dusted off my fanciest duds and moseyed my way down to find out what the hell had happened in this place written off by the East and West coasts as mere fly-over territory.

As you'll see, layered between hard-working dedication and street-smart hustle, Houston is its own distinct world. A music scene accented with the homegrown trappings of Slabs, Grills, cumulus-sized clouds of marijuana smoke, and the ever present aura of syrup yields a swansong' vibe that could have only been Third Coast Born. Watch as a host of Houston MC, led by the Screwed Up Click, Devin the Dude, the South Park Coalition and Bun B, lay this rags-to-riches story out for the whole world to see in simple black and white.