Chopping Neoliberalism, Screwing the Industry: DJ Screw, the Dirty South, and the Temporal Politics of Resistance

Sinnreich, A. & Dols, S. (2022). Chopping Neoliberalism, Screwing the Industry: DJ Screw, the Dirty South, and the Temporal Politics of Resistance. In R. Christopher (Ed.), Boogie down predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

12 Pages Posted: 2 Dec 2022

See all articles by Aram Sinnreich

Aram Sinnreich

American University - School of Communication

Samantha Dols

affiliation not provided to SSRN

Date Written: October 1, 2022

Abstract

DJ Screw, born Robert Earl Davis, died too young to see the music that he invented (and to which he gave his name) become the globally celebrated musical genre it is today. Chopped and screwed music, which began as a local Houston hip-hop subculture, distributed physically via mixtapes at parties and local brick-and-mortar retail establishments, has now become a widely recognized genre embraced and emulated by pop stars and promoted by major record labels. While DJ Screw and his creative partners in Houston’s Screwed Up Click are now far more widely known than they were before his death at the turn of the century, their legacy has a monodimensional and even pejorative aspect to it — one in which the music has become a sonic marker of drug abuse, and a symbol of the degradation and decadence of the “Dirty South.” In this article, we aim to broaden Screw’s legacy, and to valorize the politically resistant aspects of chopped and screwed music, by illuminating the articulation between hip-hop as a political art form and the rise of the “slow media” as a global counterhegemonic movement.

Keywords: hip hop, music, neoliberalism, slow media, political resistance

Suggested Citation

Sinnreich, Aram and Dols, Samantha, Chopping Neoliberalism, Screwing the Industry: DJ Screw, the Dirty South, and the Temporal Politics of Resistance (October 1, 2022). Sinnreich, A. & Dols, S. (2022). Chopping Neoliberalism, Screwing the Industry: DJ Screw, the Dirty South, and the Temporal Politics of Resistance. In R. Christopher (Ed.), Boogie down predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4250448 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4250448

Aram Sinnreich (Contact Author)

American University - School of Communication ( email )

Mary Graydon Center
4400 Massachusetts Av. NW
Washington, DC 20016
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.american.edu/soc/faculty/aram.cfm

Samantha Dols

affiliation not provided to SSRN

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