It's officially summer season when we get a spell of hot days so bad my wife and kids force me to drag our ragged assortment of ill begotten window units out the shed, shopvac them out, clean the filters, plug 'em up in the yard and then haul them into our various styles of windows in various parts of house and try to condition the air down to something more tolerable for them. Usually, a few weeks before this every year, it gets warm enough where all I want to do is drink beer, ride to the river - not really get there and have to choose something to do but just constantly be riding to the river with that leisurely array of activities awaiting and kicking the lounge neurons around your brain, and jam DJ Screw shit. And screw season has been in effect, not that it ever really goes away, so much as calms down a bit during the cooler months. There is something about slow, warped hip hop music with the scratch effects leading into a cut instead of echoing behind a word or sound that just jibes with summertime, and jibes with getting fucked up most definitely. I have been so into screwed music for so long that last week when my daughter gave me a list of songs to make a birthday mix for her friend, one of the songs was "One Draw" by Rita Marley, and all I could find on the hard drive was a screwed and chopped version, which I included. Apparently, to regular people, screwed songs are not considered actual songs by the artist. Normal Rita Marley is happy and upbeat and could be about anything at all, but screwed and chopped Rita Marley drawling in a ghostly voice, "I waaannnnnaaaa get hiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggghhhhhhh, sooooooooo hiiiiiiiggggghhhh...." leaves no doubt about what the fuck is being suggested. My bad normal people; I aplogize for being in the midst of your world.
So I've hit my screw season so hard that I've actually contemplated just deleting everything else off my gaypod and filling it up with Screw music. The problem is, if you enjoy a vast array of musics like I do, there's only so many times you want to hear Tupac or gangsta rap bullshit like Screw filled his CDs out with. But there are great moments. And the whole Screwed-Up Clique definitely mastered the art of rapping with a consciousness for the end result of the screwed version. It's what makes their freestyle sessions so awesome. Fat Pat is the master of that shit. I'm fairly certain he does a verse on this song "Smoke On", attributed to ESG, but featuring 7000 people, that would be the absolute stupidest shit to hear at regular speed, rapping about taking a shit and taking a shower and eating breakfast. Slowed down though, and instantly chased down with the ghostly hook of "smoooke..... smooooke onnnnnn" the shit is damn near perfect. Like, if he had been rhyming about some serious soul-searching shit, it would've made it worse. The fact it's just everyday bullshit and they smoke, smoke on, yeah, it makes me want to just stay high from here til Labor Day.
STEAL “Smoke On”
NEXT UP: More music for drinking cough syrup to, but from a far different angle!
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