Entry · catalog no. 8716
chopped and screwed
/ — /pending
idiom · phrase · Houston · 2026
✓ Verified
1.
A way of remixing a record by slowing it to a crawl — roughly 60 to 70 beats a minute — and chopping it up with skips, stutters, and scratches until it drips. Also the whole slowed-down Houston sound made this way.
“He only listens to the chopped and screwed version of that album.”
Origin & Attribution
Created by Houston's DJ Screw (Robert Earl Davis Jr.), who began making his slowed-down mixtapes around 1990; the style became the signature sound of Houston hip-hop through the 1990s.
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Houston · 2026
Spoken by
Houston
$CHOPPEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Rising0 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
12/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
2026
in the culture
Recorded here
2026
point of first record
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
DJ Screw — Wikipedia
submitted
■
+ Cite a sourceUniversity of Houston, "The Chopped and Screwed History of Houston Hip-Hop" — article · 2012
submitted
See also