The master player himself (real name: Robert E. Davis Jr.) lives in the same worn South Park house in which he began mixing tapes four years ago. At eight o'clock almost every night, the privacy gate to DJ Screw's driveway swings open, and cars steadily fill up the street in front of his house. Teenagers and adults -- black, Hispanic and occasionally white -- line up at the back door's metal security gate to buy from the selection of $10 tapes Screw and his band of 20 in-house rappers (The Screwed Up Click) have just recorded.
Screw is a stocky five feet, six inches and looks younger than his 26 years. He answers the door and greets his public with a stern expression and a .45 in hand. You never know who will show up, he says, recalling the time last year when the police broke down his door after a neighbor alleged that Screw was dealing drugs out of his bungalow.
Each tape holds 200 minutes of Screwed rap, each song featuring a number of different voices, and a number of different messages. The music, and the celebrity thrill that comes from brief contact with the mysterious man himself, leads naturally into swangin' and bangin'.
"They'd just be riding in their cars, slowed down," Screw says of the phenomenon, "and the music gets to them so much that they've got to swang -- they throw their hands out the sunroof, too, just like at a rock concert."
The devotion shown by those who make weekly stops for Screw's tapes, and the attention they pay to the lyrical detail in his music -- the mention of Swishers, the gin cocktails, the player attitude -- causes Screw to smile.
"It feels good that they're getting into me," he says, "and I'm getting into them getting into me."
Screw's work ethic pumps into action at about the same time his driveway gate swings open. In between answering the door and stocking a Nike box full of the Maxell tapes that hold the products of his craft, he organizes about 15 rappers, who sit on milk crates composing their rap on notebook paper.
His studio, a spare bedroom that holds 15 large crates of records, several sound boards, two turntables, posters of local rappers, a mike, a TV tray stacked with computer discs and various other recording equipment, thumps with the background sound that Screw mixes. Pivoting between his turntables and records, he flips vinyl back and forth, scratching and slowing down the beat until he's pleased with the sound. One by one, the rappers stand at the mike and record their section, everyone else watching quietly, and giving encouragement during the playback.
Working solid for two or three days at a time, Screw smokes Black Mild cigars and drinks Big Red soda or a player potion -- gin cut with grape Snapple and soda water -- to stay awake. On this night, he moves with a slow precision, methodically organizing his record bins, creating room for all the rappers to stand and finally, after the sound is laid in, coaching them through their recording. A quiet reverence seems to fill the room as people watch him work. After five hours of recording, two of the rappers fall asleep on their milk crates, while the others drift off with their drinks. Screw's girlfriend, Nikki, comes home with a box of takeout for him, stopping in the kitchen to scold him for not doing the dishes.
As it gets closer to midnight, the tape-buying traffic slows to a trickle. Some of the fans lean in close to the security gate as their orders are filled, hoping to get a glimpse of Screw's studio and the bodies attached to the voices on tape. A few times during the night, the DJ pulls a key ring from his pocket, opens the security door and steps out to talk to the people who have driven an especially long way to buy tapes -- a young black man from Beaumont who, apparently starstruck, can only smile at Screw's questions, and a white kid from Dallas who amuses the DJ by rattling off the list of substances he used on the trip down to Houston.
The studio now is empty, and the perfume of reefer is wafting in from other parts of the house. Screw sits back down at his mixing board, puts on his headphones and cues up the last section of tape. Out in the Houston night, players and would-be players are nodding to the sounds he's created and dreaming of stardom, but DJ Screw is working.
