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Tuesday, October 30, 2001
SPM plans onslaught of 'screw'

By Brendan Walsh
Caller-Times

Contributed photo

Carlos Coy a.k.a. South Park Mexican keeps DJ Screw’s music alive in his newest album ‘Screwston Vol. II: Pink Soda.’

Popular Houston musician DJ Screw passed away on Nov. 16 last year, likely after overdosing on codeine-containing prescription cough syrup, according to reports. If Carlos Coy - the rapper known as South Park Mexican - has his way, though, the screwed and chopped style of hip hop that DJ Screw invented and popularized will live on.
   SPM's Dope House Records will release the compilation album "Screwston Vol. II: Pink Soda" today.
   DJ Screw's technically unremarkable but extremely successful invention was to "screw" rap records by playing them at about 2/3 their normal speed and to "chop" them by occasionally skipping the song back about half a second to cause a word to repeat. Slowing down the speed accents the bass and distorts the vocals; chopping provides a disorienting blip in an otherwise smooth song.
   The album "Pink Soda" features 15 songs by Dope House artists, chopped and slowed down by DJ Mike Moe. Most of the songs have been previously released in non-screwed versions.
   Coy says he and his Dope House Records label plan to release 700 albums in the next 10 years, using songs by big names like Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z, and rock songs as well.
   It seems highly unlikely that the screwed style - which is very popular regionally but almost unheard of outside Texas, West Louisiana and Memphis - has a large enough fan-base to support nearly that many albums, but if anyone knows about overcoming the odds, it's Coy.
   Born and raised in the rough Houston neighborhood of South Park, Coy was first arrested for a felony when he was 10.
   Serious charges
   He spent his teenage years dealing drugs, but stopped hustling at about the same time his daughter was born.
   He began rapping and selling homemade tapes out of the trunk of his car, and by the late '90s had his own record label, hit singles and national attention.
   Coy's latest battle may be one of his toughest, however. On Sept. 25 the Houston Police Department arrested the rapper on two charges of aggravated sexual assault of a child. The felony charges, one involving a 9-year-old girl, one involving a woman who was 13 at the time of the alleged incident, are unrelated.
   "I'm perfectly, totally, 100 percent innocent of everything that they're running their mouth about, except for the fact that I did have a kid eight years ago with a girl under 18 who lied about her age," Coy said.
   Coy thinks the charges are just a rather extreme version of player hating, an attempt to discredit someone at the top of his game. "Everybody is trying to take me out. ... It's just ridiculous, you know what I'm saying?" Coy said.
   "I got all my lawyers on it and I want my people to know I'll make it through. ... All these (false) allegations aren't gonna stop me. They need to go to Academy and get some double barrels or something."
   A preliminary hearing is set for today.


Contact Brendan Walsh at 886-3763 or walshb@caller.com

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