Dj Screw

The man credited with being the central figurehead for the uprising of hip-hop is the late Dj Screw (real name Robert Earl Davis Jr). Screw was the creator and pioneer of a new style of hip-hop, which was christened “screwing” after its creator. Dj Screw began making mixtapes of the slowed-down music in the early 1990s. The genre was associated with both the use of marijuana and the consumption of “syrup”, a cocktail of cough syrup, mixed with the prescription drugs codeine and promethazine (Dj Screw’s death in November 2000 was attributed to either an overdose of codeine, or a gradual build-up of codeine in his body’s system as a result of years spent abusing the drug). Dj Screw made a significant number of mixtapes (purported to be in the thousands), usually with a theme.