Man hold up! I remember when Lance Walker and Peter Beste were telling me about Vice Magazine folks coming to Houston to do a dvd or some shit about Houston. At the time I was super swamped with summer (or some seasons) bookings and regular work and was honestly quite burnt out with running around Houston in search of rappers. See in my experience, most journalists didn't really want to hear about the real and would only want to go around and chase the hype (Some, like Dave Stelfox, kept it trill). SO I really didn't get a chance to make the time to go and see what they were doing.
But these dudes from VICE KEPT IT STRAIGHT REAL! I'm telling y'all, it warms my heart to see this footage, mostly of the good folks from the South Park Coalition, KB da Kidnappa, Willie D, Devin the Dude, etc... Wish I would have been there. Most all the realest from Houston are represented on here.
On where you ask?
Well, here:
CHECK OUT THE VBS TV SPECIAL ON HOUSTON PART 1 HERE!
VBS.TV is Vice Magazines new video site that shows shit from all over the world, music clips, um, a whole bunch of shit. I just started getting into it. My favorite section so far is on Richard Kern, one of my favorite photographers, and um, film makers. Dude was like #1 on my VCR Top 10 most watched list in the early 1990's, now he's mostly shooting photos of naked girls. But he does it well, very well. Anyway, if you can get past the Kern footage, you should check out the Houston footage cuz trust me it's off the chain and I commend these folks.
Vice sometimes gets shit from people for being a hipster magazine, but I'ma say this, it's one of the only magazines I read cover to cover every month and they put it down hard. It's really just the ads that are hipster, their international coverage is genius and groundbreaking. This site seems to be following the same path.
Check back to www.vbs.tv every day this week to see a new episode on Houston. I saw a preview of them all and believe me when I say, they are keepers. They give the world a nice little slice of real Houston. Not the diamond encrusted side. I mean yeah, they got TV Johnny on there, but generally they just keep it real with the music. And the syrup. And the blunts.
Here's what VBS folk had to say about it:
Screwed in Houston: The Story of Third Coast Rap premieres on www.vbs.tv Monday, March 26, 2007 with one episode per day all week. More info below.
Today’s bubblegum rap may rule the charts, but at VBS we prefer our beats harder and more innovative. Follow along as we head south to the Third Coast to groove on one of the most original rap scenes ever realized. Houston is a city defined by its geography low and slow, hot and hard, bayous and parking lots spreading for endless flat suburban miles. But a lack of citywide zoning creates pockets of distinct communities within Houston’s sprawl, and in these unofficially cordoned-off neighborhoods, Dirty Southern rap was born.
Initially characterized by the hard-charging Geto Boys, Houston’s style was based on life in the 3rd and 5th Wards as well as South Park. And when DJ Screw emerged from the shadows, his Screwed and Chopped sound created a sub-genre of rap that would soon take the music world by storm. Bundled with DJ Screw’s sound was the controversial romanticizing of Syrup, a drug almost solely associated with Houston rap. The Bayou City has since blown up as a Mecca of the new southern style, and the slow sticky sound of Screwed and Chopped has come to dominate the public’s perception of the Houston scene. VBS gambled that the story of Houston Rap was more fascinating than mainstream media’s simplistic version. So we dusted off our straightest-laced correspondent, Trace Crutchfield, and sent him to find out what the hell had happened in this place lost in America between east and west, this Third Coast.
As you’ll see, layered between hard-working dedication and street-smart hustle, Houston is a distinct world. A music scene accented with the homegrown trappings of Slabs, Grillz, cumulous-sized clouds of marijuana smoke and the ever present aura of syrup, yields a swangin’ vibe that could have only been Third Coast Born. Watch as a host of Houston MCs, led by the Screwed Up Click, Devin the Dude, The South Park Coalition and Bun B, lay this rags-to-riches story out for the whole world to see in simple black and white.
Check it out right now for real. And every day this week.
And oh yeah, of course they've got a MYSPACE PAGE.
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