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A superb exception is found in the first four proper songs of Stop Stealin’ Our Style, a mixtape released in December by the Austin-based Screw Shop and Tosin, its curator. The project is dedicated to the memory of a number of fallen Texas rappers, and nods to both Pimp-C and DJ Screw, the former in a tribute track from Lil’ Flip and D-Red that functions as the set’s coda.
The track-list, though, tends more towards three other Houston icons - Big Moe and the Hawkins brothers, Fat Pat and Big Hawk. Big Moe died last October of complications from a heart attack, at the age of 33. Fat Pat was shot and killed in 1998 and his older brother suffered the same fate in May 2006.
This trio is the focus of the front four, which combine into a warped, otherworldly wake, tie-dyed in chrome and cobalt. Post-Tupac tradition dictates that tribute tracks take the form of forced inspirational reduxes - complete with violins and kids choirs - that sap the tributees of their original vim. Tosin's selections ignore this tradition; they exhilarate by keeping the tragedy implicit. To an outsider, very little indicates that the songs even form a tribute, save maybe the gloomy and reverent march of the chopped and screwed treatment.
“Rest In Peace” – the only largely new piece of music - opens the set-within-a-set as Austin’s Wes Sanders and Da Bosnian tip their hats to Big Moe through a barrage of chopped highlights from his career. A slowed version of the rapper’s “City of Syrup” follows; DJ LL holds the cheeky g-funk of the original track at bay and repaints Big Moe’s Houston-isms as grander proclamations, instead of simple place-holders in the original’s mock-up of the West Coast sound.
The height of the set comes between the third and fourth songs – a reworked version of Trae and Hawk’s “Swang” and a slowed “Wanna Be A Baller,” respectively. The former replaces the original’s Fat Pat chorus with a sample from his verse on “…Baller” and ends by extending that sample into the full verse. Simultaneously, we hear old tape of Hawk chanting his fallen brother’s lyrics, recorded before Hawk’s own violent and untimely death. The moment is surreal and chaotic and utterly agonizing.
Credit is due to REL Entertainment, who engineered and debuted the track on one of their Pitch Control DVDs. As for the effectiveness of the sequence, Tosin is responsible; he manages to capture the tragedy of the three men’s deaths without spelling it out or handicapping the set with chintzy embellishments. Equally impressive: he achieves prolonged poignancy within a mixtape solely through his song selection.
To purchase Stop Stealin' Our Style, click here or visit your local purveyor of rap
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