There's nothing wrong with your audio player,éyou're just hearing chopped-and-screwed hip hop: A song's pitch is downshifted to a sludgy slo-mo (screwed) and its vocals are spliced out and reinserted as offbeat stutters (chopped). Hit-making MCs like Paul Wall and Lil' Jon mainstreamed the sound by releasing C&S versions of their albums; then the Black Eyed Peas and Blink-182's side project, Transplants, got into the act. Now it's the fans' turn, thanks to standard music software with pitch-shifting capability (such as GarageBand and ACID), plus apps made for the C&S technique (like Screwlab Pro and Drip Drape). The result: home-brew remixes - from R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" to 'N Sync's "Gone" - that sound even better than the originals.
- Julianne Shepherd
MC Paul Wall chops and screws his own tunes.
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The C&S Remix Effect
