All Screwed Up: ESG and Slim Thug’s “Grippin’ Grain”

“Grippin’ Grain” has one of those beats that sounds amazing screwed up. If you listen to the original song, the beat sounds like the sort of thing regional rappers in the 90s used all the time, an amalgam of G-funk and 80s electro music that’s supposed to sound sleek and expensive. Screwed up, it sounds older and languid, like something off a late 70s or early 80s Isley Brothers or Earth, Wind, and Fire album.

For most of the first minute and a half, the song’s nothing but bass, drums, and some funky electric piano parts, with some synthesized strings creeping in around the :40 mark. If it was just this repeated for the song’s ten plus minutes, it’d be fine with me, because this is vintage Screw. He takes a laid back beat with a subtle, often airy melody, like ESG’s “Smoke On” or 4 Deep’s “Rollin 4 Deep” or Slick Rick’s “Sittin In My Car,” and he stretches it and stretches it, finding that transcendent sweet spot and just making a home there. He’s just like Eno on Music for Airports or the trippier Krautrock bands or any of my current favorite ambient drone artists like Emeralds or Skaters or Dolphins Into the Future.

Screw staggers his tricks throughout the song, leaving ESG’s first verse basically unchopped, but then, right before the first chorus, he randomly plays the song’s original intro twice. I get such a kick out of this technique, because it so throughly denaturalizes the listening experience. On the classic 3 in tha Mornin tape, Screw scratches the first couple of lines of RBX’s verse on “High Powered” what feels like eight or nine times, until the line “Haven’t you ever heard of a killer?/I drop bombs like Hiroshima” sounds simultaneously psychotic and absurd, like something you’d hear a homeless schizophrenic man repeating to himself over and over in an angry voice.

After Slim Thug’s verse, the song gets really trippy, with two phased choruses and ESG and Slim’s voices sounding almost like dying robots (I’m serious!) as they trade lines back and forth. This is all miles away from those screwed and chopped versions of albums that used to be everywhere–it’s gritty, it’s druggy, and seems to be more about what the sound of music does to your synapses than any sort of normal form of listening. For the last two minutes, Screw plays the instrumental part from the beginning of the song again, like he couldn’t wait for the rapping to end so he could get back to pure music.

ESG ft. Slim Thug – Grippin Grain (from the Screwed Up Texas tape)

Tags: All Screwed Up