Hip-Hip -- The Dirty South is Champ?

Funny thing I noticed in the NYTimes today... an article on hip-hop from Houston. The article shined the spotlight on Mike Jones, who's coming out with a new WB-financed album later this summer.

Music from the South has been hella popular the past half-decade, but I think it gets short shrift in NYC and the City of the Angels.

And Houston is a bombastic music mecca boasting the South-by-Southwest Music Festival in March of every year; where fucking fabulous acts blow up the spot, ripping the speakers on the stage.

So it's no real surprise that Houston music, particularly its hip-hop, is getting pub -- now in the New York Times.

I remember a few years ago I heard something about Houston-based hip-hop (which hasn't really been blowin' up the national scene since the Geto Boys did so in the late 80s and early 90s when Scarface and Bushwick Bill were spittin' lyrics) about what was called "screw music", essentially beat tracks slowed down. The purveyor of this style of music (available on that old, favorite staple - the mixtape) was this cat name DJ Screw, who got drunk off of some weird cough syrup concoction -- the Flying Homer in real life! Life imitating art, or art imitating life? -- but the NPR story mentioned that DJ Screw had passed away.

There's a blog -- Houston So Real that chronicles the Houston hip-hop scene. Check it out.